by Donncha

Enhanced Feeds liven up your feed

Blogs have a powerful feature called in RSS feeds that enables people to read and keep track of their favourite blogs easily in aggregators like Bloglines and Google Reader. RSS readers of your blog never have to wonder if it has been updated because their news reader will tell them within an hour or two whenever you make a post.

Up until now your feed has been fairly basic. All you got in most aggregators was the post title and the content. Simple to navigate and read, but it left you with so many questions. How do I add this post to del.icio.us? How do I Digg it and has it been Dugg already? I wonder how many comments have been left?

Wonder no longer. Today, your WordPress.com feed can be supercharged with the following fine feed widgets:

  1. Comment Count
  2. Categories
  3. Tags
  4. “Add to Del.icio.us” link
  5. “Digg it!” link
  6. “Stumble it!” link

Comment Count is turned on by default but you can switch all the features on or off as you please. This is what your blog will look like in a news reader with everything turned on.

lorem-ipsum.png

To activate these goodies, go into the “Reading Options” page (Options->Reading) of your blog and scroll down. You’ll see the following checkboxes where they can be switched on or off.

enhanced feed options

If you have any ideas for other feed bling we could add, let us know in the comments.

156 Responses to “Enhanced Feeds liven up your feed”

  1. -30-

    Woot! Thanks!

  2. jnstrom

    I hope this helps with my traffic. Ive only had two people see my new blog so far. Im still learning everything.

  3. Enhanced Feeds liven up your feed « My Weblog

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  4. David W. Boles

    Killer good!

    FeedBurner get a’runnin’!

    Do you have plans to automatically push WordPress AdSense or other advertising on our feeds? If so, will we have the ability to turn it off or opt out?

  5. Matt Mullenweg

    David, no plans to advertise in feeds currently.

  6. deftoned

    Very nice additions! Thank you.

  7. PV

    Wow! Looks like the features just keep coming. Keep up the great work guys!

  8. nemo

    Great additions!
    Glad to see so many updates being posted lately.
    Thanks for the great work you’re all doing!

  9. Julio Fragoso

    thi is totally awesome…

  10. Canadian Cinephile

    Now I can keep track of my reader. I call him “George.”

    I made him up.

  11. masterclasslady

    Hi there and thanks for adding this wonderful option.

    However, when I added the checkmarks by all the options in this feature and pressed the “update” button, the check marks disappeared. The “comment count” remained, but the others did not take and I tried a couple of times.

    Can someone assist me with this problem?

    Thanks again.

  12. Matt Mullenweg

    masterclasslady, I just tried it on your blog and it seems to have worked fine. Could you maybe try it again?

  13. goldcoaster

    Checking this out now.

  14. Patrick

    pwn. this is a great addition

  15. storymode

    Even though I know nothing I write will be dug, I am very happy with these additions. ^^

  16. kOoLiNuS

    cool !!

  17. furoshiki

    I had been expecting this “Add to del.icio.us” for such a long time! and the rest is pleasant too. Thanks a lot.

  18. Dave Bonta

    Good work, but I don’t think you have all the bugs out yet. When I try to check additional boxes and click “save,” the boxes all come unchecked.

  19. Matt Mullenweg

    Dave Bonta, I don’t see your WP blog, but updating the options is working well in every place we can test it. Try contacting support if you still have trouble.

  20. trollboy

    cool. now all i need is some people to start reading my feed!

  21. David W. Boles

    Thanks for that reassurance, Matt! That’s helpful information.

    Do you happen to know what happens if we re-burn our now-enhanced RSS with FeedBurner and their promo links that seem to provide similar service to your new links? Will we get double links to Digg and the like or will FeedBurner strip out the extra WP.com adds?

  22. Matt Mullenweg

    David, I imagine you’d have two of the same thing. You should probably pick the widgets from one or the other.

  23. kazik

    Cool!

  24. FXSmom

    Sweet!!

  25. qazse

    This is wonderful news! I wish I knew what it all meant.

  26. familyforest

    Fantastic! Thanks and Merry Christmas!

  27. Salahudin al-Rawandi

    nice!

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  29. secondchancetolive

    Does this mean that we are going to get the Feed Stats back???

  30. cronies

    Very cool! Ty WP! *Goes to activate all of them now*

  31. maiideas

    Fantastic! Thank you for adding these bonus features! I just checked off all six goodies. Look forward to seeing them in action after I add a new post later today.

  32. anggara

    great news

  33. Suresh Gundappa

    Brilliant guys, this will really help us to make maximum use of feeds. You guys are fabulous!

  34. secondchancetolive

    Matt, I am also having a similiar experience. After checking each of the boxes and doing the update, none of the options remain checked…like my checking the boxes ever happened. What’s up?

    Seems like this has been happening to alot of people from the comments above. There may be a bug ???

    Thanks for checking on this matter.

    Craig

  35. jessicadoyle

    Thank you :)

  36. bruisinraincloud

    thank you so very much! This is great!

  37. dinsan

    vowwwwwwwwww lets rock !!!!!!!!!!

  38. Kunal

    another option would be e-mail this, it is there by default in Google Reader, but I do not know about other aggregators …

    and add reddit too, along with digg.. :)

  39. crazyharp81602

    You rock!!!

  40. E@zyVG

    Really cool …. wanted this feature for sometime now ….. tnx.

  41. E@zyVG

    BTW, how about having the same but not only for RSS readers, but underneath usual posts, too.

  42. wits

    I like this 12 days of Christmas thing! Thanks!

  43. Jeff Bean

    Hi Matt,

    Love the platform.. Thanks!

  44. planetultramarathon

    Thanks WordPress! Nice extra just in time for Xmas!

  45. Red Kid

    WOW!! That’s kick ass!! :D
    Love WP!

  46. Lore

    @David W. Boles Yes, we’re having same links from both feedburner and wordpress.com feed.

    @Matt I noticed that now inside the rss there’s the stat count emoticon too. Are you going to reactivate stats too? :P

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  48. edro

    Great Addition!

    When will it be debugged and available for use?

  49. ruhi

    Awesome additions. WP only keeps getting better.

  50. legoless

    :o Cool!

  51. dandelionsalad

    This is fabulous, thank you very much. Cheers and Happy holidays to all!

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  53. Fire Fly

    Maybe a trackback count as well?

    This is shiny.

  54. Haniey

    this is great! i like it very much. thanks!

  55. C.T. Daniel

    nice but this don’t work for me. I switch on all checkboxes and update option but … nothing … no change

  56. gobansaor

    Excellent, but, there’s always a but, how about feed stats.? Now that would be nice.

  57. turbotad

    Ok, now that seriously rocks. So much for FeedBurner!

  58. churumuri

    Was waiting for this. But like so many others, I am unable to turn on the feature. The boxes get unchecked the moment I check them and update.

  59. محسن وزیری

    OH MY GOD! ITS VERY GOOD THANK YOU mr.

  60. elpres

    How about a “reddit” button?

  61. Saeid

    Very good.
    Thanks

  62. ladybeams

    I used the above, thank you very much. I too tho hit ‘update’ and all the checkmarks disappeared except the ‘comment count’. It says my options were saved, but were they?
    Thanks

  63. Karthi

    Matt,

    I am facing the same problem as the one faced by masterclasslady and Dave Bonta. Any suggestions will be of great help.

  64. grinder

    Awesome \m/

  65. Tekone

    nice nice man

  66. Guy

    Sweet! As far as additions, maybe integrating or splicing other feeds into our WP feeds (e.g. twitter, flickr, del.icio.us) may be cool.

  67. AltijdAndries

    Great work! But a suggestion: maybe a user selected cut-off for RSS-posts? I know you have the “read more” tag, but maybe something like that that only effects the feeds? Because my blog is imported on the Dutch equivalent of facebook, but it won’t load youtube embeds, and it screws up the layout of my posts (the imported ones). So I would like to have a small bit of description imported, but not the rest! I know the “show summary” option, but it doesn’t display a “click here to read the rest” link, so I get akward situations because it might exactly cut off the main image, or something…

  68. curves79lady

    Cool!

  69. abbydonkrafts

    It would be nice if we could provide a “footer” template for each entry. That way we can drop in our own social bookmarking, etc, code and have it automatically be added with the appropriate title, etc. Right now I have to use AutoHotKey and manually enter the page address and title each time to generate the social bookmarking code for each entry.

  70. flicksntoys

    Feedburner currently tracks syndication and other RSS stats, does WordPress.com offer such stats or plan to? Thanks for the new features, they are appreciated.

  71. calsifer

    Great enhancements! Is it possible it have these on the actual blost articles too?

  72. Andrew

    I posted about this yesterday, saying that there will no doubt be requests for further social bookmarking services besides the initial three, and that my preference would be for reddit. This morning, reddit does indeed seem to have been added. Thank you!

  73. chanux

    Thats cool. give me social bookmark buttons on posts please.

  74. Google Crawling

    Great work and thanks for the enhancement of feeds. I love this work and hope i’ll will enjoy!

  75. Michell Bak

    MANY THANKS! :-)

  76. abarclay12

    Anything to liven up my feeding. Anything.

  77. moonbeammcqueen

    Fantastic!!! Thanks so much!

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  79. kormanj

    hello mr. wordpress add balatarin site for iranin and persian language. ok

    http://balatarin.com is digg iranian

  80. decoding

    Excellent addition! Thanks a lot.

  81. gwhiz

    Matt, you guys rock!

    Wonder if there’s any discussion about the “font” used for the Posted in… Comments… Add to… bits?

    I’ve looked at it in Safari, Google Reader (via Mac browsers) and the font used is blehhhkk :P

    How about Verdana or Trebuchet or (gosh forbid Arial)? Not sure what’s in use but it’s icky.

    All the same… Thanks for the helpful tool for traffic gen. Will get to work later tonight and hopefully Twitter the immediate infusion of new commenters.

    Gerald in Tulsa

  82. Brian

    Woot, indeed!

  83. fashionbyjenni

    Wow, thank you this is fantastic!

  84. Khürt

    This is exactly what I have wanted for months! Thank you!

  85. Phy

    Love it! Thanks WordPress!

  86. Dudu Maroja

    its working today hooray !

  87. 2.0 Weblogs

    word.

  88. jangari

    I would like to see a section where you can add static text that sits as a prefix, or a suffix, to all outgoing feeds, but doesn’t appear in the article. I want to encourage readers of my feed to replace the feed from an old site with the new one.

  89. Salva.

    Very good, people. Really nice job.

  90. Cross

    Finally I wanted this for so long! Now we got it! Already activated. Maybe in near future you can add the “add to del.icius” and some more widgets for Home page. Thanks

  91. invictus

    Very cool addition indeed but I have some problems too. At first, like masterclasslady and Dave Bonta, I experienced the “unchecked boxes” problem. When I managed to work around it after a few tries and succeded, then nothing new happened on my feeds. I mean, my new posts’ feed appear as before, without the enhancements. Anyway, I’m sure it’ll be fine soon.

  92. scarlett

    masterclasslady
    However, when I added the checkmarks by all the options in this feature and pressed the “update” button, the check marks disappeared. The “comment count” remained, but the others did not take and I tried a couple of times.

    I am having the exact same problem. I tried 3 times yesterday and today again. No go. :(

  93. JunP

    thanks a lot WP.

  94. hongkongphooey

    It’s working now, the options could be saved.

  95. fowgre

    I’ve had a similar experience as masterclasslady; yesterday I checked everything except ‘categories’ but when I checked it a moment ago, the only thing that was checked was ‘comment count.’ Trying again; hopefully this time it will take.

    Oh yeah, one more thing… can you add an enhanced feed option that will make people respond to my words of wisdom? *LOL*

  96. Lorelle VanFossen

    Are the feeds to tags covering only the posts on my blog or all posts within WordPress.com with that tag?

    And will these work in EVERY WordPress.com Theme?

  97. turi8

    Thanks

  98. dankprofessor

    Great addition. Will these widgets come up if I edit a previously published post?

  99. fundyreformed

    Awesome. Now if we could only get “add to delicious” or “digg this” links automatically embedded in our actual posts, that would be even better. Currently, we have to enter such links manually.

  100. fundyreformed

    Another feed idea, is giving us a feed count chicklet, like what Feedburner uses. If we could display how many readers we have, then many of us wouldn’t have any reason to burn our feed with feedburner.

  101. fundyreformed

    1 more thing, I checked and yes changing your feed options with WP will duplicate links on your feedburner feed. I had # of comments selected with Feedburner, and WP’s # of comments showed up as well. It is a cinch to deselect the Feedburner options which clash with WP however.

  102. Guh

    we want full feed, but at the same time, we want nice appearance on our blog.

    The “read more” stuff, can we have it on our page without the feed becoming partial?

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  104. Nita

    Useful, particularly the comment count and categories. Thanks.

  105. Maltesh Ashrit

    Aweesome Stuff !! :)

  106. almostinfamous

    this is awesome for all the 7 people that read my blog.

    but one day, when i’m all rich and famous, this is gonna be the bee’s knees!

  107. Chittaranjan

    Nice!

    Even though I don’t read my own feed (duh!) its good to know that the readers are getting so much more than just content! Add-it, Stumble-on and Digg-away readers……

  108. Martin Doherty

    Nice one… well done all.

  109. jeromebeta

    nice, thanks!

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  111. d.

    It looks very nice.

    Bur I can’t get the Digg function t work, att all.

    Any clues why?

  112. Dolly Garlo

    Lots to learn. Thanks for the info!

  113. Amarjeet Singh Rai

    But why are they images? These images cause a scrollbar at the bottom if there are too many tags. Change them to text, please.

  114. fbcp

    Thanks, I will try to check it out. Probably will not be very good at it - I am such a clutz…

  115. Cory Greenwell

    Is there anyway to edit the font of these links? It looks like the typeface on my first Apple IIe

  116. Harshad Joshi

    Is it possible to provide a seperate RSS syndication just for user comments?

    I have observed that some of my readers have posted very good comments on some post(better then the post itself), it would be very nice to see the views of such people being available to more web audience..

  117. moonbeammcqueen

    I turned all of this on yesterday, but I see no difference. Am I doing something wrong?

  118. mms911

    These feed enhancements don’t work if the sydications feeds are configured to show just summary.

  119. daybydayflips

    I’m with ya almostinfamous! Thanks for the great post!

  120. C.T. Daniel

    how this stuff works?

  121. Victor

    Cool, good stuff!

  122. rjlight

    YES!

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  124. sugali

    w00t, just getting to know the basic and you guys keep coming with some more good stuff. Thank you

  125. Susan

    I love that you guys are always improving. Thanks bunches! Any chance that we’ll be getting the RSS stats back again? I miss it as it made me feel so loved!

  126. Cassandra

    Cool feature! Even though I don’t have very many readers, I always love to see 2.0 functionality expanded. Please, pretty please add a Twitter widget soon!

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  128. fajro

    Why only Digg, delicious and stumbleupon?

    You should add the Share-this plugin:

    http://sharethis.com/publisher?type=wpplugin

  129. بهمن

    This is so great, really thanks guys ;)

  130. بهمن

    I have two suggestion for you:

    1. Please add http://balatarin.com to our feeds?! http://balatarin.com is just like http://Digg.com for Persian language users.

    2. Please add a counter for our feeds in our widget of blog like the FeedBurner.com counter.
    And also please add a Feed Stat in pour dashboards like Blog Stat!

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  133. slimball2007

    Awsome Thnx WordPress

  134. federico federici

    nice enhancements indeed… Thanks a lot…

  135. that girl again

    OK, if you can’t use a less hideous font and colour could you please insert a CSS class in the images so I can hide them? Or if you absolutely can’t, make the .pngs transparent? There are some feeds I’m subscribed to through livejournal, and I don’t care for having my friends’ page defaced.

  136. Anurag Bansal

    That is just awesome. I have been waiting impatiently for such a thing on wordpress.com.
    I appreciate it. But it will be also good, if Addthis or share this can be added in each post somehow. That builds more interaction with the reader.
    Thanks anyways…

  137. ganeshabba

    Hard work

  138. Sai

    Can we get the “Add to” for social bookmarking sites under the main posts too???

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  140. that girl again

    OK, if you can’t use a less hideous font and colour could you please insert a CSS class in the images so I can hide them? Or if you absolutely can’t, make the .pngs transparent? There are some feeds I’m subscribed to through livejournal, and I don’t care for having my friends’ page defaced.

  141. lovehunk04

    Thanks i didnt knew it.

  142. darvish

    I have posted two new posts since enabling the features, but they don’t show up. Am I doing something wrong?

  143. wanderlust

    when are you bringing back feedstats?

  144. Nature Gal

    The biggest bling that you could add to the feed would be feed stats. For blogs that have short content many people *only* read the feed. Right now we have no way of knowing how many of those there are.

  145. insidesportsgeek

    Much love WordPress Team. Thank you

  146. Tudor

    Wonderful service. Thought you’ll like to know, Word Press was nominated as an exemplary creative organization recently, in lectures forbusiness students. See
    http://leaderswedeserve.wordpress.com/category/creative-leadership/
    I explained my experiences and evidence of your energy, dedication, and the way you deal with outages.

    Best wishes for 2008

  147. si22

    That is just awesome. I have been waiting impatiently for such a thing on wordpress.com.
    I appreciate it. But it will be also good, if Addthis or share this can be added in each post somehow. That builds more interaction with the reader.
    Thanks anyways…

  148. Sankar

    This is really cool. Been waiting for a long time for such awesome features. :)

  149. Miguel del Este

    Keep up the good work. I am looking forward to big things in 2008.

  150. boosterseat

    Huzzah!

  151. Muffin

    YAY!
    ~Adam

  152. wordsplay

    thanks for all the good stuff, i agree with si22 that a “share this” or “send to” would be helpful as well

  153. sillyzone

    great stuff ta.

  154. soldier 12

    Thanks this will really help boost my hits.
    ~Soldier 12~

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