138 Add Blogger Comment Count as Feedburner Feedflare May 21, 2008 /

Until recently, it was not possible to display the number of comments for a post within our Blogger feeds.

However, via Google System I've learned that Feedburner have now added a new FeedFlare which you can use to display your post comment count in your Feedburner feed.

When readers click on the comment count link from your Feedburner feed, this will lead to the comments page for this post, enabling readers to read comments and add one of their own.

To activate this in your Feedburner feed, simply log in to your Feedburner account and click the link for the blog you wish to display the comment count.

Next, click on the Optimize tab, and then on the "FeedFlare" link in the sidebar.

On this page, you should easily spot the checkbox which says "Comments Count (Blogger)". Check the box which will display this FeedFlare in your actual blog feed (as this count should already be displayed in your blog posts).

Finally, save your FeedFlare settings for this new feature to take effect (or "activate" your Feedflare is you are not already using this particular feature of Feedburner yet!).

Using Intense Debate Comments?

For those who are using Intense Debate as their commenting system, you can also display your comment count using the Intense Debate comments Feedflare.

Simply log in to Intense Debate and click on the "Add-Ons tab in your dashboard.

On this page, look to the right-hand side of the screen where you will see the Feedburner Feedflare settings, like this:

Choose the blog for which you would like to display the comment count using the drop-down menu. This will then generate a unique URL in the box beneath.

Copy the URL from this box to your clipboard, and enter this in your Feedburner FeedFlare page in the box which says "Enter or Paste a FeedFlare Unit URL:

Then click the "Add New Flare" button.

Finally, save or activate your FeedFlare settings for this new feature to take effect.

Be patient!

In either case, the settings may not take effect immediately! It may be a few hours (or perhaps a day) before your new FeedFlare settings will become visible in your blog feed, though by the next feed count update, you should notice your comment count is visible when viewing your blog feed.

Also, you must ensure that you have activated the comment feeds for your posts in the Settings>Site Feed area of your Blogger dashboard. This is enabled by default, but do check to ensure you haven;t accidentally switched off this setting!

I hope this will be useful for you in adding your own comment count to your blog feeds. It's also another good reason to redirect your Blogger feeds through Feedburner if you aren't already doing so!

As always, please feel free to leave your comments and opinions below.