Feeds: Not Just for Newsreaders Anymore

You may know that web feeds are a great way to keep up to date with new content on your favorite blogs. But did you know that they can do much more than that? Feeds can be used in a variety of ways such as gathering content from other sources and publishing it in one location, adding new functionality to your weblog and notifying subscribers of new updates via email.

For example, if you would like to display links to recent posts from other weblogs or other sources on your weblog, try using the Feeds module in Weblogs > Design > Select Content. This is a great way merge all of your weblogs in one and link to recent updates in services such as Flickr or Last.fm. The Feeds module does all the work for you. You can configure it to display 5 or 10 items at a time and it checks for updates on a regular basis to keep your content up to date. You can find more on this feature in our Knowledge Base.

If bringing all of your content together isn't enough, you can always try adding new functionality to your weblog and feed. FeedBurner's FeedFlares are a great way to enhance your weblog and feed and promote them at the same time. By enabling this feature from the Optimize tab in FeedBurner, you can select from a range of items such as links to Technorati, Digg and del.icio.us for each post. You can even add "Email This" links to your weblog without having to touch a single snippet of HTML. With this feature, there is something for everyone and if you can't find what you need, check out the FeedFlare Catalog and 101 FeedFlares for a Better Tomorrow. You can find more on using FeedBurner with TypePad in our Knowledge Base.

One of our favorite ways to use a feed is to receive new updates from a weblog via email. With the FeedBlitz widget, you can set this up for your weblog in just a few clicks. This is a great way to keep your viewers in the loop with new content added to your weblog. You can find some tips on setting up this widget in our Knowledge Base.

We hope these tips have given you some ideas you can use to enhance your weblog and don't forget, your feed can do more than you think it can.