Create Category-Specific RSS Feeds for Typepad Blogs

One of my blog categories is Folk & World Music. I’ve decided to turn it into an mp3 blog. In order to promote awareness of this project, I registered my blog feed with mp3blogs.org, an aggregator devoted to this field. But the problem was that I was now feeding every single post I created to mp3blogs.org and not just the ones devoted to music.

With Laura’s help from Six Apart, I created a category-specific feed that will only give mp3blogs.org my music posts. Here’s how you 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 [code lang=”html”]< MTEntries>[/code] 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:

[code lang=”html”][/code]

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.