We are planning to perform a major hardware upgrade on Monday, July 25 (starting at 1:00 AM Pacific Time). It might take a few hours to complete.

Please note that until the upgrade is complete you won’t be able to access Control panel and your digests won’t be updated (still they will be served as usual).

This upgrade should help us to eliminate service outages caused by servers overload and dramatically decrease maintenance periods in the future.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

We are deeply sorry for letting you down on New Year Eve, but an unexpected thing has happened to FI Data Base recently. We are trying hard to sort the problem out and will keep you up-to-date.

Hope that it won’t affect your plans much.

Best regards,
FI support team

Do you know that Christmas is almost here? We believe you do, because it is time to leave all those “business” thoughts behind and get yourself ready for the mysterious things to happen.

No matter either you get homesick and spend the holidays with your family every year or prefer traveling, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and Cheerful New Year!

Thank you for joining Feed Informer and staying with us. We are currently using your feedback (if you had no idea we need it, click here to share your mind) to develop a new version of the project (the details will be available as soon as it is launched). Besides we promise to become a better bloggers for you to know about our steps instead of guessing. :)

Well, here it is – the final countdown! Make sure you’ve got a wish to make! ;)

Yours,
FI Support team

We are glad to introduce our new flash templates we were talking about some time ago.
Now you can make your feeds look exactly as you need it for your site design. You can find a new tab with detailed flash template settings in your digest settings menu.
We actually invite you to test this new option and comment on it.
Hope, you will enjoy our new adjustable flash templates!

Yours,
FI Support team

We are glad to announce we’re launching the logo removal service.
According to the new scheme, anyone will be able to remove the Feed Informer logo from the digest bottom. From now on the logo removing will be paid per digest, regardless of the
account type.
In two weeks this new option will be introduced in your Digest Settings of
the user menu. At the same time Feed Informer logo will appear on every digest including
those that were hidden untill now.
We will also notify such subscribers via email.

Yours,
Feed Informer Team

We would like to inform you that tomorrow, 3 June 2009, between 3 and 8 AM EDT, we will be shutting down the main database server for maintenance.

During this time all digests will be operational but not updating.

Please forgive the inconvenience.

We get your recommendations and suggestions all the time, and using those comments we created a plan of changes to FI service. We would like to hear your opinion on this plan:

Complete redesign of Flash templates system

We understand that our current system is limited in its features and settings. We plan to create a new one that will allow users to seamlessly integrate our templates into their pages design, using such settings as width and height of the given flash bock, change the background color, font and font size, links color, etc. We want to ditch curved angles, gradients, etc as well.
We can also add those settings to GIF templates, if there is an interest in that in FI users community.

We plan to use text link instead of a FI logo in HTML templates

Text link is fully customizable with CSS, and it will be easier to integrate it into website design. You can change text color and size, change font size and font style, etc, so the link will not be a foreign object in your page’s design.

We plan to review and renew current HTML templates

What we have now as HTML templates set isn’t good enough, we think we want more templates, different templates, and you want more templates as well. We hope that this will help your users to find something they like for their pages and websites.

We would like to hear your comments on those 3 topics, and, if you have more to say – please do, we’d like to hear more about digests presentation system, for example.

We also plan to ditch old digest management panel, it will be discontinued, so if you think that some of its functions are missing in the newer panel, please let us know so we can add those ASAP.

» I modified the source feed(s), but the digest is displaying old information.
An item of a digest is updated if at least one of the following fields if its source feed’s item has been changed:
1) Title
2) Link
3) PubDate
4) Description
Please also note that digest updates only when FI robots revisit its source feed, i.e. do not expect that digest will be updated immediately after the source feed has been edited. Typically it takes up to 40 minutes (max) to update a digest, though it might get updated even in one minute.

» Pictures aren’t displaying.
You should put
%DESCRIPTION%
instead of
%DESCRIPTIONPLAIN%
for HTML tags rendering.

» How to get the feed article link to open in a new window?
You should change
<a href="%URL%">%TITLE%</a> tag
for
<a href="%URL%" target="_blank">%TITLE%</a>

» Is it possible to edit a flash template for its width and length? It seems I can adjust the width of the actual box, but then the content inside i.e. the feed is not fully visible and cut off on both the left and right.
Unfortunately, right now it is not possible, maybe in future we’ll get some flash editing feature.

» Is there an option to filter digest’s contents? I want only posts with particular key words to be shown.
Yes, there are two filters (AND and OR) you can use. They are available in “Digest Settings” tab of every digest.
Use AND Filter to show items containing ALL the words mentioned. For example if you want to see only posts including both “blogging” AND “weblog”, enter the following query in the AND Filter field: blogging weblog.
Use OR Filter to show items containing ANY of the words mentioned. For example if you want to see topics including words “blogging” OR “weblog”, enter the following query in the OR Filter field: blogging weblog.

» Is it possible to remove “Feed Informer” logo from my digest?
Logo can be removed through the settings of every digest, but it is a paid option: the fee is $50 a year for one digest. Please read User Agreement before you order.

» What are the benefits of Premium Account subscription?
The main advantage of the subscription is e-mail technical support. Besides you will be able to create up to 1000 digests with 500 feeds per digest.
You can upgrade any minute through your account’s Information tab. The fee is $100 per year. Please look through the User Agreement before you buy the subscription.

» Why have I been charged for EXTENDED DOWNLOAD SERVICE, which I did not buy?
EXTENDED DOWNLOAD SERVICE is added to every purchase by default. It is done by the payment service and you can see the details here . Considering EXTENDED DOWNLOAD SERVICE is not required for purchasing Feed Informer logo removal or when upgrading to premium user, we advise you to delete this line from the cart before you proceed to checkout.

» I purchased FI Logo removal/Premium account, but the digest/account is still not updated.
Please note that we check for payments and add the corresponding option manually. Thus we appreciate it if you could notify us about the purchase through our contact form at once. In case you send payment on weekends or Holidays, the changes are likely to be applied on the first working day.

» How to get Blogspot feeds accepted by Feed Informer?
There is a simple solution to this issue. All you have to do is to add “?alt=rss” or “?alt=atom” at the end of the source URL. Submit http://username.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss (or http://username.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=atom) instead of http://username.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/, when creating the digest. The URL will be accepted.

» How long it takes for a new feed to update through Feed Informer?
It seems like my feed hasn’t updated for a long time.
Please make sure that the page where your digest is embedded is accessed on a regular basis, otherwise Feed Informer will not update digest’s contents. For example, if you embed a digest into a test page that is not requested often (or not accessed at all), that digest won’t update.
For advanced users: until your site has enough visitors to keep digests up to date you might need to use crontab jobs to access your digests at regular intervals.