RSS Feeds and WordPress

Sunrise over Kuskulana River and the Kuskulana Gorge, fall colors, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Sunrise over Kuskulana River and the Kuskulana Gorge, fall colors, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

I received a note the other day (thanks Warren) about my RSS feeds being messed up. Is anyone else having any problems with it? Is anyone else subscribed to the RSS feeds? Does anyone else read this? Is anyone ACTUALLY out there?

No, seriously, if anyone is having any trouble with it, please let me know. The problem so far, is apparently twofold;

1) the feed seems to only offer the first 2 or 3 letters of the title of the post, and

2) posts get repeated in the feed.

I suspect the latter problem is my fault, for not unclicking the “Notify Subscribers” button at the bottom of the WordPress Dashboard when I edit a published post. I have no idea why the title of the post gets cutoff in the feed. I watch the blog through google Reader and it works fine for me (as an aside, google reader (Sadly google reader is no more) works great – I use it daily for my blog reading and newspapers.  If you’re unsure what a “reader” is, it’s a page you can set up for yourself, with your own account, like an email account, where you can subscribe to different “feeds” – such as blogs or newspapers, etc, etc. Everything the paper publishes with get posted, with headlines and usually a short blurb) in the reader – scan it for articles of interest, open them and read them – hence .. “reader“; tonsa fun!!!).

Anyway – so i’m not sure why the “”default” RSS feed tab format in FireFox web browser on a PC” shows my RSS feed all messed up. the titles (I saw via an email sent to me), say

“Aussiefoto (that’s me!) has published a new blog post: Stu..”
“Aussiefoto has published a new blog post: Bro..”
“Aussiefoto has published a new blog post: Ba..”

and on and on. If anyone out there has any ideas how to fix this so it works a bit more user friendly, please advise me, either in comments below, or via email. Thanks so much. And I’ll try to click “No” on the “Notitify Subscribers” button when I edit any posts I’ve published. I think that will solve the repeated postings problem ( I hope so – what I will REALLY try to do is properly edit my stuff BEFORE publishing it).

On to other more important matters. If you’re not subscribing to this blog, this might be a perfect time to sign up. And I’ll whack another 10% off  a print, up to 16″x20″, if you do so. just click on “Subscribe to the Blog Feed” below (you have to have an RSS reader setup), or enter your email in the box to the right and click “sign up” (this sends the post to you, without the photo, I believe, via email). That’s how easy it is. Networked Blogs (no longer functioning) is not an RSS feed, but it kinda works in a similar way. Kinda – you have to be on facebook to use it.

If you have a reader set up, you can also click on the appropriate widget in the sidebar, toward the bottom – there are options for Google Reader, (No longer an option) Yahoo, Newsburst (no longer), etc, etc. Google Reader is the best.(Update: as most of these RSS readers have gone by the wayside, I suggest you subscribe via the sidebar sign up).

That way, then you too can get messed up, repeated, truncated posts in your RSS feed. 🙂 Just kidding – hopefully, I’ll get the problem sorted out asap.

For what it might be worth, I am subscribed to about 50 feeds in my google reader; many of which are blogs by my friends, photographers, hikers, etc, but also newspapers and whatnot. All kinds of goodies. Some I delete if they don’t appease me. Most of the major newspapers offer a feed to particular subjects, such as “political news”, “sports”, international news”, “environment”, etc, etc. That way you can subscribe to just get feeds on subjects that might interest you. Worth setting up, in my opinion.

Again, if anyone can offer some input on how to rectify these 2 issues I just mentioned, I’d really appreciate. I’ll offer a print up to 8″x10″ if someone can solve it for me. Thanks.

Cheers

Carl

PS – oh .. the photo above is of the Kuskulana River .. folks who’ve been to McCarthy, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park might recognize the scene, the bridge goes right over it. In the fall, the colder temperatures slow the glacial melt down, and the river water level subsides dramatically; as does the amount of silt and dirt it carries, meaning it clears right up. Here it is almost a clear pristine turquoise – gorgeous, and not at all like the seething, roaring brown cesspit is can be in the summer.

5 thoughts on “RSS Feeds and WordPress

  1. Jackson Frishman

    Beautiful photo! I’m not entirely clear on all the ways RSS can work, but I follow you and it seems to be working fine for me. I set it up by “Subscribe to this page” under the Bookmarks menu in Firefox, and the feed show up in my favorites list.

  2. Ron Niebrugge

    Hi Carl,

    I use FeedDemon and your title comes through just fine. But, the rest of your feed is truncated – only a couple of lines and no thumbnail. 🙁

    Good luck troubleshooting!

    Ron

  3. Warren

    Top of the Day Carl,

    Your feed is probably not “Notifying Subscribers” every time you edit a post. You just happen to use the same first two or three letters in the titles of sequential posts. For instance your five posts from Sept. 13 to Oct. 2 were mountain shots. Each post title started with “Mt ” Several recent posts started with “Gri” after your Katmai trip.

    Firefox appears to allow 47 or 48 text characters in each line displayed under any “favorites” tab. Your RSS feed is one of my “favorites” tabs. The text, “Aussiefoto…Blog post: ” uses up approximately 42 of the spaces. I’m guessing shortening or removing this text will allow more of each post’s unique title to show.

    Yes, there are a bunch of us out here… and we check up on you quite regularly. Keep the good work coming.

    Cheers!

    Warren

  4. latoga

    Carl, I’m seeing just the first few lines of the post (and no photo) via google reader. Check your WordPress settings, reading section. What is the “for each article in the feed show” option set to? full text show all text in the post, Summary shows first few lines.

    Personally, I have mine set to full text. I also unsubscribe to any feeds that don’t show full text as I use the RSS reader to save time and having to click over to the blog to read the post isn’t doing that for me.

    Good luck!

  5. Carl D Post author

    hey Jackson

    Thanks for the kind words on the photo.

    After all that, I think the problem was entirely benign. Warren described it, I suspect. We’ll see if it continues. Warren, I’m not sure how to shortern that title starting with ‘Aussiefoto .. blog post’ .. is that on your end or my end?

    Hey Greg

    Thanks – I had actually edited my settings to only show the snippet, rather than full text, to see if that worked better .. it should be now set back to Full text.

    Thanks folks,

    Cheers

    Carl

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