Redirect Your RSS Feed to FeedBurner

Do you use FeedBurner? It’s a great service that can add a lot of value to your website or blog. For a lot of folks however switching to it can be scary as how do you tell existing subscribers that your feed has moved?

The answer, if you’re using Apache, is amazingly simple.

1.) Set up your Feedburner account

This is easy. Go to feedburner.google.com and sign up. You can use your GMail address to create an account.

3.) Open up your site’s .htaccess file

This should be found in the root of your site but if you’re on Mac or Linux you’ll have to view hidden files.

4.) Add the following

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^(FeedBurner|FeedValidator) [NC]
RewriteRule ^feed/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?$ http://feeds.feedburner.com/Bit51 [R=301,NC,L]

Where feed/ is the address of your existing feed in relation to your homepage. For example, the above uses the Bit51.com feed whereas WordPress normally sets the feed to https://www.chriswiegman.com/feed. The rewrite rule then uses the “feed/” in the last line and redirects it to the FeedBurner address for everyone except FeedBurner bots (which will need to see the old stuff to update your new feed).

5.) Done.

Now anyone, including readers, who go to your own feed will automatically be taken to your new feed.