August 24, 2009

How to Subscribe to Password-Protected Feeds with Feed My Inbox

(2) Comment(s) | Published in Feed My Inbox

This morning we received a great question from a customer asking how to subscribe to a private or password-protected feed. That's a great question we hear quite often, so we thought it would be valuable to post it here on the blog.

Method 1

What seems to work best in our experience is to modify the URL of the feed to include your username/password. Here is what it should look like:

https://[username]:[password]@[domain]/[path]

An example with fake values filled in would look something like this:

https://admin:testing@brightwurks.com/rss.xml

Simply type that into Feed My Inbox, and it works like magic. We know this is tested and works well for web apps with protected feeds, like those from 37signals, as covered on their product blog a while back.

Method 2

If you are not so keen about having your username/password as part of the URL and would rather have a feed URL you can share with others, FreeMyFeed.com is definitely worth a shot. Simply type in your feed URL, username and password, then they will generate a NEW URL that does not have any login information in it, like so: http://freemyfeed.com/feed/SPGadlaeK1291JA91LAMadmaldkfdls= (just an example).

The only potential downfall to Free My Feed would be depending on their website to be up and working properly in order to get updates from your feed.

We hope this helps, just let us know if you have any questions.

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August 19, 2009

Feed My Inbox turns 1!

(10) Comment(s) | Published in Feed My Inbox

One year ago today, we launched this little idea called Feed My Inbox, a simple RSS to email application. We never set out to re-invent the wheel ... only to grease it up so that it worked a hell of a lot better.

To say we've been surprised by the popularity and growth of Feed My Inbox over the last year would be a serious understatement. It's been tons of fun, and the app is something our team is fully dedicated to for many more birthdays.

We are so grateful to all of the people that use this service. Here are some statistics of what happened behind-the-scenes over the last year:

Unique Visitors- 131,134
Pageviews- 550,599

Active accounts- 34,727
Feeds we're tracking- 56,606
Confirmed subscriptions- 66,840
Emails sent- 3,077,382
Feed entries emailed- 33,771,734

Service Outages- 37 (most of them less than 5 minutes)
Uptime- 99.91%
* We're getting better at this!

Although the application looks pretty much the same to you, under the hood it is literally 100% different. We have learned a lot along the way and are now to the point where we can scale this thing for the long haul.

I also wanted to give you an update on where we hope Feed My Inbox is headed in the next year. Putting this in writing is serious business, so we fully intend to live up to the following:

1. New features are on the way

We are currently working on the next big version of Feed My Inbox, which will bring many of the feature requests we have collected over the last year to light. We are not close enough to say when it will be launched, but it is officially a work in progress. Stay tuned to the blog for the first announcement.

2. We heart webmasters

Since we announced that webmasters can embed a sign-up form on their website that ties to Feed My Inbox, tools for you to see subscribers and have more control over outgoing emails have been sorely lacking. We have not forgotten about you, and over the next year we'll be bringing some game-changing stuff your way that no other RSS to Email provider can do.

3. We're listening

Our small team is BIG on customer service. We answer all emails and keep a close eye on the support discussions over at Get Satisfaction. If you have any feedback, questions,  suggestions or constructive criticism, don't hesitate to send it our way. 

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