Working with Blogger Feeds (Atom & RSS) - Blogger Theme Dev Course

Every Blogger blog has built-in feeds that provide your content in a machine-readable XML format. This is incredibly useful for content syndication (e.g., allowing people to subscribe in a feed reader like Feedly) and for integrating your blog content into other websites or applications.

The Main Post Feed: `feeds/posts/default`

This is the primary feed that contains the full content of your most recent posts. By default, it uses the Atom 1.0 format.

You can access it using the following URL structure:

http://<your-blog-name>.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
For an RSS 2.0 feed, simply add the ?alt=rss parameter: .../feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

When to use it: Use this feed when you need the complete post content, including the full body HTML, author information, comments, and labels.

The Summary Feed: `feeds/summary`

This feed is a lightweight alternative to the main post feed. Instead of the full post content, it provides a short summary or snippet of each post.

The URL structure is: http://<your-blog-name>.blogspot.com/feeds/summary

When to use it: This feed is ideal when you only need post titles, links, and a brief description. Because it contains less data, it loads faster and is more efficient. It's perfect for creating a "Latest Posts" widget on another website or for applications where bandwidth is a concern.

Customizing Feeds with Parameters

You can customize any feed by adding query parameters to the URL to filter the results:

?max-results=5: Limits the number of posts returned to 5.
?orderby=updated: Sorts posts by their last updated time instead of the default published time.
To get posts from a specific label, use the format: /feeds/posts/default/-/LabelName

Code Examples

htmlExample Feed URLs

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<!-- Full content feed (Atom 1.0) -->
http://your-blog-name.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
 
<!-- Full content feed (RSS 2.0) -->
http://your-blog-name.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
 
<!-- Summary feed -->
http://your-blog-name.blogspot.com/feeds/summary
 
<!-- Get the 3 newest posts from the "Tutorials" label in RSS format -->
http://your-blog-name.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Tutorials?max-results=3&alt=rss

Pro Tip

You can control your blog's feed settings in the Blogger dashboard under "Settings" > "Other" > "Site Feed" to set the amount of content shared (Full, Short, or None).

Most modern feed readers and services can handle both Atom and RSS formats, but Atom is generally considered more modern and robust.

Exercises