What’s FeedFlare?

Google FeedBurner FeedFlare service places a simple footer at the bottom of each content item, both at site posts and RSS feed, helping you to distribute, inform and create a community around your content. The FeedFlare embeds links in your feeds for your visitors and subscribers to sharing and bookmarking. Such as a quick link to email the post author, share the post on Delicious.com, or Digg the post.

FeedFlare is a simple XML document that tells FeedBurner how to render a FeedFlare in the feed and on the site, and it identifies the communication channels that need to be established when creating an instance of a FeedFlare. A FeedFlare unit has two pieces of information, catalog information and the instructions for generating an instance of a FeedFlare. There are also two main classifications for a FeedFlare unit, static or dynamic. There are totally 16 official FeedFlare and a personal FeedFlare for customize your FeedFlare at the dashboard “Optimize” section.

A static FeedFlare unit (represented by a element in the unit XML) generates FeedFlare that does not change its text or image over time, while a dynamic FeedFlare unit (represented by a element in the unit XML) might change its representation based upon the item data over time.

For example, “Email This” is a static FeedFlare while “5 comments on this item” is a dynamic FeedFlare. In both cases, the flare link destination will likely be variable based upon information from the feed or item.

Note: You must add the FeedFlare HTML code into the theme’s index.php and single.php just above the postmetadata tag before the FeedFlare function on your site active.

Set Up A Custom FeedFlare

1. First create a XML file use the FeedFlare unit sample above and then upload to your server;
2. Login to the FeedBurner dashboard, tab the “Optimize” section;
3. Paste the URL of your custom FeedFlare Unit file into the “Add New Flare” box;
4. it will generate your custom FeedFlare unit immediately, choose where the Flare to be, site or RSS feed.

FeedFlare Unit Examples

[php]<FeedFlareUnit>
<Catalog>
<Title>Hello World</Title>
<Description>A static FeedFlare unit that just shows the text "Hello World"
</Description>
</Catalog>
<FeedFlare>
<Text>Hello World</Text>
</FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>[/php]

FeedFlare Ideas

Google FeedBurner API has a great resource of FeedFlare, named “101 Flares for a Better Tomorrow“. Grand total 101 by ready-to-used flares the FeedBurner API developers.

1. Self Promotion
You can link or plain text that promotes your new site or other personal project, link to your advertise page or even the affiliate link.

2. Add to Friends
Shows the publisher’s current number of friends on MySpace and lets the readers link as a friend.

3. Subscribe to comments
Link to a micro feed for the comments on an item. Would work today with WordPress powered blogs.

[php]<FeedFlareUnit>
−
<Catalog>
<Title>Subscribe to comments</Title>
<Description>Subscribe to comments on this post</Description>
</Catalog>
<FeedFlare>
<Text>Subscribe to comments</Text>
<Link href="${link}feed"/>
</FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>[/php]

4. Display Copyright
Displays explicit copyright message associated with an item.

[php]<FeedFlareUnit>
<Catalog>
<Title>Display Copyright</Title>
<Description>
Displays a copyright message associated with an item.
</Description>
</Catalog>
<FeedFlare>
<Text>Copyright ${../a:title}. All Rights Reserved.</Text>
</FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>[/php]

5. Alexa Ranking
Show the current Alexa ranking for the current site.

[php]<FeedFlareUnit>
<Catalog>
<Title>Alexa Rank</Title>
<Description>Shows the current Alexa ranking for the site</Description>
</Catalog>
<FeedFlare>
<Text>Alexa Rank</Text>
<Link href="http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=${../a:link[(@rel='alternate' or not(@rel))]/@href}"/>
</FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>[/php]

6. Just Found This Interesting
Display and link to the latest URL that the publisher saved to an online bookmarking service.

7. Permalink
Adds the permalink of posts to help verify as the original source

[php]
<FeedFlareUnit>
<Catalog>
<Title>Permalink</Title>
<Description>Adds the permalink of posts to help verify as the original source</Description>
</Catalog>
<FeedFlare>
<Text>Permalink: ${link}</Text>
<Link href="${link}" />
</FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>[/php]

8. Follow You at Twitter!

[php]<FeedFlareUnit>
<Catalog>
<Title>Follow Us at Twitter</Title>
<Description>Follow Us at Twitter</Description>
</Catalog>
<FeedFlare>
<Text>Follow Us at Twitter</Text>
<Link href="http://twitter.com/your_twitter_usename"/>
</FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>[/php]

9. Twit This!
Submits your post to Twitter. Might be useful as more people start using Twitter on a daily basis.

[php]<FeedFlareUnit>
<Catalog>
<Title>Twit This!</Title>
<Description>Submit this post to Twitter via TwitThis</Description>
</Catalog>
<FeedFlare>
<Text>Twit This!</Text>
<Link href="http://twitthis.com/twit?url=${link}&title=${title}"/>
</FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>[/php]

10. Add to Any Bookmark Manager
Add a link to this post to one of many popular online bookmark managers.

[php]<FeedFlareUnit>
<Catalog>
<Title>AddToAny Share/Bookmark</Title>
<Description>Help your visitors share and save your pages using any service.
</Description>
</Catalog>
<FeedFlare>
<Text>Share/Bookmark</Text>
<Link href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=${link}&linkname=${title}"/>
</FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>[/php]

11. Add to Windows Live Favorites
Add a link to this item to your Windows Live Favorites.

[php]<FeedFlareUnit>
<Catalog>
<Title>Add to Windows Live Favorites</Title>
<Description>
Add a link to this item to your Windows Live Favorites.
</Description>
</Catalog>
<FeedFlare>
<Text>Add to Windows Live Favorites</Text>
<Link href="https://favorites.live.com/quickadd.aspx?marklet=1&mkt=en-us&url=${link}&title=${title}&top=1"/>
</FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>[/php]

12. Reddit This
Submits your post to Reddit.com. This should really be part of the official feedflare collection as Reddit has a rather large userbase, perhaps more so than Newsvine.

[php]<FeedFlareUnit>
<Catalog>
<Title>Submit to Reddit</Title>
<Description>Submit this post to Reddit.com</Description>
</Catalog>
<FeedFlare>
<Text>Submit to Reddit</Text>
<Link href="http://reddit.com/submit?url=${link}&title=${title}"/>
</FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>[/php]

13. Donate via Paypal
Allows you to accept donations securely and conveniently using PayPal.com. This is a simple feedflare which allows you to choose the display message for the donation form, paypal address and donation currency. Non-profit organizations, self-help bloggers or anyone with an established audience might do well with this.

[php]<FeedFlareUnit>
<Catalog>
<Title>Donate via PayPal</Title>
<Description>
Accept donations securely and conveniently using PayPal.com.
</Description>
</Catalog>
<FeedFlare>
<Text>Donate</Text>
<Link href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=${(ancestor-or-self::*/a:author/a:email)[last()]}&item_name=${/a:feed/a:title}&no_shipping=0&tax=0&currency_code=USD&lc=US&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF&charset=UTF%2d8"/>
</FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>[/php]

14. Google Bookmark This
A static FeedFlare unit that bookmarks the current page to the user’s account at Google Bookmarks.

[php]<FeedFlareUnit>
<Catalog>
<Title>Google Bookmark This</Title>
<Description>A static FeedFlare unit that bookmarks the current page to the user’s account at Google</Description>
</Catalog>
<FeedFlare>
<Text>Google Bookmark This</Text>
<Link href="http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=edit&bkmk=${link}&title=${title}" />
</FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>[/php]

15. Monkey Alert!
Display an alert message if the word “monkey” appears anywhere in a content item.

[php]<FeedFlareUnit>
<Catalog>
<Title>Monkey Alert!</Title>
<Description>
Show an alert if the post contains the word "monkey"
</Description>
</Catalog>
<FeedFlare>
<Text>
Monkey Alert for "${.[count((a:content//text())[contains(.,'monkey')]) > 0]/a:title}"!
</Text>
</FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>[/php]

Further Reading

• The official Google Code FeedBurner API page for the developers.
• 6 Useful FeedBurner Features that are Normally Ignored by Daily Blog Tips.
• 15 Feedburner Feedflares You Can Easily Use to Promote Your Content and Website