Fedafi - Wordpress Plugin for RSS

we are very happy to see Fedafi on the Mashable Toolbox 

Feel free to take a look on this list of rss tools.

Today we became aware of a bug in the chicklet code for the Fedafi Wordpress Plugin. The bug stopped the chicklet from showing the correct data on the first of each month.

Below is a fix for this, unzip the archive and upload chicklet.php to your fedafi folder

/wp-content/plugins/fedafi/

Download the patch here.

As far as we can see today Google started passing over subscriber numbers, which is great news.

Feedfetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html; 7 subscribers; feed-id=…)

Just a few weeks ago I posted about how some of the big online readers weren’t passing over subscribers and some were using none standard format, well Google is now doing both.

Just need Excite Mix to get onboard.

[update] If you are using the latest version of our wordpress plugin the Google count will already be showing in your stats - no waiting for a new release

We’ve put together some RSS subscriber icons so that you aren’t stuck with the orange one that ships with the plugin. Just pick the one you want, upload it to wp-content/plugins/fedafi/ and rename it background.png

Download the zip file with them all in here.

If you are wondering if the Fedafi Wordpress Plugin is compatible with the new 2.1 version of Wordpress, well - it is!

We’ve tested and can’t see any problems, if you find any let us know.

We have just released v1.0.2 of the Fedafi RSS Wordpress Plugin, download it here.

The new release has some feature changes, code optimization and bug fixes.

New Features

1. We have started to introduce the new statistics engine into the code, this will now show subscribers by online service where available. So you will be able to see how many Bloglines, Rmail, Pageflakes, Netvibes (and many more) subscribers you have. It’s available by day and uses some Ajax to drop down, it looks like this:

   

2. We have also added referrer tracking so you can see where people come from when they click on article links. This of course is limited to where a referrer is available. This means if a Pageflakes user clicks an article you will know about it. But if a desktop reader clicks one it will just show ‘Desktop/Mobile reader’, like this:

   

Bug Fixes

1. We fixed a bug that caused the stylesheet to be ignored if you used a different folder to install Wordpress (different from the index page)
2. Fixed a ‘null’ return bug in the stats routine

We recommend everyone updates to the latest version. Please report any bugs here.

If you use the default Wordpress permalink structure for your blog then many people may subscribe to your current feed using an URL something like this

domain.com/?feed=rss2

If you install the Fedafi Wordpress Plugin you need to redirect this to the new feed so that your subscribers don’t get lost.

To do this you need to add code similar to this in your sites .htaccess file.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^feed=(rss2)$
RewriteRule ^.*$ http://yourdomain.com/rss.php? [R,L]


Guy Kawasaki posted about the amount he gets through advertising from his blog, more of a ‘here’s the numbers make of it what you will’ than a ‘look at me’ type of post and very useful it was. This has lead to quite a conversation, including one about us here at Vecosys.

What is interesting is that some, like Vecosys have risen above the mire of ‘you don’t know what you are talking about’ and considered the whole ‘blog advertising’ arena.

Alan Patrick at Broadstuff has just written on the subject with an interesting take on banners vs search, likening blogs to the old magazine media. Much is being made of metrics and for those who have them they are a powerful tool. But, my thoughts are that blog advertsing in particular is more like product placement. Especially for the long tail.

I think savvy marketers won’t be looking for ‘goal conversions’ they will have a much more subtle approach to blogs. Like product placement in movies the long tail can achieve the same with their engaged readership. Pay per post on the other hand will become the product plug.

Now of course I would say that, having just started an ad network for feeds, but I would have said it anyway and my goal for our network is to get people using the exchange system. This way many will build their subscriber list telling others about blogs worth reading.

Back to the point, if the most powerful endorsement is a personal one then it follows that placement within a conversation also carries some of that power. The RSS feed is the channel conversations use to travel, they are different to the blog itself. In fact for many it’s the only point of contact with the blogger. It follows that impersonal Google ads are a flat plug, like interrupting a pub conversation with your mates and making a sales pitch.

A banner ad from a company you’ve chosen is more like a placement. Imagine how Pepsi would like it if every time guests came around you got Pepsi out? Okay not every time, but sometimes

If you like Pepsi and your friends like you it then becomes more difficult for them to dislike Pepsi, in consumer behavior this creates a triangle of love, because disliking Pepsi means they may have to dislike you. Hence celebrity endorsements and product placement, you like Tom Cruise so if he drinks Pepsi you have to like Pepsi - way too simplistic but you get the idea.

That’s the niche for banners in the long tail.

If a blogger ‘endorses’ a company/product and I like the blogger then maybe that will go some way to win the battle for my mind for that product type. Wash, rinse and repeat and over time brand positioning can be achieved.

We hope that our network grows, last year over 1.5 million copies of Wordpress were downloaded and we want every last one of them using our plugin and using it to build up their own personal subscriber list. Then, when they are ready we will have a network that is unique, a way for the likes of Pepsi to reach into thousands of households by personal endorsement.

Disclaimer, I hate Pepsi.

We are just finishing off working on the next release of the Wordpress plugin that will add to the statistics engine to give more accuracy and detail, allowing you to drill down by day. One thing that has made all of the work much tougher is the lack of standardization regarding information supplied by user agents.

Some, such as Netvibes, Pageflakes, Bloglines and more have used a standard format, like this:

Service_Name/release (http://www.domain.com; 1 subscriber)

This is great, it says who and how many. However others seem to use their own standard, such as:

FeedLounge (http://dl0.feedlounge.com/), 1 subscribers, next refresh in approx. 3600 seconds

Others don’t supply any subscriber information, such as

Excite Europe Feed Agent (http://mix.excite.co.uk/)
Google

Come on Excite, let us know how many people are reading, we want to know.

I know some ‘user agent purists’ will say that subscriber details shouldn’t be there, but they are and will continue to be added, let’s just hope they add in a standard way.

Anyway, here’s a sneak preview at the new stats engine;

At last we have started inputting publishers to the network, you should get your ID sometime soon if you haven’t got it yet.

Once you get it login to the user area and edit the details we have for your feed, these details will be public.

If you want a publisher ID and haven’t contacted us yet register here and then just fill in the form on the ‘publishers’ tab.

Please report any bugs.