5

Secure RSS Feeds

Once you protect a post in DAP, you can …

a) Make it completely disappear from your feed except for authorized users who have valid access to the post and are using a member-specific RSS feed URL

-OR-

b) You can show a “Summary” of every post, by turning on sneak-peek and making sure you have inserted the “<!–more–>” tag entered into each of your posts.

Troubleshooting RSS Feeds

If your blog post is showing in its entirety in your feed, then….

1) You may not have protected the post in DAP at all, so it’s an unprotected post, which will (and should) show up in your feed

-OR-

2) You have turned on Sneak-Peek and haven’t inserted the WordPress “more” tag (<!–more–>) into each of your posts. If you turn on Sneak-peek, then you must insert more tags into all posts. Also, if you have turned on Sneak-Peek, then you must also do this…

Go to “Settings > Reading” in WP admin, then set “For each article in a feed, show” to “Summary“.

If it is set to “Full text”, then it will show the full text in the feed, which is not what you want.

 

Custom RSS Feed Links For Members

Starting DAP v4.2, each of your members can now get their own unique RSS feed link that they can use with a feed reader (like Google Reader, FeedBlitz, iTunes, etc) to get a custom RSS feed with content that they’re eligible to view.

To give each of your members their own unique RSS Feed URL, just insert the following line of code into the top of the “Member Links” or “My Content” type page, or wherever you want your users to see their personalized RSS feed link…

If your blog is in the root…

http://YourSite.com/feed/?key=%%ACTIVATION_KEY%%

If your blog is in a sub-folder (say “/blog”)…

http://YourSite.com/blog/feed/?key=%%ACTIVATION_KEY%%

 

The text %%ACTIVATION_KEY%% in the above URL will be replaced with their own custom key, like…

http://YourSite.comcom/feed/?key=123456789

They can then copy that link, enter that into any feed reader, and it will show content specific to their account.

Custom Feed Link Security

Another useful feature we’ve added, is that the custom feed link also does IP count validation. So if they share  the feed link with others, then after “X” unique IP login attempts (where “X” is configurable by you, the DAP Admin, in Setup > Config), their account will automatically get locked out.

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 5 comments
Frederick - July 25, 2011

Oh, wow… so, if I’m reading this correctly. I could essentially use this new feature to create a podcast as a product? (considering podcasts are just RSS feeds with attachments).

Seems I’d just have to protect the post, and also protect the actual MP3 or media files as well?

Thank you!

Frederick

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Ravi Jayagopal - July 28, 2011

Frederick,

That’s correct. This was primarily meant for podcasters.

>>Seems Id just have to protect the post, and also protect the actual MP3 or media files as well?<< Correct. Just protect all content involved via DAP, and you will be all set. - Ravi Jayagopal Check out my Podcast about Membership Sites: http://SubscribeMe.fm/

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David - April 25, 2012

>>>They can then copy that link, enter that into any feed reader, and it will show content specific to their account.

Not quite. This works only if I am also logged-in at the same time, from the same browser I am logged-in on.

Otherwise:

http://our.site.com/feed/?key=12345

…throws an error/denied

Is there any way to have this work as described and show a feed that is specific to a user on any feed reader?

Thank you

Reply
Cam - June 18, 2017

Hi,

Just following up on David’s comment. Is this possible?

Given we are 5 years on and there are a number of podcast apps available and some of the feed readers you mention no longer exist. How can we have users paste in the unique URL to get access to their private and secure feed?

I’ve tried quite a few apps and none seem to work.

Cheers

Cam

Reply
Ravi Jayagopal - June 19, 2017

Hi Cam,

Sorry we never addressed David’s comments before. Maybe it was different back in 2012, and maybe we fixed it at some point – can’t remember now. But this is certainly not an issue in 2017. Hasn’t been for a few years as far as I can tell.

In fact, this is being used for may private podcasts by many DAP users – at least around 20 or so, I would think. And I’m using the exact same thing for delivering my book at http://PodcastingConfessions.com as an audio book, in the form of a podcast.

So as long as your subscriber uses the full link with their key at the end of it, it will work just fine, and show the content they’re eligible to see, whether they are using a browser to view it, or whether they’re adding it as a Podcast feed to their favorite podcast app like the Apple Podcast app, or OverCast.

And the moment they stop paying, as long as you remove their access to that product, they will lose all access to the content. Doesn’t matter whether they use the key or not. Their personalized feed URL will no longer return any content, and they will run into a “Sorry” page. Now, the only difference with using this for a premium podcast, is that you have to remember that feeds are downloaded locally into podcast apps. So if they’ve already downloaded your RSS feed into the podcast app and the app has cached it, then it means that it has already downloaded all past episodes.

So once someone loses access to the feed (because they stopped paying or stopped being a member or lost access to the product for whatever reason), then the past episodes will not be removed. Of course they won’t get access to any new posts or new episodes released after that date, but the old files that have already been downloaded to their device cannot be deleted by DAP.

And if you’re going to use this feature for a podcast, then don’t forget to use PowerPress, a premium podcast RSS feed creating plugin, to create your RSS feed. I have a very detailed online course coming out about how to create premium podcasts. So be sure to sign up for our list on the home page, and we’ll notify you when the course is launched.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

– Ravi Jayagopal
Check out my Podcast about Membership Sites:
http://SubscribeMe.fm/

My book about podcasting:
http://PodcastingConfessions.com

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