I’m pleased to announce the release of DualFeeds v1.1 for WordPress.
This version includes many new features, including better support for FeedBurner, support for feed autodiscovery, improved summary feed and presentational elements to help promote your feeds.
What is DualFeeds?
DualFeeds is a WordPress plugin allowing you to offer BOTH Full Post AND Summary feeds, so your readers can choose the format which suits them best.
WordPress 2.3 Compatibility
For those of you wondering whether it’s compatible with WordPress 2.3, the answer is yes! Both version 1.1 and 1.0 are compatible with WordPress 2.3.
Major Changes
- Better FeedBurner support: DualFeeds can now redirect feed requests for your first, second and comment feed URLs to the appropriate FeedBurner URL. This can be used with or instead of FeedSmith.
- Option to turn on feed autodiscovery links for your Full Post, Summary and Comments feeds, so modern browsers can autodiscover your feeds.
- Improved truncation of entries in the summary feed if there is no excerpt or more tag. Instead of being cut off mid-word, they are cut off after the last full word (within the Maximum Summary Length).
- Summary feed now includes a "visit site to read more" link at the end of each entry. Requested by RT from Untwisted Vortex.
- Prominent sidebar widget linking to the Full Post, Summary & Comments feeds. No need to edit your theme to set up links (unless you want to!).
- Option to display links to the Full Post, Summary and Comments Feeds at the end of each post / page.
These are just the major changes. Visit the ChangeLog for the full list of changes.
Where Do I Get It?
DualFeeds 1.1 can be downloaded from the DualFeeds plugin home page. Further information about the plugin and it’s features, including upgrade instructions, is also available on the plugin home page.
Hi Stephen,
I’ve been doing what I can to promote your excellent plugin whenever I see bloggers pondering the dilemma of what type of feed to offer. Like you I do most of my blog reading via RSS and I personally hate partial feeds, although I appreciate some people prefer them. The only use for them as far as I can see is to force readers to visit in the hope that they will click on some ads or such like.
Giving the reader control as your plugin does is by far the neatest and most reader friendly solution, and kudos to you for writing it.
Hi Maurice, thanks! I’ve seen you mention it several times now. Very much appreciated!
I may have found a new use for it as well. I’ve just found out that my blog is being scraped. I plan to switch the feeds so that the sploggers are only getting the summary feed. It they take the time to visit my site they will be able to find the URL for the full text feed, but it adds some protection. The only problem is that my subscribers will have to change the URL they are subscribing to, to get the full post feed.
I’m not going to make the change immediately, but expect a post outlining my plans in the next few days. Let me know if this would be a pain for you.
Hey Stephen,
Sorry I didn’t comment on this earlier. I really like the idea behind this plugin and I’ve been pondering it for a while. One question. Although the design of the widget looks great, is there any way to plugin the feed urls into custom RSS images?
The reason I ask is because I’m thinking about having a few custom buttons made. One for full, one for summary, one for comment and one for email.
Great job. I wish I were as technically inclined as you 😉
Hi Josh,
It should be pretty easy to use with custom buttons. To get the custom buttons to display, you’re going to need to add them to your theme – do you know where you’ll do this yet? If you do, then when you add them, you simply wrap them in an “a href” tag linking to the appropriate URLs. You can find the right URLs for your site in the DualFeed Options page in the Admin Area.
If you need more information, just let me know (maybe shoot me an email). I’ll be glad to help!
I wish I was as good at marketing as you are 🙂
I don’t use a widgetized theme so I’ll just be inserting the images into my sidebar like the current RSS image.
What I meant was, can’t I get a summary feed, full feed and comment feed from feedburner and just link my images to them? Since I believe that’s true, whats the purpose of dual feeds?
That’s not in any way a disrespectful comment, I’m just trying to fully understand it.
Hi Josh,
You can indeed use FeedBurner to create both full post and summary feeds. You need to burn your main feed twice (with separate FeedBurner URLs) and then use FeedBurner’s Summary option on one of them.
The main reason to use DualFeeds to create the summary feed (instead of getting FeedBurner to do it), is that FeedBurner creates the summary from your feed, while DualFeeds creates it from WordPress itself.
That means that all FeedBurner can do is cut the feed after a certain number of words. DualFeeds can access the post excerpt and the more tag (if you use them), which should lead to better summaries. If you don’t use excerpts or the more tag, DualFeeds will cut the post in a similar way to FeedBurner, so there is less incentive to use DualFeeds – although I may add things in future (such as adsupport to full post but not summary feed).
One other issue that I try to make people aware of, is that of becoming tied into using FeedBurner. They are clearly market leaders in this type of service, and they are backed by Google, but who knows what will happen in a couple of years time.
If you’re starting out, I’d recommend using links to YOUR feed URLs, not the FeedBurner ones. Then use a plugin like FeedBurner’s FeedSmith, to redirect requests for your URLs to the FeedBurner ones. This means people are subscribed to your URLs, so it’s less disruption if you ever stop using FeedBurner.
Of course, in your situation, you’re already using the FeedBurner URL, so you may as well use the FeedBurner URL for the summary (whether or not FeedBurner creates the summary or is looking at a summary feed created by DualFeeds).
I hope this makes sense.
That makes total sense. Thanks alot Stephen!
Hi Josh. No problem – always glad to help.
That was a very useful comment you gave above to Josh regarding feedburner vs. dualfeeds. You could even make a post about it – most people (like myself) don’t give that much thought about it when choosing their feed format/provider.
Good stuff!
Hi Moshu, Thanks. I think I will write a post about being tied into FeedBurner. Not sure when, but I’ll slot it into my list of future posts.
By the way, I just have to say your work in the WordPress Support Forum is fantastic. I see your name all over the place, helping people out (and for free). I help very occasionally, but I don’t know how you do so much!