Create Category-Specific RSS Feeds for Typepad Blogs

Richard Silverstein has a great post on how he created a category-specific feed that would only give blog aggregators posts that are appropriately categorized (he has a Folk and World Music category on his RichardSilverstein.com blog and wanted to submit only his music posts to mp3blogs.org, which, like the name suggests, is an aggregator for mp3 blogs. Here’s how he says to do it:

First, you need a Typepad Pro account allowing you to create advanced templates. Then, create a new index template dedicated to the category (you can also do this for multiple categories) for which you wish to have an RSS feed. Go to your advanced template screen and click ‘Create New Idex Template Set.’ Then open your regular RSS feed template & copy the code into this new index template. Then customize it so that everywhere you see a tag, you add in the category name.

For instance, if your category was called ‘Folk and world music,’ then you would change the tag to look like:

This will list only information about entries in the specified category.

You may also wish to replace the <$MTBlogName$> tag with the category name, or add the category name after the tag, such as:

<$MTBlogName$>: Folk and world music

This will be the title that people see when they view the feed in their newsreader or aggregator.

Once you’re all done customizing the template, save your changes then publish the template.

WARNING: It is VERY important that you list your category precisely as it is listed in your blog. This procedure is case sensitive and a single mistake may cause a failure to publish your new template.

Thanks, Richard, for coming up with this for the TypePad community!

Update 8/6/05:
Richard has since moved from TypePad to WordPress, but the above instructions are still valid for TypePad users who want to create category specific RSS feeds

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Filed under: Templates • TypePad • Weblogs

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