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Feedburner is a very popular feed aggregator and provides a host of services which you can tap on to publicize and promote your Blog. One widely used service is their FeedCount Chicklet which displays your Blog Feed's circulation statistics. The chicklet can be static (displaying the number of “readers”) or animated (showing the number of “readers” via feed). Although you can change the background and text color for the graphic display, there is no option for you to change the text. This hack will explain how to change and personalize the FeedCount Chicklet text as well as to change the animation settings so that it rolls the text more than once.

For those who have yet to sign up for a Feedburner account, consider doing so right away. Now that it is under the Google family, there is an easy way for you to channel all your Blogger feed subscribers to Feedburner. Login to Blogger, and under Settings -> Site Feed, enter your Blog's Feedburner Feed address into the box beside “Post Feed Redirect URL.” Readers who click the “Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)” link or the RSS icon in their browsers will be redirected to your Feedburner Feed.

FeedCount Chicklet

When you are logged into Feedburner account and are viewing your Feed details, click the Publicize -> FeedCount tab. This is where you can generate a code to display a chicklet in your Blog which shows the subscriber count. Whether or not you already have a high number of subscribers doesn't really matter. A nice chicklet can draw readers' attention and make it easy for them to click the Feed link.

Choose the custom colors of the body and text and click “Activate”. You will be given a HTML code for the Chicklet. We have to edit this code. Open MS Notepad (usually found under All Programs -> Accessories in Microsoft Windows) or a word processor program. Copy and paste this code.

Static FeedCount HTML Code

The static FeedCount code will look something like this:-

<p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ TipsForNewBloggers"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/ TipsForNewBloggers?bg=99CCFF&amp;fg=444444& anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p>

This is the standard FeedCount chicklet you see:-



To change the word “readers” to some other text such as “Viewers”, insert this other code (shown in red). You can change the word “Viewers” to other text, but because of the space constraint, keep it to no more than 7 characters.

<p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ TipsForNewBloggers"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/ TipsForNewBloggers?bg=99CCFF&amp;fg=444444& anim=0&amp;label=Viewers" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p>

The FeedCount chicklet now looks like this:-



You can change the text to capital letters or include characters, e.g., “*FANS*”, and your new FeedCount Chicklet will look like this:-



Animated FeedCount HTML Code

The animated FeedCount code is rather similar except that the animation value is set as “1” instead of “0”.

<p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ TipsForNewBloggers"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/ TipsForNewBloggers?bg=99CCFF&amp;fg=444444& anim=1" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p>

When the page is loaded, viewers will see a one-time rolling text of number of “readers” via feed.



The word “readers” can be changed to other text like “Members” by inserting the code (shown in red):-

<p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ TipsForNewBloggers"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/ TipsForNewBloggers?bg=99CCFF&amp;fg=444444& anim=1&amp;label=Members" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p>

This is the new FeedCount Chicklet you will see. Insert the relevant text that suits your Blog.



Animation to play more than once

Other than the change in text, you can also set the animation to play more than once by changing the anim value to something greater than 1. Since readers are unlikely to stay on a page for too long, it need not be too big a value. When the page is refreshed, the animation count will start all over again.

<p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ TipsForNewBloggers"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/ TipsForNewBloggers?bg=99CCFF&amp;fg=444444& anim=50&amp;label=Friends" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p>

Our animated FeedCount Chicklet will now look like this:-



Further reading:-

Another useful service that Feedburner has is their Headline Animator. You can create a nice animated banner that automatically displays the titles of your recent posts. Read more about it in our guide at Animated Banner with Rotating Headlines.

© Tips for New Bloggers