If you are an RSS junkie you would have noticed that many feed have small links at the bottom of the post that can be used to digg the post, email it, subscribe to the comments of that post etc. These is a feature of feedburner - it is called Flares. According to Feedburner "FeedFlare is a one-step service that enables publishers to configure a very slim "footer" containing customizable actions that will appear beneath each item in a feed.
For the longest time I thought that this was available only for paid uses of feedburner service - but I was wrong. If you use feedburner, you could use flares in your feed. And that is exactly what I did - if you are reading this post using a feed reader, just go to the bottom of this post and you will see the flares.
How to Add flares to your Feed
Before anything, you must be using feedburner to deliver your feed if you want this feature. If you are using feedburner, continue reading. If you are not using feedburner, its game over for you.
- Got to Feedburner Login page and Login into your account.
- Click on the feed you want to add the flares to.
- Click on the 'Optimize' tab. Click on the FeedFlare tab on the left sidebar.
- Select all the flares you want to add to your feed and submit the form.
An image to make things clearer...
Thats it. Now all the posts in that feed will have the flares at the bottom.
Custom Flares
The flare form only displays the default flares. But it is possible to create and use custom flares using the open FeedFlare API. See the Flares Catlog and 101 FeedFlares for a Better Tomorrow to find all the flares that can be used.
Don't Clutter
A word of warning before you add the flares to your feed - don't use too many. It is easy to abuse flares by adding many of it. Please make sure your feeds are clutter free.
3 Comments:
Thanks for putting this up. It had been for a long on my to-do list but the to-do list itself is not to be seen. ;)
Thanks (again) for the write up about the FeedFlares since I've been wondering what a lot of them did, and if they would be worthwhile setting up.
Nice blog....lot of information...btwn..I'm also from Kochi..
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