Feedburner: Switching to Google account with MyBrand enabled

Since I’ve migrated my FeedBurner account to Google I encounter a lot of problems, especially with the MyBrand service. MyBrand is a service allowing to use custom domain names with FeedBurner. Instead of something like http://feeds.feedburner.com/lapin-blanc, your feed address become http://feeds.lapin-blanc.net/lapin-blanc. I’ve already explained why it’s better !

My subdomain for feeds was rss.lapin-blanc.net. There is no way to get this subdomain working since I’ve switched to Google accounts. I’ve followed the Tim Heuer’s tutorial but the message The domain « rss.lapin-blanc.net » you specified is already in use. is still displayed when I try to recreate my main custom URL in the MyBrand settings page. I’ve just managed to get my « backup » domain called feeds.lapin-blanc.net working.

So I’ve created this quick-and-dirty hack:

  1. Set a working MyBrand domain. For me: feeds.lapin-blanc.net.
  2. Point the DNS entry of your primary feeds domain on your web server. For me me: replace rss 10800 IN CNAME <my-login>.feedproxy.ghs.google.com. by rss 10800 IN CNAME www.
  3. Create a virtual host on your web server to redirect permanently the old addresses to the new one. For me (using Debian GNU/Linux):
    Create a file called /etc/apache2/sites-available/rss.lapin-blanc.net containing:

    <VirtualHost *>
        ServerName rss.lapin-blanc.net

        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteRule ^(.*) http://feeds.lapin-blanc.net$1 [L,R=301]
</VirtualHost>

    Next type in a shell a2ensite rss.lapin-blanc.net && /etc/init.d/apache2 reload.

  4. Change all occurrences of your old feeds URL to the new in your site to reduce the number of HTTP requests.

Your burned feed must work without losing readers. This a temporary solution, and I think that the only useful long term solution is to go away from FeedBurner…

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janvier 31, 2009 | Filed Under English, Référencement, Web 2.0 

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