I get a lot of email asking how I do links in my RSS feed and on my website. For the past year I’ve been using this plugin by Jonathan Penn, and it has been the foundation of getting the proper behavior for links in my RSS feed (though I have written a bit of additional code to get better functionality out of it).
This new plugin, written by YJ Soon, seems to add similar custom functionality right out of the box:
(i) the item’s RSS permalink becomes the link destination; (ii) the actual permalink to your post is inserted as a star glyph at the end of your post; and (iii) a star glyph is added in front of your non-linked-list post titles.
Moreover, you can customize much of the behavior as desired.
I have not yet switched to this plugin, but if you post links (or are thinking about posting links) to your WordPress website this plugin looks like the ticket.
And so long as we’re on the subject, clever readers may have already noticed I changed the default behavior for links in the shawnblanc.net RSS feed about a week ago. Formerly the linked-to URL pointed to this site’s permalilnk first, thus causing two taps or clicks before landing on the linked-to URL. Now a link in the RSS feed goes directly to the linked-to URL. This change in RSS behavior has proven to be a fantastic decision, and I highly recommend all link-bloggers do the same. But more on that another day.