Here is a neat trick to making your blog look better. I hate seeing those default Feedburner and Twittercounter chicklets on other people’s blog, because they look so ugly. No matter what color you change them, they never look nice. So, wouldn’t a neat trick be to display these counter on your own terms?
As you can see here on Blogussion, at the top nav menu there is the count for both RSS and the Blogussion Twitter followers. I like to have them display as text because I can easily customize the looks of them on my own terms.
Why text is better than a chicklet
When you change to the text form, I almost guarantee you will see more conversions and will gain new subscribers – if you do it right!
The real perk of using this text block is that it just shows the number of followers/subscribers you have. That means you are free to add any kind of text you want before or after that count. The real trick here is how to hook people in to clicking that link and subscribing to your feed or following you on Twitter.
A simple example of what may be a good catch to sign up would be something like “Come join 1,568 other people who are learning about blogging.” It’s simple, catchy and it shows that there are a number of people who are learning about blogging by reading from your blog.
Displaying RSS Count
Create a new file, name it feed.php and paste the following into it:
<?php //get cool feedburner count $whaturl="https://feedburner.google.com/api/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?uri=Feed Here"; //Initialize the Curl session $ch = curl_init(); //Set curl to return the data instead of printing it to the browser. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); //Set the URL curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $whaturl); //Execute the fetch $data = curl_exec($ch); //Close the connection curl_close($ch); $xml = new SimpleXMLElement($data); $fb = $xml->feed->entry['circulation']; //end get cool feedburner count echo $fb; ?>
Edit the line at the very top with the name of your feed. For example, I would put “Blogussion” on the line. Then just simply add this line of code wherever you want the count to display: <?php include("feed.php"); ?>
Script found on Hongkiat.com
Displaying Twitter Count
Create a file called twitter.php and paste the following code into it:
<?php
$tw = get_option("twitterfollowerscount");
if ($tw['lastcheck'] < ( mktime() - 3600 ) )
{
$xml=file_get_contents('http://twitter.com/users/show.xml?screen_name=Feed here');
if (preg_match('/followers_count>(.*)</',$xml,$match)!=0) {
$tw['count'] = $match[1];
}
$tw['lastcheck'] = mktime();
update_option("twitterfollowerscount",$tw);
}
echo $tw['count'];
?>
Script found at WP Recipes
Again, edit what’s in bold to your Twitter name and paste this code wherever you want the count to display: <?php include("twitter.php"); ?>
So those are two coll little tricks that really make a difference on your blog. Let me know what you guys think of using this trick, let alone sharing the number of subscribers on your blog.
Photo by Stephen Coles
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Hey Alex! I agree. By displaying them with numbers you set yourself apart and it removes the advertisement-look of the chicklets. It’s certainly a nice touch you’ve added here and I think a lot of people will benefit from this post.
As far as sharing your numbers, it’s a great idea as long as you have enough. I’d say 100 subscribers and 2,000 followers are the cut-off. It’s just one more way to prove the legitimacy of your site.
Congrats on your RSS count, by the way. It goes up almost every time I visit! Personally, those numbers are the first thing I notice when I visit your blog.
Nick Tart | JuniorBiz´s last blog ..Not Every Business Owner is an Entrepreneur
Thanks Nick! I think the RSS count could be a lot better, but I do have some things rolling out to make it higher of course!
Alex´s last blog ..Young Blogger Interviews #2: Liane from Better Blogging for Bloggers
Omg, thanks for sharing this with us! I was actually doing some face-lift operations on my blog this week and I kind of toyed with the idea of removing the ugly TwitterCounter and Feed Count clicklets from my sidebar in favor of plain text.
Thanks again, Alex!
Jeremiah´s last blog ..7 Astonishing Wordpress Themes for Your Blog
Hey Jeremiah! Haven’t seen you around in a while.
Looking forward to seeing your blog face-lift! You should definitely go this route though, you have a nice design and I think those chicklets would hurt it.
Alex´s last blog ..Young Blogger Interviews #2: Liane from Better Blogging for Bloggers
Ah, yes, I’ve been falling off “the blogging horse” as of late. My trip to North Carolina to let my parents see my daughter for two weeks disconnected me from the world and I’ve been busy with my day job catching up on some hours of work I missed. Shouldn’t be too bad in the coming weeks, now that I’m all in order in my day life!
*ugh* Life after High School is the pits, hahaha.
Jeremiah´s last blog ..7 Astonishing Wordpress Themes for Your Blog
I have tried using the Twitter Counter once, but I found it to be too ugly. It just messed the whole layout for me so I just go for the cute Twitter bird icon to magnitize people
~Igor
Mastermind Internet Marketing´s last blog ..Twitter Overrated?
It does look very ugly! There are so many Twitter birds out there for use, and many look great.
Alex´s last blog ..Young Blogger Interviews #2: Liane from Better Blogging for Bloggers
Thanks for your information of changing to a nice Rss Feed count, now my blog feed count display, is absolutely unique…. you can take a look too !
The Bad Blogger´s last blog ..4 Stupid Marketing Concept You Should Dump Right Away !
Looks good man, nice implementation!
Yep! Text is definitely better than chicklet. But I’m really very tempted to still use chicklet because adding stuffs that will match to my blog’s color theme is my weakness
Liane YoungBlogger´s last blog ..[Poll Results] Is Blog Advertising Really Dead?
Haha, well red text would look just fine!
Alex´s last blog ..Young Blogger Interviews #2: Liane from Better Blogging for Bloggers
Wow, that was a cool tut for twitter.. comes handy !
Thanks.
Don’t forget to check out the Contest I’ve started on my blog !
Enk.´s last blog ..US to force Apple over Google Voice on iPhone?
I think it’s cool to display text, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say the chicklets are ugly. They look fine to me.
Jake | Web Journey´s last blog ..Vipre Antivirus Review
I think the chicklets are not horrible, but I do think they leave something to be desired when it comes to conforming with your theme.
Useful information but I disagree with you. I think people look for the chicklet and it is much more visible than just the text. In fact, if you did not tell me that your subscriber count is at the top, I probably would not have found it.
Tycoon Blogger´s last blog ..Blog Comments = Link Juice and Free Promotion
I guess it’s just a matter of taste then. I know it’s not visible here, as I don’t want my blog to be filled up with RSS messages.
Alex´s last blog ..Young Blogger Interviews #2: Liane from Better Blogging for Bloggers
Like Tycoon Blogger said, if I haven’t read this article, I would never have seen your subscriber count
But with that said, I also think that the current feedburner chicklets are ugly and that’s partly why I don’t have one on my site – and also because it doesn’t look so good to advertise that I only have 30 or so subscribers
I’ll keep your trick in mind when I update my theme to Thesis, it might come in handy – thanks!
Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..My Top 10 Favorite TV Shows
It’s a good trick for using later definitely.
Alex´s last blog ..Young Blogger Interviews #2: Liane from Better Blogging for Bloggers
I think it’s cool to display text, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say the chicklets are ugly. They look fine to me. Thanks
I guess it’s just a personal preference!
Alex´s last blog ..Young Blogger Interviews #2: Liane from Better Blogging for Bloggers
This article is pretty useful, and I like that it’s text instead of a button or chicklet, it’s just nice to be able to use the number of subscribers and followers in a sentence..
That’s the best part of this tutorial: you can actually use this in any sentence!
Alex´s last blog ..Young Blogger Interviews #2: Liane from Better Blogging for Bloggers
Hey Alex, it’s great you actually ended up putting this up, but i’m still having trouble getting it to work on my site. I follow the instructions correctly but for some reason it says something about the get option having an error?
Max´s last blog ..Just A Filler
What is the exact error you get Max?
Alex´s last blog ..Young Blogger Interviews #2: Liane from Better Blogging for Bloggers
By the way, Alex, you should mention in the article that using the FeedBurner count script requires PHP5 to be installed on your web server. A lot of hosts default to PHP4, so you might need to switch an option or contact your host to speak to them about an upgrade (if possible).
Thanks for the scripts. I hated to place these chicklets on my sites becuase of the look; now I can edit these small but important stats to interesting text links.
Richael | Domain Marvelous´s last blog ..Domain Name Promo Codes for August
It seems that the Twitter code doesn’t work anymore (I think they changed the API yesterday), but Twounter does work (http://themesphere.com/twitter-counter-wordpress-plugin.html).
DIsclaimer: I’m just a user of the plugin.
The script you provided really nice. I never think like this. Thanks a lot…
Okay, after using this script my feed isn’t working anymore. All I get when I go to the feedburner(!) url is the number of subscribers: http://feeds.feedburner.com/spanish–only–com
Is this strictly for word press? I’m trying to use this on a test server without wordpress. i tried the example you provided and got errors.
Fatal error: Uncaught exception ‘Exception’ with message ‘String could not be parsed as XML’ in D:\html\feed.php:19 Stack trace: #0 D:\html\feed.php(19): SimpleXMLElement->__construct(”) #1 {main} thrown in D:\html\feed.php on line 19
line 19 – $xml = new SimpleXMLElement($data);
how does this include the twitter.php file?
Twitter is really a great invention, but I think blogging is even more important to create some traffic. But I can use some of the tips.
Ok need a little help here, don’t understand the create file in the instructions. where do I paste this code?
JavaCarl´s last blog ..Blog Evolution