• I’m not sure if this is a WordPress issue or a FeedBurner one, so I’m posting this in both places.

    I have a new WordPress blog (https://iosdevgoodies.joostschuur.com/) that uses a FeedBurner plugin to redirect its RSS feed there via a 302 redirect, and on the site itself, the feed is only ever listed (both in the sidebar subscription link and in the header meta data for auto-discovery) under my own hostname above, with no reference to FeedBurner.

    Now I understand the concept of what’s going on here: The 302 redirect tells aggregators that the FeedBurner URL is not the definitive one, instead use the original one from the blog. It’s a ‘temporary’ redirect. This allows me to change my feed management down the line and not lose subscribers.

    So here’s my question: When I subscribe to the blog through either the feed button in the browser address bar or the sidebar link on the blog, I get redirected to Google Reader as my default feed reader (so far, so good), and the subscription that is added now lists the FeedBurner URL under ‘show details’ -> ‘Feed URL’. Why does that not list the original blog’s feed when Google Reader and FeedBurner both should know that it was a 302 redirect?

    On the other hand, if I explicitly subscribe by pasting in the version of the feed URL on my own hostname into the ‘Add a subscription’ box for Google Reader, it will list it under my hostname and _not_ the FeedBurner one.

    The blog exists twice on Google Reader and the ‘show details’ view shows a number of people subscribed to both versions of the feed. The majority likely clicked on the auto-discovery link and were using Google Reader the way I did. The rest may have subscribed through other means that somehow still sync with Google Reader. I tested adding a subscription to NetNewsWire e.g., and it doesn’t display the FeedBurner URL.

    Of course, in the end, either works, and I’m sure FeedBurner merges both subscriber counts together. I’m just wondering why Google displays the ‘temporary’ URL, when I’ve gone to some lengths to mask it. Surely Google will be smart enough to also retain (and for some reason just not display) the original feed URL as well, so I don’t lose my Google Reader subscribers, should I change who hosts the feed.

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