“Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)”

This appears on posts that have comments as well as the ones that have no comments.

The hack

For people who have removed (or wish to remove coz they use feedburner etc) the “Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)” link (that appears at the bottom of the posts section on the blog’s main page), this comment feed link will not appear on the post page. Here is a work around to have the comment feed link displayed while keeping your main page settings intact.

It requires a very small modification to your blog’s template. So, if you do not wish to display the “Subscribe to: Posts(Atom)” link at the bottom of the main page but still want to display the comment feed link to an individual post on that post’s page, add the lines in bold to the code in your blog:

<b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == "item"’>
<div class=’feed-links’>
Subscribe to:
<b:loop values=’data:links’ var=’f'>
<a class=’feed-link’ expr:href=’data:f.url’ expr:type=’data:f.mimeType’ target=’_blank’><data:f.name/> (<data:f.feedType/>)</a>
</b:loop>
</div>
</b:if>

It is a simple “if” condition and to work with it you need to search for “ class=’feed-links’ ” and add the code in bold as shown here.

How do they make it work for an individual posts?

I don’t really know that, but let’s look at the URLs of the feeds:

Comments feed my previous post:

http://stubborn-fanatic.blogspot.com/feeds/2189603568115404259/
comments/full

Comments feed for this post:

http://stubborn-fanatic.blogspot.com/feeds/2453519588050438240/
comments/full

I am not sure what these numbers i.e. “2189603568115404259” and “2453519588050438240” are. I guess they refer to the total number of posts in all the blogs on blogger at the particular moment when you create a post (your post’s simplest possible unique-ID across the entire blogger i.e. your post number). I am also not sure of this feed’s exact purpose. Few people, who tend to have an elaborate discussion on a particular post, might prefer to use such a feed, otherwise I see no use. Whatever it is, it sounds like a good feature. Its presence might be useful to certain readers and its absence does no harm.

Update: I have replaced <b:if cond=’data:blog.homepageUrl != data:blog.url’> in the above hack with <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == "item"’> because the blog’s default feed link was not displaying on the main page but still displaying on the label and archive pages.

Summary posts feed of your blog:
http://[your blog].blogspot.com/feeds/posts/summary (updated as per blogger buzz)

Full post feed for a label (topic):
http://beta.blogger.com/feeds/[blog id]/posts/full/-/[label name]

Summary feed for a label (topic):
http://beta.blogger.com/feeds/[blog id]/posts/summary/-/[label name]
(or)
http://[Your Blog].blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/[label name] (updated as per Phydeaus3)

Full comments feed:
http://beta.blogger.com/feeds/[blog id]/comments/full
(or)
http://[your blog].blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full (added as per blogger buzz)

Summary of Comments feed:
http://beta.blogger.com/feeds/[blog id]/comments/summary
(or)
http://[your blog].blogspot.com/feeds/comments/summary (added as per blogger buzz)

Phew! Did I miss some thing? With so many feeds to play, you can offer your readers with tremendous flexibility in choosing what they want to read and how. Realizing the benefits of this (especially in my blog where there are a many topics(labels)), I have revamped my feed subscribe section in the side bar. Using drop-down menus, I have tried to ensure that the readers get to choose what they want.

I picked up the code for the drop-downs from an article in Improbulus’s “A consuming experience”. However, the code for the drop-downs required some modification (I guess due to the differences between beta blogger and classic blogger). Here’s how a typical drop-down code looks:

<select id=”feedURLs” onchange=”var feedURL=this.options[this.selectedIndex].value;var feedTxt=this.options[this.selectedIndex].text;showFeed(feedURL,feedTxt)”>
<option selected=”selected” value=”clear” >Select Full or Shorter Feed</option>
<option value=”FULLFEEDURL”>Full Site Feed</option>
<option value=”EXCERPTSFEEDURL”>Excerpt Site Feed</option>
<option value=”HEADLINESURL”>Headlines only Site Feed</option>
</select><br/>

Here is the modified version of this code that works with blogger beta:

<select id=”feedURLs” onchange=”var feedURL=this.options[this.selectedIndex].value;var feedTxt=this.options[this.selectedIndex].text;showFeed(feedURL,feedTxt)”>
<option selected=”selected” value=”clear” />Select Full or Shorter Feed
<option value=”FULLFEEDURL”/>Full Site Feed
<option value=”EXCERPTSFEEDURL”/>Excerpt Site Feed
<option value=”HEADLINESURL”/>Headlines only Site Feed
</select><br/>

Basically the </option> tag is eliminated to get this thing working here. I dressed up all the essential feeds of my blog using FeedBurner and then used them in the drop-downs. Feedburner also lets you create the OPML file for all the feeds that you have burned using it. Once you have the OPML file, upload it somewhere and provide a direct link to your readers so that they may download and incorporate it in their feed reader. To learn about OPML click here. To find out your blog id in beta, just scroll to the bottom of your blog and hover the mouse cursor on the link which reads “posts(atom)”. The number after “feeds/” is your blog id.

Another update: If you wish to post HTML code in your blog you can use this tool to encode HTML code such that it can be displayed just the way it should appear to a reader. I had found this link in John’s FreshBlog.

Depending on the number of feeds you have in your blog, blogger names each feed widget as Feed1, Feed2 etc. To find out the blogger-assigned name of a particular feed widget, just hover your mouse cursor over the edit link of that widget in the layout -> page elements section of your blogger account and in the browser’s status bar you will see a link with the blogger assigned name a.k.a the widget ID.

http://beta.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=[edited]&
widgetType=Feed&widgetId=Feed2&action=editWidget

However, this exercise may not be required if you have assigned a title to your feed widget. You can search for a particular feed widget’s code in your template using its title or the widget ID. Once you have located the feed widget you wish to modify, you should look for the following code in there. Look for the line which goes <a expr:href=’data:i.alternate.href’… and add a target=’_blank’ to it and you are done. Simple isn’t it?

<b:widget id=’Feed2′ locked=’false’ title=’Reuters: Top News’ type=’Feed’>
<b:includable id=’main’>
[blah blah!]
<ul id=’feedItemListDisplay’>
<b:loop values=’data:feedData.items’ var=’i'>
<li>
<span class=’item-title’>
<a expr:href=’data:i.alternate.href’ target=’_blank’>
<data:i.title/>
</a>
</span>

I have applied this hack only to third-party feeds in my blog. If you are using your own feed to display recent posts etc this may not be required as even if some one clicks on a link in that feed widget, they remain on your blog.

As always, if you face any problems, just drop a line here and I shall look into it. Also note that this hack is only for blogger beta blogs.