How to Create a Feed for a Specific Category

I was asked this question by a REALTOR customer of mine.

Claudia Rose of Winkelmann Realty has a blog.  She wants to be able to notify visitors/customers of Short Sales in the area. What I told her she should do is to use her blog to notify everyone that wants updates about Short Sales.

To do this I would post anything to do with Short Sales in its own category and give people a way to subscribe to just the category updates.

This is REALLY easy to do.  She already has a category of Short Sales created. To have people subscribe to the feed for that category all you need to do is attach /feed to the end of the link.

The link to the category:
http://blog.rosehometeam.com/category/short-sales/

The link to the feed for the category looks like this
http://blog.rosehometeam.com/category/short-sales/feed

Now the above solution only gives your readers the option of using a feed reader for getting the updates. But what about those readers who still don’t use a feed reader? Answer = Use Feedburner. Using Feedburner gives users the option for subscribing by email or you can if you want just give them the link to the subscribe by email feed.

As and example I created a temporary feed for one of my categories.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/futureofrealestatetechnology/techtutor

Now I will give you the direct link to subscribe by email
http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=1813732&loc=en_US

Subscribe by Email

Now when somebody subscribes to the custom feed they will only be notified about posts tagged with the category you have specified.

That’s all there is to it.

If you would like this done for you give me a call at  = 877-987-TECH

Loren Nason
Real Estate Technology Coaching

2 Comments

  1. Jeffrey Simons on March 24, 2008 at 12:33 pm

    Hey Loren;

    That’s awesome… you make it look so easy. I will be speaking with you soon about this and more…

  2. Mark A. on April 9, 2008 at 4:32 pm

    Right. That’s a good workaround, except it’s got one tiny issue: WordPress by nature, treats its “Pages” like stepchildren, in other words, it doesn’t see the need for them to be updated regularly (as opposed to “Posts”). What I’ve done on my blog is exactly what you have suggested, which is to assign Pages to specific categories. But wait: In WordPress, one can’t assign a static Page to a category. Unless one uses the “Page Category Plus” plugin. And from there of course, you can go the FeedBurner route etc.

Leave a Comment