FeedBurner allows a blogger to track their readership and monitor click through rates as well as some other meta information. And you don’t have to pony up the dough for the commercial features, the free stuff that comes standard is still pretty powerful.

If you’re using WordPress and you already have an established readership via your standard WordPress feed - there’s a quick and dirty way for you to quickly change that with a few tweaks to your .htaccess file.

(If tweaking your .htaccess file seems like too much trouble, there is a plugin - though I’ve not used it, the details make it look as though it simplifies transferring your feeds through FeedBurner without needing to modify your actual template. If you have tried the plugin, mind letting me know how you like it :)? )

The code below assumes you’re using pretty permalinks on your blog - add it anywhere before the WordPress mod_rewrite code…


#Redirect Feeds Through Feed Burner
Redirect 302 /feed/ http://feeds.feedburner.com/YourFeed
Redirect 302 /comments/feed/ -> http://feeds.feedburner.com/YourCommentsFeed

Whenever someone adds your feed to their reader using http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ - the feed will be accessed through FeedBurner and you will be able to track it as though they had subscribed to the FeedBurner feed itself.

* the -> means it should be on the same line. Also, I used a 302 (temporary) redirect in case you ever want to change your actual feed burner address, use a new service, or revert back to using your standard WordPress feed URL for whatever reason.

If this method is not powerful enough for you (because sneaky users can still access your feed using ?feed=rss2), then there is a thread at the FeedBurner forums which offers up some workarounds.