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I’m not even sure where to post this question, but I’ll give it a shot here: what’s the most sensible option for tracking EE RSS feed subscribers if you’d prefer to maintain complete control of your feeds?

I’m asking because I want to help a client gauge subscribers without just directing them to Feedburner. So far I’ve not found any compelling alternative, and manipulating feed subscribe URLs isn’t an option since it won’t allow me to gauge existing subscribers.

Wouldn’t it make sense, then, to build a module that lets you stick an {exp:track:it} tag into a template and then record hits and basic info into a table that a module could sort out by IP to estimate hits and subscribers? I realize that the details would make it hard to tell one subscriber from another, but even a rough estimate would be helpful.

I wouldn’t mind being the one to *build* such a thing, I’m just wondering if anyone else has pondered this before. Is my insistence upon tracking with EE silly? Is it more reasonable to cURL Google Analytics or take some other approach?

Hey there Matt,

The closest thing I can think of is to track the views on the RSS page. That would of course not get you the subscription count but it does give you a hit count as you mention in your 3rd paragraph. If anything you might be able to use the Entry Tracking as a starting point.

What do you think?

Cheers,

Thanks for responding, Shane. View tracking is a place to start, I’m just wondering whether I’m alone pondering this or if others have approached the problem before. It’s kind of a “hey everybody” question that I don’t know where to ask. I suppose it’s best to just develop something and float it out there, then I’ll find out.