The Blog Feed Redirect Option Needs To Be Used Properly

When you setup a Blogger blog, and use a properly configured feed, the combinations of comments, labels, and posts feeds can do wonders for making your blog more accessible and maintainable. You have a number of feeds, with URLs based upon the URL of the blog, to work with.

For more possibilities, you can use a custom feed, provided by an aggregation service like FeedBurner or FeedDigest. When you use a custom feed, you can even redirect references, within the blog, to the custom feed, so you don't have to manually reconfigure things like post footer feed links.

You redirect feed references using the dashboard setting in Settings - Other - "Post Feed Redirect URL".

Always use this setting properly - only put a valid feed URL in the box, or you will end up with a broken blog feed. A valid feed could be:

• A feed from another Blogger blog, as when you move the blog to another URL, and setup a stub blog with a redirected feed.
• A valid external URL - one provided by FeedBurner, FeedDigest, or a similar service.

Do not point this internally, to the same BlogSpot or domain URL. You cannot use this to simply change the URL of the feed for any one blog - it must be used in conjunction with a second blog, or a custom feed setup.

Here's the redirect setting, for this blog:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Nitecruzr-Blogging

That's my FeedBurner feed URL. Yours will be similar, excepting the

Nitecruzr-Blogging

If you use the URL of a feed for the same blog, you'll end up with a feed redirect loop. If your readers see anything from the feed, when it's directed to itself, it will be something like

The page isn't redirecting properly

Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

If you have no FeedBurner or second blog feed to redirect into, or if you don't know what is needed here, leave this setting blank. If you're using the setting, and you're experiencing a feed related problem, you should first clear the setting.

Also, be aware of the interaction between the Google Sitemap and the blog feed. A Google Sitemap will break, if you redirect your blog feed to a URL outside the blog naming space.

Finally, note that the blog feed is intended to let your readers read your blog, with greater ease. It's not designed to let you randomly distribute the blog content to the Internet, while abusing your Followers and subscribers.