Suddenly I understood that most of the blog users lose their subscribers.
Most of us use FeedBurner for counting RSS- blog readers, don’t we?

The problem is that all the readers subscribe for our FeedBurner feed, a part of them subscribe for a standard URL as flashdaweb.com/feed.

Why don`t we change the situation?

WordPress plugin FeedBurner FeedSmith solves the problem partly (about 90%). It automatically redirects usual feed (flashdaweb.com/feed) to the FeedBurner feed (feeds.feedburner.com/flashdaweb) you set it in FeedBurner FeedSmith settings:

Our task is to solve the rest 10% of the problem.
The matter is that most of the normal browsers like Firefox or Safari define the RSS on page and show a small RSS-icon for a quick subscription:

Some people use exactly this system for subscribing for the blogs because it`s rather convenient – no need to search for a subscribing button or link. So one subscribes for a standard WordPress feed without considering FeedBurner. I do subscribe using URLs with RSS-icon for a quick subscription and I know many people do the same things.

Therewith if the site changes its place the addresses like flashdaweb.com/feed will stop existing and the reader will be lost. It is terrible!

How can we change it?

Admin => Presentation => Theme Editor => Header

Find the following line:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" />
title="RSS 2.0" href="" /&gt;

The following lines are also possible:

<link rel="alternate" type="text/xml" title="RSS .92" />
href="" /&gt;
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" />
title="Atom 0.3" href="" /&gt;

These are the RSS of «RSS .92»-and -«Atom 0.3»-format. They are outdated and can be deleted.

Then change the line for:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" />
title="RSS 2.0" href="your  FeedBurner feed" /&gt;

That`s all. Now the icon of fast subscription in browsers will be sent to your FeedBurner feed,

And all the subscribers are sure not to lurk!

———————-
Examples of blogs that has this problem

My favorite design blog – http://www.webdesignerwall.com/

They have 7750 subscribers – i wonder how many was not counted.

Another blog http://www.larissameek.com/ – Larissa Meek Art Director at AgencyNet.

If you use any other solution, please write in comments.

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