Add Feedburner As a Widget (Blogger and Typepad)

When creating a blog, one of the most important things that's on your mind and what you want to do is get new subscribers!  FeedBlitz and Feedburner are two of the most popular ways to manage your subscriptions.  I have used both and don't have any problem using either one. This tutorial however, is on using Feedburner.

Creating Your Feedburner Account For the First Time

• Go to www.Feedburner.com.
• In the middle of your screen "Enter your feed or Blog URL".
• This is where you will enter your blog address, such as http://heatherporto.typepad.com.
• Click Next.
• It will identify a few feed sources.  I use RSS.
• Click Next.
• Enter a Title for your feed (will default to the title of your blog.This is OK).
• Create a username (not an email address, the @ symbol is rejected).
• Enter a password twice.
• Then enter your email address (again, you cannot use your email address as your username).
• Then click Activate.
• You are now on your way!

Adding Feedburner Widget(s) To Your Blog

• Sign in to your Feedburner account. When you sign it, it will show you all the "feeds" you have set up.  So, click on that feed.
• Then you will see tabs, such as "Analyze", "Optimize", "Publicize" and more.
• Click on the Publicize tab.  Here you will find a lot of different things.  The two that I use are Email Subscriptions and Chicklet Chooser.  I actually do put both on my and many blogs I develop (since some visitors like to subscribe in different ways).
• So, on the left side you will see a bunch of different options, we will review Chicklet Chooser and Email Subscriptions.

CHICKLET CHOOSER

• Choose one of the New Standard  Feed icons (like the little orange square with "subscribe in a reader").
• Scroll to the bottom and you can quickly add this to your Typepad or Blogger account with the "Use as a widget in ...dropdown box, Typepad is the default. However if you click the dropdown, you will see Blogger is there as well).

For Typepad

• If you choose Typepad and then click GO, it will bring you to your Typepad account, and an area called "Add a Sidebar Widget", where you will select which Weblog you want to add it to. 
• Select the desired weblog (if you are using Advanced templates there is another way of doing this with adding the HTML -- contact me for those instructions separately).
• Give the Widget a name.
• Then click "Add Widget".
• Then, you can go to the Design tab of your weblog, and choose Order Content to determine where you want to place the newly added widget.

For Blogger

• If you choose Blogger and then click Go, it will bring you to a box "Add Page Element" where it wants you to select a blog and then a enter a Title for the newly added page element. 
• Click Add Widget button. 
• Then go to the Layout from the Dashboard. Then click on Page Elements and then you can drag and drop and rearrange the elements of your blog, including the placement of your newly added Feedburner widget.

*****  Now for the other widget I use *****
 
EMAIL SUBSCRIPTIONS
While still in Feedburner....

• In the Publicize tab, instead of choosing the Chicklet Chooser, now click on Email Subscriptions. This is what you see often on blogs where you can subscribe by entering your email address (such as the one I have in my upper right corner, www.blogsbyheather.com).
• When first coming to this option, scroll to the bottom left and be sure to click "Activate" to activate this service.
• Once activated, now in the middle of the screen you can choose "Use as a Widget in...." where you again can choose Typepad or Blogger. 
• Again, like the instructions above, it will then bring you to Typepad or Blogger and ask you what blog or weblog you want to add it to, and what the Title of the widget (or page element/gadget) should be.

Let me know if you have any other problems, I'd be happy to help: heather@blogsbyheather.com

Hope this helps!

 

Comments

[Sara]

Such a helpful post. Thank you!:)

[Heather Wright-Porto]

You're welcome!
thanks for visiting!

[Katrina]

Wow I thought I would be searching for this information for ever! your instruction were spot on THANK YOU. I am new to this blogging thing and don't know my way around computers that well too, I use them daily but this is different.

[lucy]

Thank you! Great help - my widget stopped working and luckily I figured out the html to have my own icon too :)
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