Fixing FeedBurner RSS Feed Problem on HTTPS WordPress Websites

FeedBurner RSS feed problems with error code 400 on HTTPS website, especially on WordPress, are fixed by adding the FeedBurner USER_AGENT to the .htaccess file. The HTTPS-Encryption can be controlled by this USER_AGENT. The solution of the problem is not to activate HTTPS for FeedBurner.

But why should you switch your (WordPress) blog or website from HTTP to HTTPS? I tell you why:

Recently, Google called for HTTPS everywhere on the web Google I/O a few months ago. Further more, HTTPS encryption is already a ranking signal for Google search results and will get more important in the next future. Therefore, the website and blog of pabst.socialmedia is based on HTTPS from the very beginning. However, setting up a FeedBurner RSS feed on a HTTPS encrypted domain was a bit tricky because FeedBurner does not support HTTPS encrypted websites.

But the problem with error code 400 can be solved easily. Add the following bold code to your .htaccess file on your website’s root directory:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedBurner [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

The bold printed line is the command to process the website’s FeedBurner RSS feed via HTTP and not via HTTPS. The other lines are for the permanent redirection rule 301 to forward HTTP-requests of a URL to the correspondent HTTPS-URL.

Now your FeedBurner RSS feed is working again on your HTTPS (WordPress) website!

Stay tuned! 😉