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How to Add Your RSS Feed to a Feed Reader

by Jeff Sarmiento  |  August 23/2006  | 

New in version 3.4 is the ability for you to receive your recent activity updates in an RSS feed. For those new to the world of RSS, here is a little guide to adding your RSS feed to a feed reader. In the example below I will be using a feed reader recommended by FreshBooks called Feedreader.

1. From within your FreshBooks account, browse to the “Home” tab and click on the feed icon link.

Feed icon

2. Right click on the your RSS feed URL and select “Copy Shortcut”.

copy feed

3. In your RSS reader select a button or link that allows you to add a new feed. When asked for the URL to your feed, paste in your FreshBooks feed URL. In Feedreader, simply click on the “New” feed button and paste the URL in the address field.

paste URL

4. When adding a secure feed you will need to specify a username and password or login credentials. Enter your FreshBooks login information. In Feedreader you will receive a popup like the one below.

username and password

Simple as that! Now you should receive recent activity updates in your RSS reader. Please note that only an RSS reader that supports RSS authentication is supported.


 

48 Comments (add comment)

Aug 23/06
9:56 am
wes says:

Just an FYI that this doesn’t appear to work with either Netvibes or Bloglines, both of which supported authentication to some degree. Not a huge deal to me since the Freshbooks start page lists all of the recent activity.

Wes

Aug 23/06
10:21 am

Wes – I use Bloglines, and you are right, they don’t support authenticifation of this kind. It’s a total drag if you ask me.

Inside your account we have listed some feed readers that do support password protected http authentification – some are web based if you want a service like Bloglines.

Aug 24/06
1:54 pm
Navneet Kaushal says:

We use netvibes. It works fine with basecamp and its authentication but not with freshbooks :(

When can we expect support for that?

Aug 24/06
2:41 pm

We’re looking into NetVibes authentification right now…we can’t even get it to prompt user for username and password. Seems odd frankly, especially since you say Basecamp works. It might be because our feed runs over SSL. Does your Basecamp feed run over SSL? Many don’t. We have an email into their support team and we’ll post what we learn here.

NOTE: we just found some threads on the Basecamp forum stating that people can’t get NetVibes to work…maybe you have a special account? :) Again..we’ll let you know what we find.

NOTE2: We just had someone try to add a BaseCamp feed…it was an SSL feed.  It did not work either.  Like the FreshBooks feed, no prompt for username or password, it just says “Looks like this feed is not valid or currently not responding”.

Aug 27/06
8:03 am
Navneet Kaushal says:

Maybe basecamp is working because it was previously on non ssl and we recently moved to ssl.
I am using this url for the feed:

http://user@account.clientsection.com/feed/recent_items_rss

Note: user and account name been changed.

When I added it first, it asked me for username and passwords and I entered them. Since then no problems at all.

Aug 27/06
8:07 am
Navneet Kaushal says:

Tried with https and without same error “Looks like this feed is not valid or currently not responding”.

Lets hope netvibes resolves it soon.

Nov 28/06
5:09 pm

[...] If you haven’t subscribed to your FreshBooks system’s RSS feed, then you might be missing out on a lot.  If you ever want to be notified of your accounts activities in real time, then RSS is your answer.  This will also allow you to keep an independent permanent record of your account activities as well.  I wrote an introductory post on RSS some time ago, so take a look if you aren’t too familiar with RSS. [...]

Jan 2/07
9:05 am

Feedbuster also should be added to the list of non-working feed readers

May 2/07
2:40 pm
Brandon Carson says:

Google Reader is a no-show as well.

Oct 30/07
12:35 pm
Tom says:

Note this exchange in the Freshbooks Forum:

http://forum.freshbooks.com/viewtopic.php?id=1179

Apparently the non-secure feedreaders simply will not work with the RSS feed from your account. BUMMER.

Freshbooks, can you PLEASE get email notification of payments going asap!?!

Jan 23/08
1:04 pm
Floogy says:

Authentication is not necessary. Just use a secret URL, like Google does for Calendar RSS. It is no more or less secure than a password.

Mar 27/08
4:46 am
Chima says:

FYI: Doesn’t appear to work with Lotus Notes (v8). I can force the issue with “Subscribe … using” applet, which causes Notes to merely render the feed XML code.

Apr 2/08
12:31 am
Nick says:

Has anyone gotten the RSS to work in Viigo for blackberry?

May 31/08
2:28 pm
Paul says:

I would like to see it work this viigo for blackberry also.

Jul 22/08
5:09 pm
38pages says:

I am using Apple Mail and it asks for authentication but then does nothing once submitted.

I have double and triple checked everything and cannot figure it out…

Any thoughts?

Jul 23/08
1:26 pm

I use Mail myself, and I’ve noticed its functionality is a little busted in this respect.

I find the way to do it is to open the RSS link in Safari first, then provide the authentication and save it to your keychain.

Then, add the RSS feed in Mail; it will use the Keychain entry from Safari to access the feed, and all will be well.

Sep 22/08
1:17 pm
stu says:

Does this Rss work with Outlook 2007? I cant seem to get it to work.

cheers

stu

Nov 13/08
2:22 pm
Nicole says:

Please support RSS Feeds for Viigo!!!!!

Dec 2/08
4:01 pm

Helow i have some problem. I can’t find my Rss link on my blog. Is here any one who know how can i find it.

Feb 13/09
11:01 am
bitlizard says:

FWIW, I use Mozilla Thundebird’s RSS support. It works for this feed without any problems.

Mar 21/09
9:02 pm
d0n13 says:

This feed only show one line in Safari on Mac OS and when I subscribe in Mail I just get the one line as well. Is there something wrong with it or does it just show the last update?

Other RSS feeds work fine and list multiple items as they are added to the feed. Thi

Aug 7/09
11:02 pm
Battery says:

Google rss reader is a good software

Aug 16/09
11:45 am

Google Reader support would be awesome, so would support for all RSS readers… Why not do this and save yourselves headaches?

Just like Google does, just use a “secret” RSS URL for each freshbook account!

A hacker that wants to view a freshbooks CURRENT account RSS:

KNOWS the RSS URL
KNOWS common passwords
Has a FAIR chance of doing it

A hacker that wants to view a secret RSS url:

Has NO IDEA what the secret URL is, which could be even 40+ characters of random URL, making his chance of success almost infinitely small.

Aug 23/09
9:35 am

Another vote for the secret URL so I can get this in Google Reader

Oct 21/09
8:14 pm
Bob says:

Another vote for Google Reader please

Nov 13/09
9:21 am

Does anyone know of an RSS reader for Android that will support this feed with it’s authentication method?

Nov 23/09
5:08 pm

Can we an option somewhere in the settings to enable a low security version of the feed with encrypted URL, so it can work virtually in any RSS reader ?

I believe it’s up to us to decide if we want to be paranoid or not :)

Nov 30/09
2:25 am
SHG says:

Another vote for Google-style secret RSS URL. Google Reader user.

Mar 7/10
7:39 am
PS says:

Can we expect Google Reader any time?

Apr 20/10
11:38 am
Jack B. says:

Also would like this to work in Google Reader.

May 17/10
10:57 am
Yujin says:

A vote for getting this to work in Apple Mail, please.

Jul 9/10
12:44 am
Bill Horsman says:

Another vote for support for Google Reader please.

Jul 24/10
7:24 pm
Brad says:

I can also use the RSS reader within Mozilla Thunderbird with no problems. I will post instructions on my website soon for those who may need help.

Sep 2/10
8:03 pm

I’d really like for this to work, but it’s not working with my Google Reader. It doesn’t prompt for my user name and password.

Sep 6/10
7:55 pm
Jack B. Erhart says:

This feature would be most helpful. Anything new on a fix?

Sep 8/10
3:00 pm

I’m pretty surprised that there is no way to make this work in Google Reader so far. GReader is by far the most popular feed reader out there…

Oct 9/10
7:17 am
DRoss says:

Actually, kind of silly you need to authenticate the feed. The URL is private to you only so you should be able to choose if you want it password protected or not.

If you can choose authentication, problem solved. It will work in all rss readers.

I’m trying to add it to Apple Mail’s rss feed thing (which asks for id/pass) and it’s not working.

Dec 1/10
1:58 am
Joe C says:

Win7 desktop gadget: Works.

Dec 4/10
5:45 am

You can subscribe to an authenticated RSS feed in Google Reader (or other reader which does not support authentication) using a service like http://freemyfeed.com/.

Jan 10/11
7:32 pm
Iyas says:

Another vote for Google-style secret RSS URL.

Jan 30/11
12:56 am
Amal says:

I vote for secret RSS URL as well, but only because it is MORE secure than configuring RSS software with the keys to my entire account.

Consider this; I want to load the feed into an RSS app on my Android phone so I can keep an eye on things, then someone pokes around in my phone and finds my RSS feed configuration, complete with my full account information they could easily use to access my entire invoicing system. It’s backwards if you ask me.

99% of all breeches will come from attacks directed at users and user computers and user software, not directly at FreshBooks. So why configure computers and software to store critical account names in their configuration? I mean, RSS readers aren’t exactly known for securely storing their data in the registry or ini files or wherever they store it.

Get my drift?

Feb 24/11
4:42 pm
Dearg says:

I would also like to vouch for http://freemyfeed.com/

I used this to by pass the authentication required to see your freshbooks activity. This is a fantastic alternative until freshbooks upgrade or change existing setup.

Oh and freemyfeed also supports google reader!
And its free

Mar 16/11
10:19 am
Sandra says:

Yesterday I added freshbooks to my feed reader (which is feedreader 3.14)

Two issues
1.
I really don’t know exactly what I am getting into with a feed reader, and all this talk about security confuses me and makes me nervous- especially with my business accounts!

2.
My freshbook feed only showed entries for last year up to August. There is nothing for yesterday nor any thing for this year.
Would be good if some one could explain my above issues as simply as you would to a little child.
I have deleted the freshbooks feed (the other feed is from a daily inspirational message ) until I get clarification on the subject.

Mar 16/11
3:17 pm

Hi Sandra,

It’s probably best to give in a call to our support team – 1 866 303 6061 – they’d be happy to take you through what you need to know.

Mar 16/11
5:52 pm
Sandra says:

Thanks John. I will do that

Jun 3/11
11:04 am
JOJO says:

Hi, just wondering if there is any forecast on making this compatible with Google Reader. Thanks!

Aug 17/11
7:39 pm
Tim Overton says:

A big thanks to everyone for the https://freemyfeed.com/ recommendation. It works a treat!


 

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