Error-Free Feed-Validation Links for Feedburner-Redirected Feeds
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Just a quick tip on how to create error-free links to feed validation services for feeds that are redirected through Feedburner. For example, let’s say our site’s main feed is originally located at:
http://domain.tld/feed/If we wanted to provide our visitors with a link that would enable them to automatically validate our feed using a free service such as feedvalidator.org1, we would create the link as follows:
<a href="http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdomain.tld%2Ffeed">Validate our Feed</a>..which would do the job nicely. However, if we are redirecting our feed through Feedburner, the previous link will return an error, as the feed URL now registers as the following:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/myfeedname..depending on the Feedburner name we choose to give it (“myfeedname” in this example). Therefore, in order to link to a feed validation service, we need to write our link as follows:
<a href="http://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2Fmyfeedname">Validate our Feed</a>Using this link, users will be able to validate (or invalidate, as the case may be) our Feedburner-redirected feed at the click of a button! Oh joy ;)
Update
As Louis points out, it is no longer necessary to link to either validation service using the Feedburner version of your feed URL. However, this was not always the case — roughly several months ago, it was necessary to link to either service using the Feedburner-redirected URL because the original feed URL would return an error. I swear I’m not lying about this! ;)
Apparently, at some point along the way, both validation services mentioned in this article have resolved this issue. So feel free to link to either service using either version of your URL! Great news indeed! — Thanks, Louis, for slapping me down pointing this out! ;)
Footnotes
- 1 Another free feed validation service is provided by w3.org. To use this service, our link would use the following URL for the
hrefvalue:http://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=
http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2Fmyfeedname
3 responses to “Error-Free Feed-Validation Links for Feedburner-Redirected Feeds”
I don’t get the point of this. My feed is redirected with a 301 redirection, from
http://nophysic.com/rss/to
http://feeds.feedburner.com/nophysicWhen I try to validate using the nice looking redirecting URL, it validates the redirected feed.
Hi Louis, thanks for pointing this out. I wrote this article several months ago and posted it for the sake of completeness. I did not realize that the validation services had fixed the issue — I should have checked before posting the article (duh). I have updated the article with an official “disclaimer” informing readers of the misinformation. I apologize for any inconvenience. Thanks for keeping an eye on things! :)
I have redirected my blog feed
http://www.sfihomebizz.com/feed/to feedburner and I get the error below frequentlyPROBLEM: FeedMedic Alert for sfihomebizzcom
Posted: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 05:57:28 PDTFeedBurner had trouble retrieving your Source Feed: http://www.sfihomebizz.com/feed/The error message is:
My blog feed is validating
http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfihomebizz.com%2Ffeed%2FBut my feedburner feed is showing errors on validation
http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2FsfihomebizzcomWhat is wrong and what should I do. Your site is a complete tutorial Jeff. Thankyou