pheedo - rss marketing solutions

Table of Contents

1. Apache Web Server Rewrites
2. Regular Expressions (Regexes)
3. Common Mistakes in Rewrite Rules
4. Case 1: Redirecting Your Feed to the Pheedo Feed
5. Case 2: Redirecting Using a Hidden Source Feed
6. Case 3: Supporting Multiple Feeds
7. Case 4: Redirects for Wordpress Blog Software
8. Validate Your Feed
9. Comments

For theApache Web Server v1.3 or later, there are two ways to do redirects with the Pheedo system. Both require the mod_rewrite module that you can read about here: Apache mod_rewrite - Apache HTTP Server and also URL Rewriting Guide - Apache HTTP Server.

Apache Web Server Configuration Requirements

Apache rewrites require one of two configuration options to be enabled in the local directory configuration, or the rewrite may be ignored entirely, possibly resulting in access being denied to your local data.

One of these options must be enabled by your system administrator. The latter of the two is generally enabled in most hosted environments.

Options +FollowSymLinks
Options +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch

Regular Expressions (Regexes)

The mod_rewrite module uses regular expressions. We cannot get into details in this document but would like to point out some that are used in the rewrite rules below:

• ! — This means the boolean "not", just like in C, C++, Java, Perl, etc.
• ^ — Represents the starting point of a string.
• $ — Represents the ending point of a string.
• .* — Is a wildcard match that will match zero or more characters

You can read about Regular Expressions in Regular-Expressions.info and test them out on The Regex Coach.

Things to Note: Common Mistakes in Rewrite Rules

1. Be sure that RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} is followed by:

!^Pheedo.* where the "!" means "not", the "^" means the start of the line and the ".*" at the end means match zero or more characters. If this final wildcard match is left off, the "Pheedo Monitor" user agent will not match, so be sure that is there.

2. Make sure the names of all your feeds, hidden or public, are correct.

3. Make sure your feeds are valid with the Feed Validator.

4. If you are using an .htaccess file, make sure it is world-readable and that the directory it is in has the AllowOverrides all directive on. It must also be in the same directory as your feeds.

5. If your feeds are in separate directories, you must put a world-readable .htaccess file in every directory for each feed in that dir.

Another option if you are running Apache is to put the list of rules at the bottom of the httpd.conf Apache config file, usually found in /etc/httpd/conf but may be elsewhere. Then you will not need to create and maintain multiple .htaccess files, but will have to use full pathnames from your Web root (ServerRoot setting in the Apache config file for each outgoing feed.

Case 1: Redirecting Your Feed to the Pheedo Feed

The first is the most simple, where our system comes to your feed, under the HTTP_USER_AGENT name of "Pheedo Monitor" and gets your feed directly, but anyone else (all RSS readers, Web browsers, robots and crawlers, and any program that calls the URL of your RSS feed) gets the Pheedo feed with tracing tags and ads inserted instead. This is the most straight-forward and simple approach.

In your httpd.conf Apache config file or in a .htaccess file located either in the same directory where your feeds are located, you put the following entries:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^Pheedo.*
RewriteRule ^feed.xml$ http://feeds.pheedo.com/examplefeed [R,L]

Please note above: do not use feed.xml specifically, but rather the name of your own RSS feed, that will end in .xml or .rdf typically. It is the same feed you registered in Your Account. Also do not use examplefeed but rather the feed name from our system that is also found in Your Account. Both feed.xml and examplefeed are merely examples that you must change to match whatever the name of your feed is and the Pheedo outgoing feed.

Case 2: Redirecting Using a Hidden Source Feed

In this case, you will provide two feeds. One is your actual RSS feed, which will be "hidden" and known only to you and the Pheedo system. This is also some times know as the "back door" approach.

For example, you could publish a feed that is not shown or linked to anywhere on your Web site (thus it is "hidden" from both browsers and robots/crawlers) that the Pheedo system would monitor. Let's say it's called http://yourdomain.com/hiddenfeed.rdf where yourdomain.com is the name of your site's domain, and hiddenfeed.rdf is your live RSS feed that is not published or linked to anywhere on your site.

Our system would be set up to pull all RSS items from that feed, since only we would know about it, and we would republish an outgoing feed of the form http://feeds.pheedo.com/examplefeed where examplefeed should be replaced with the name of the actual outgoing feed found in Your Account.

In this case, the rewrite rules are as follows:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^yourfeed.rdf$ http://feeds.pheedo.com/examplefeed [R,L]

Please note above: do not use yourfeed.rdf specifically, but rather the name of your own publically known RSS feed URL, which ends with .xml or .rdf typically. It is the same feed you registered in Your Account. Also do not use examplefeed but rather the one also found in Your Account.

In either case, once you reload or restart the Apache server, you should now have your published feed redirected automatically to our system, which will insert ads according to how you have it set up.

Case 3: Supporting Multiple Feeds

This is simply an example of supporting multiple feeds without much description. Please read the section on the Apache Rewrite Module and Rules before attempting this.

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^Pheedo.*
RewriteRule ^mt/archives/autos.xml$ http://feeds.pheedo.com/examplefeed_autos [R,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^Pheedo.*
RewriteRule ^mt/archives/books.xml$ http://feeds.pheedo.com/examplefeed_books [R,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^Pheedo.*
RewriteRule ^mt/archives/cats.xml$ http://feeds.pheedo.com/examplefeed_cats [R,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^Pheedo.*
RewriteRule ^mt/archives/dvds.xml$ http://feeds.pheedo.com/examplefeed_dvds [R,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^Pheedo.*
RewriteRule ^mt/archives/education.xml$ http://feeds.pheedo.com/examplefeed_education [R,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^Pheedo.*
RewriteRule ^mt/archives/fruit.xml$ http://feeds.pheedo.com/examplefeed_fruit [R,L]

Again, please note: each of the examplefeed_* entries must be the Pheedo feed name in Your Account, and every feed ending in .xml is your original, validated RSS feed.

Case 4: Redirects for Wordpress Blog Software

This has been testing on Wordpress v1.6 and later versions, but should work on any version where the feed URL ends in "/feed/".

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^Pheedo.*
RewriteRule ^/?feed/?$ http://feeds.pheedo.com/examplefeed [R,L]

Please note: examplefeed above should be replaced with the Pheedo feed name in Your Account.

Validate Your Feed

To best make sure your feed will work with our system, it is often helpful to test it with The Feed Validator which tests RSS 0.9, 1.0, 2.0 and Atom feeds for validity.

Testing that your feeds are valid before using our system will often help avoid problems by assuring your original feed is valid to one of the standards above.