WordPress.com’ RSS feeds suck

Augmented Reality 2 Minutes

Update: since writing this post WordPress’s feeds started validating. That needs to be pointed out because I’ve found the WordPress team is remarkably fast at listening to its users and implementing fixes and features. Yesterday at the Blog Business Summit it was praised on stage multiple times for just this reason. Can you please let me know if my feed works great in your RSS aggregator? That will help us make sure this really rocks. Thanks!

Turns out there are lots of people complaining about my RSS feed. Turns out if you click on my XML icon you get a “funky” feed. Sorry Matt, but I’m getting too many complaints from my readers to say it’s not. I never got complaints about my old feed. WordPress.com REALLY needs to nail this.

My old feed validated. It did not look funky when you looked at it. Why don’t my description fields have full text? My old ones did and no one complained. My old feed didn’t get complaints. My new feed is getting complaints.

The CData stuff in my description is confusing, by the way. For me. My old feed didn’t use them. I’m not sure why the new feed needs to use that. It makes my feed look ugly and I’m not sure it makes my feed any better.

Now, Matt Mullenweg says that I can get different feeds by adding RSS, Atom, or RDF onto the end of my URL. OK, let’s try that. Here’s my RSS feed. It sucks. Here’s why. It is not full text. Look at the description field. Sorry, RSS feeds that don’t have full text suck.

I just tried my Atom feed and I couldn’t even get it to load up in the browser. That certainly is not good usability (RSS pulls up, but not Atom). So, I fired up Firefox. It still required me to do some work to get it to open up in the browser. That’s funky. It should open up in the browser right away without trying to spit it down to a file.

But, let’s forget that funkiness for a second. Then I see where he’s going wrong. The Atom feed is better than his RSS feed. He has a summary AND a full text version in Atom. That’s acceptable in Atom, but it’s non standard in RSS.

And, so, my RSS usability is broken. I’m almost forced to put two links on my blog, one for RSS and one for Atom. And the RSS is broken for my readers.

Matt, please fix this. It’s a HUGE issue for me. I can’t stay on a service that has partial text feeds or RSS that doesn’t validate. Sorry. That’s just not something I can compromise on and I can’t go with a service that biases Atom ahead of RSS support since so there are news aggregators out there know how to deal with RSS and are barfing on my feeds (I’m getting an email or two complaining about this every day).

However, this is why you can’t write a review of a blogging tool without really using that tool. It’s why I’m happy my wife is using MSN Spaces and my son is using Google’s Blogger and my book blog is on TypePad and my internal blog is on Community Server. I would have totally missed the funkiness of WordPress’s RSS feeds if I hadn’t had tons of readers follow me around and complain.

Here’s the solution: copy my old Radio UserLand feed. It worked. This new feed stuff does not.

Published by Robert Scoble

I help entrepreneurs build their technology business' story, help with getting ready for investors, with other launch plans, and many other strategic things that can help your new startup. Call to talk: +1-425-205-1921 (text first).

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187 thoughts on “WordPress.com’ RSS feeds suck”

  1. i am just starting out blogging and have found that blogging services vary and wish they all were as cool as channel9. however, i have found one that is super cool and is really “growing up”… imeem (www.imeem.com). it does not have all the web features yet, but the constant development really is encouraging.

    Like

  2. i am just starting out blogging and have found that blogging services vary and wish they all were as cool as channel9. however, i have found one that is super cool and is really “growing up”… imeem (www.imeem.com). it does not have all the web features yet, but the constant development really is encouraging.

    Like

  3. i am just starting out blogging and have found that blogging services vary and wish they all were as cool as channel9. however, i have found one that is super cool and is really “growing up”… imeem (www.imeem.com). it does not have all the web features yet, but the constant development really is encouraging.

    Like

  4. Robert, before the XML geeks swoop down and start picking this to death, the point is that, as a non-technical user, you’re right to insist that RSS work well for your users. You want to provide them with full feeds, you want to be able to view your feed, and have some idea of what’s going on when you look. That’s what I get from your message. Weird things like CDATA, while they’re valid and definitely not funky (in a technical sense) are confusing. I support you in what you want, although other techies will say there’s no reason for the technology to be transparent to you, I disagree. People don’t things they don’t understand, and it’s certainly possible to do it in a way that you can understand, without giving up any of the power and depth that geeks like so much. I’d also be happy to work with Matt to make you happy. I’m pretty sure I know what you want. Keep on truckin. Dave

    Like

  5. Robert, before the XML geeks swoop down and start picking this to death, the point is that, as a non-technical user, you’re right to insist that RSS work well for your users. You want to provide them with full feeds, you want to be able to view your feed, and have some idea of what’s going on when you look. That’s what I get from your message. Weird things like CDATA, while they’re valid and definitely not funky (in a technical sense) are confusing. I support you in what you want, although other techies will say there’s no reason for the technology to be transparent to you, I disagree. People don’t things they don’t understand, and it’s certainly possible to do it in a way that you can understand, without giving up any of the power and depth that geeks like so much. I’d also be happy to work with Matt to make you happy. I’m pretty sure I know what you want. Keep on truckin. Dave

    Like

  6. Robert, before the XML geeks swoop down and start picking this to death, the point is that, as a non-technical user, you’re right to insist that RSS work well for your users. You want to provide them with full feeds, you want to be able to view your feed, and have some idea of what’s going on when you look. That’s what I get from your message. Weird things like CDATA, while they’re valid and definitely not funky (in a technical sense) are confusing. I support you in what you want, although other techies will say there’s no reason for the technology to be transparent to you, I disagree. People don’t things they don’t understand, and it’s certainly possible to do it in a way that you can understand, without giving up any of the power and depth that geeks like so much. I’d also be happy to work with Matt to make you happy. I’m pretty sure I know what you want. Keep on truckin. Dave

    Like

  7. Dave: yeah, I had 15,000 subscribers on NewsGator and 9,000 on Bloglines to my old Radio UserLand feed. I never had a complaint. So, what I want is my old feed. Don’t mess with what works.

    I’m cool with doing a super-dooper Atom feed too, but don’t mess up my RSS feed. That MUST work like my old feed.

    Like

  8. Dave: yeah, I had 15,000 subscribers on NewsGator and 9,000 on Bloglines to my old Radio UserLand feed. I never had a complaint. So, what I want is my old feed. Don’t mess with what works.

    I’m cool with doing a super-dooper Atom feed too, but don’t mess up my RSS feed. That MUST work like my old feed.

    Like

  9. Dave: yeah, I had 15,000 subscribers on NewsGator and 9,000 on Bloglines to my old Radio UserLand feed. I never had a complaint. So, what I want is my old feed. Don’t mess with what works.

    I’m cool with doing a super-dooper Atom feed too, but don’t mess up my RSS feed. That MUST work like my old feed.

    Like

  15. I use the feedburner plug-in for my WordPress feeds. Also, in the Control Panel under “Reading” there is an option to turn on full feeds. It took me a couple of weeks to figure that one out — My sense is that it should default to full feeds rather than an excerpt, but it is there.

    I haven’t had any trouble at all with Feedburner, and as far as I can tell, the feeds aren’t ‘funky’ either. You might want to give it a whirl.

    Like

  16. I use the feedburner plug-in for my WordPress feeds. Also, in the Control Panel under “Reading” there is an option to turn on full feeds. It took me a couple of weeks to figure that one out — My sense is that it should default to full feeds rather than an excerpt, but it is there.

    I haven’t had any trouble at all with Feedburner, and as far as I can tell, the feeds aren’t ‘funky’ either. You might want to give it a whirl.

    Like

  18. I use the feedburner plug-in for my WordPress feeds. Also, in the Control Panel under “Reading” there is an option to turn on full feeds. It took me a couple of weeks to figure that one out — My sense is that it should default to full feeds rather than an excerpt, but it is there.

    I haven’t had any trouble at all with Feedburner, and as far as I can tell, the feeds aren’t ‘funky’ either. You might want to give it a whirl.

    Like

  19. Caius: my feed did not validate just an hour ago. So, things are already changing. Which is why WordPress is getting the attention of bloggers (it was praised several times yesterday on stage).

    Drumsnwhistles: you are giving up a LOT by going with Feedburner: control of your destiny. Here’s something to think about: what if Feedburner goes out of business? You’re screwed cause all your readers are on Feedburner.

    Or, what if they decide to start putting ads in your feeds? You’re screwed. I’m not ready to do that yet.

    Like

  20. Caius: my feed did not validate just an hour ago. So, things are already changing. Which is why WordPress is getting the attention of bloggers (it was praised several times yesterday on stage).

    Drumsnwhistles: you are giving up a LOT by going with Feedburner: control of your destiny. Here’s something to think about: what if Feedburner goes out of business? You’re screwed cause all your readers are on Feedburner.

    Or, what if they decide to start putting ads in your feeds? You’re screwed. I’m not ready to do that yet.

    Like

  21. Caius: my feed did not validate just an hour ago. So, things are already changing. Which is why WordPress is getting the attention of bloggers (it was praised several times yesterday on stage).

    Drumsnwhistles: you are giving up a LOT by going with Feedburner: control of your destiny. Here’s something to think about: what if Feedburner goes out of business? You’re screwed cause all your readers are on Feedburner.

    Or, what if they decide to start putting ads in your feeds? You’re screwed. I’m not ready to do that yet.

    Like

  25. Your “funky” feed has been working perfectly well for me since Day 1 (in Bloglines), and to these eyes it’s indistinguishable from your last feed. I’m not really clear on what the complaints are.

    Like

  26. Your “funky” feed has been working perfectly well for me since Day 1 (in Bloglines), and to these eyes it’s indistinguishable from your last feed. I’m not really clear on what the complaints are.

    Like

  27. Robert,

    IMHO, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill with this. Seems you like you have two very easy and effective solutions here:

    1) Ditch RSS and go with Atom. Seriously. I can’t think of a single major newsreader that can’t handle Atom without blinking.

    AND/OR

    2) Go with Feedburner. I LOVE this service. Great tracking, easy to set up, and shows human readable xml feeds.

    Frankly, I’d avoid going with a WordPress.com blog for the same reason I think a zillion others have noted in the past: why tie you blog’s stability, brand, and hamper your movability to a third party? Heck, even Feedburner lets you use your own domain URL (albeit for a small extra fee).

    Seriously, why would anyone with technical prowess want to go with somename.3rdpartysite.com when they can have somename.com or .net? It just doesn’t make any sense to me. What possible value could you be deriving from a hosted WordPress solution?

    And no, I’m not trying to pick on Matt here. I’ve not used WordPress, but I respect the tool and the people behind it… and I know it’s a really fine blogging app. I just don’t get the hosted thing in your context.

    Like

  28. Robert,

    IMHO, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill with this. Seems you like you have two very easy and effective solutions here:

    1) Ditch RSS and go with Atom. Seriously. I can’t think of a single major newsreader that can’t handle Atom without blinking.

    AND/OR

    2) Go with Feedburner. I LOVE this service. Great tracking, easy to set up, and shows human readable xml feeds.

    Frankly, I’d avoid going with a WordPress.com blog for the same reason I think a zillion others have noted in the past: why tie you blog’s stability, brand, and hamper your movability to a third party? Heck, even Feedburner lets you use your own domain URL (albeit for a small extra fee).

    Seriously, why would anyone with technical prowess want to go with somename.3rdpartysite.com when they can have somename.com or .net? It just doesn’t make any sense to me. What possible value could you be deriving from a hosted WordPress solution?

    And no, I’m not trying to pick on Matt here. I’ve not used WordPress, but I respect the tool and the people behind it… and I know it’s a really fine blogging app. I just don’t get the hosted thing in your context.

    Like

  29. Your “funky” feed has been working perfectly well for me since Day 1 (in Bloglines), and to these eyes it’s indistinguishable from your last feed. I’m not really clear on what the complaints are.

    Like

  30. Robert,

    IMHO, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill with this. Seems you like you have two very easy and effective solutions here:

    1) Ditch RSS and go with Atom. Seriously. I can’t think of a single major newsreader that can’t handle Atom without blinking.

    AND/OR

    2) Go with Feedburner. I LOVE this service. Great tracking, easy to set up, and shows human readable xml feeds.

    Frankly, I’d avoid going with a WordPress.com blog for the same reason I think a zillion others have noted in the past: why tie you blog’s stability, brand, and hamper your movability to a third party? Heck, even Feedburner lets you use your own domain URL (albeit for a small extra fee).

    Seriously, why would anyone with technical prowess want to go with somename.3rdpartysite.com when they can have somename.com or .net? It just doesn’t make any sense to me. What possible value could you be deriving from a hosted WordPress solution?

    And no, I’m not trying to pick on Matt here. I’ve not used WordPress, but I respect the tool and the people behind it… and I know it’s a really fine blogging app. I just don’t get the hosted thing in your context.

    Like

  31. What possible value do I have from having a hosted WordPress solution? Easy. I don’t have to do any work.

    There are TONS of people who don’t want to do any work when starting up their blogs. I want to be more like the 98% than the 2%. By using the same services that other people will be using I will have something to say. And, I’ll learn about those services in an intimate way.

    Like

  32. What possible value do I have from having a hosted WordPress solution? Easy. I don’t have to do any work.

    There are TONS of people who don’t want to do any work when starting up their blogs. I want to be more like the 98% than the 2%. By using the same services that other people will be using I will have something to say. And, I’ll learn about those services in an intimate way.

    Like

  33. What possible value do I have from having a hosted WordPress solution? Easy. I don’t have to do any work.

    There are TONS of people who don’t want to do any work when starting up their blogs. I want to be more like the 98% than the 2%. By using the same services that other people will be using I will have something to say. And, I’ll learn about those services in an intimate way.

    Like

  34. Adam: I’m not making a moutain out of a molehill. My old feed worked. It had more than 25,000 people using it. Think about that sometime.

    This new feed is getting complaints.

    Like

  35. Adam: I’m not making a moutain out of a molehill. My old feed worked. It had more than 25,000 people using it. Think about that sometime.

    This new feed is getting complaints.

    Like

  36. Adam: I’m not making a moutain out of a molehill. My old feed worked. It had more than 25,000 people using it. Think about that sometime.

    This new feed is getting complaints.

    Like

  37. Understood, Robert, but if I understood you correctly, you noted that your Atom feed looks / works just fine. Why not just do a redirect and then *voila*? Unless (and I admit this could be a consideration) you’re worried that there’d be problems you hadn’t caught with the Atom feed, too.

    So, yeah, I suppose that I was a bit too brusque to simply suggest that this wasn’t a problem at all… but I stand by my assertion that it’s likely to be easily solvable.

    (and for the record… I use NewzCrawler, and I never noticed any problems at all with your WordPress feed)

    Like

  38. Understood, Robert, but if I understood you correctly, you noted that your Atom feed looks / works just fine. Why not just do a redirect and then *voila*? Unless (and I admit this could be a consideration) you’re worried that there’d be problems you hadn’t caught with the Atom feed, too.

    So, yeah, I suppose that I was a bit too brusque to simply suggest that this wasn’t a problem at all… but I stand by my assertion that it’s likely to be easily solvable.

    (and for the record… I use NewzCrawler, and I never noticed any problems at all with your WordPress feed)

    Like

  39. Understood, Robert, but if I understood you correctly, you noted that your Atom feed looks / works just fine. Why not just do a redirect and then *voila*? Unless (and I admit this could be a consideration) you’re worried that there’d be problems you hadn’t caught with the Atom feed, too.

    So, yeah, I suppose that I was a bit too brusque to simply suggest that this wasn’t a problem at all… but I stand by my assertion that it’s likely to be easily solvable.

    (and for the record… I use NewzCrawler, and I never noticed any problems at all with your WordPress feed)

    Like

  43. >your Atom feed looks / works just fine.

    I don’t know that to be the case. I don’t use Atom feeds. I use RSS. I still don’t understand what the Atom feed buys me that my old feed didn’t. And, are you saying there is no aggregator out there that doesn’t work with Atom? I think that’s a pretty bold statement since there are hundreds of aggregators.

    Like

  44. >your Atom feed looks / works just fine.

    I don’t know that to be the case. I don’t use Atom feeds. I use RSS. I still don’t understand what the Atom feed buys me that my old feed didn’t. And, are you saying there is no aggregator out there that doesn’t work with Atom? I think that’s a pretty bold statement since there are hundreds of aggregators.

    Like

  45. >your Atom feed looks / works just fine.

    I don’t know that to be the case. I don’t use Atom feeds. I use RSS. I still don’t understand what the Atom feed buys me that my old feed didn’t. And, are you saying there is no aggregator out there that doesn’t work with Atom? I think that’s a pretty bold statement since there are hundreds of aggregators.

    Like

  46. Hi Robert,
    Your feed has been working fine in my GreatNews reader (which you pointed out a few months ago – thanks btw 🙂 ) and has been working fine since you moved to wordpress.

    Like

  47. Hi Robert,
    Your feed has been working fine in my GreatNews reader (which you pointed out a few months ago – thanks btw 🙂 ) and has been working fine since you moved to wordpress.

    Like

  48. Hi Robert,
    Your feed has been working fine in my GreatNews reader (which you pointed out a few months ago – thanks btw 🙂 ) and has been working fine since you moved to wordpress.

    Like

  49. The argument above about a hosted solution:

    The problem is not you using a hosted solution, it’s the .wordpress.com part. Why can’t you use scobleizer.com, and have it powered by wordpress.com? I just don’t see why anyone who’s serious about keeping your readers, which you seem to be, would tie yourself to a service.

    Better point: what the hell is your problem with atom? You seem really anti it here. End users shouldn’t care about which format it is. End users don’t look at the source.

    Those things? It’s all about keeping your text safe in the XML pipeline from your keyboard to the end users viewer. Think of it like a tag that says “inside me you’ll find no XML, so don’t try parsing it as that”.

    Even if you don’t like feedburner itself, have a think about how they handle this: they put some javascript and an xslt stylesheet into the (atom or rss) feed, and magically the feed looks pretty in browses when clicked on. But really, if Internet Explorer just downloads the file, then that is Internet Explorers problem.

    Like

  50. The argument above about a hosted solution:

    The problem is not you using a hosted solution, it’s the .wordpress.com part. Why can’t you use scobleizer.com, and have it powered by wordpress.com? I just don’t see why anyone who’s serious about keeping your readers, which you seem to be, would tie yourself to a service.

    Better point: what the hell is your problem with atom? You seem really anti it here. End users shouldn’t care about which format it is. End users don’t look at the source.

    Those things? It’s all about keeping your text safe in the XML pipeline from your keyboard to the end users viewer. Think of it like a tag that says “inside me you’ll find no XML, so don’t try parsing it as that”.

    Even if you don’t like feedburner itself, have a think about how they handle this: they put some javascript and an xslt stylesheet into the (atom or rss) feed, and magically the feed looks pretty in browses when clicked on. But really, if Internet Explorer just downloads the file, then that is Internet Explorers problem.

    Like

  51. The argument above about a hosted solution:

    The problem is not you using a hosted solution, it’s the .wordpress.com part. Why can’t you use scobleizer.com, and have it powered by wordpress.com? I just don’t see why anyone who’s serious about keeping your readers, which you seem to be, would tie yourself to a service.

    Better point: what the hell is your problem with atom? You seem really anti it here. End users shouldn’t care about which format it is. End users don’t look at the source.

    Those things? It’s all about keeping your text safe in the XML pipeline from your keyboard to the end users viewer. Think of it like a tag that says “inside me you’ll find no XML, so don’t try parsing it as that”.

    Even if you don’t like feedburner itself, have a think about how they handle this: they put some javascript and an xslt stylesheet into the (atom or rss) feed, and magically the feed looks pretty in browses when clicked on. But really, if Internet Explorer just downloads the file, then that is Internet Explorers problem.

    Like

  55. Need anyone point out that if maybe RSS was an actual SPEC, there would be a concrete definition for the way that the feeds should look? That’s probably why the ATOM feed worked better.

    “you are giving up a LOT by going with Feedburner: control of your destiny. Here’s something to think about: what if Feedburner goes out of business? ”

    Wait a minute, so why aren’t you hosting you blog on your own server at your house or at least at a professional hoster? Before you had a “weblogs.com” url. good thing you were friends with Dave when he shut off that server. (not that he didn’t have good reasons, but if you weren’ Doc or Scoble you were pretty bad off and had to move quick). Now you have a WordPress.com url. You can’t even follow your own bad advice Robert. 🙂

    Like

  56. Need anyone point out that if maybe RSS was an actual SPEC, there would be a concrete definition for the way that the feeds should look? That’s probably why the ATOM feed worked better.

    “you are giving up a LOT by going with Feedburner: control of your destiny. Here’s something to think about: what if Feedburner goes out of business? ”

    Wait a minute, so why aren’t you hosting you blog on your own server at your house or at least at a professional hoster? Before you had a “weblogs.com” url. good thing you were friends with Dave when he shut off that server. (not that he didn’t have good reasons, but if you weren’ Doc or Scoble you were pretty bad off and had to move quick). Now you have a WordPress.com url. You can’t even follow your own bad advice Robert. 🙂

    Like

  57. Need anyone point out that if maybe RSS was an actual SPEC, there would be a concrete definition for the way that the feeds should look? That’s probably why the ATOM feed worked better.

    “you are giving up a LOT by going with Feedburner: control of your destiny. Here’s something to think about: what if Feedburner goes out of business? ”

    Wait a minute, so why aren’t you hosting you blog on your own server at your house or at least at a professional hoster? Before you had a “weblogs.com” url. good thing you were friends with Dave when he shut off that server. (not that he didn’t have good reasons, but if you weren’ Doc or Scoble you were pretty bad off and had to move quick). Now you have a WordPress.com url. You can’t even follow your own bad advice Robert. 🙂

    Like

  58. oh, for the record. Using NetNewsWire, I’m able to read the ATOM feed that Safari picks up by default when I browse to your page. So, ironically given your employer, all of your Mac readers are probably happy as clams with your feed. 🙂

    Like

  59. oh, for the record. Using NetNewsWire, I’m able to read the ATOM feed that Safari picks up by default when I browse to your page. So, ironically given your employer, all of your Mac readers are probably happy as clams with your feed. 🙂

    Like

  60. oh, for the record. Using NetNewsWire, I’m able to read the ATOM feed that Safari picks up by default when I browse to your page. So, ironically given your employer, all of your Mac readers are probably happy as clams with your feed. 🙂

    Like

  67. I haven’t had any problems at all with your feeds, although wordpress.com is running with a deprecated version of Atom (0.3).

    Regarding Atom it is a far more versatile and regulated standard than RSS has ever been and is supported by all major feedreaders out there – can you perhaps show one that doesn’t support it? Atom is always my choice when choosing between it and RSS.

    Why should you be able to read the contents of a feed in a web browser? How’s that helping the technically illiterate out there?

    Like

  68. I haven’t had any problems at all with your feeds, although wordpress.com is running with a deprecated version of Atom (0.3).

    Regarding Atom it is a far more versatile and regulated standard than RSS has ever been and is supported by all major feedreaders out there – can you perhaps show one that doesn’t support it? Atom is always my choice when choosing between it and RSS.

    Why should you be able to read the contents of a feed in a web browser? How’s that helping the technically illiterate out there?

    Like

  69. I haven’t had any problems at all with your feeds, although wordpress.com is running with a deprecated version of Atom (0.3).

    Regarding Atom it is a far more versatile and regulated standard than RSS has ever been and is supported by all major feedreaders out there – can you perhaps show one that doesn’t support it? Atom is always my choice when choosing between it and RSS.

    Why should you be able to read the contents of a feed in a web browser? How’s that helping the technically illiterate out there?

    Like

  70. Patrick: cause I’m a user and it’d make it more consistent. The Web got popular because of “view source.” RSS got popular because normal people who aren’t rocket scientists can look at it and figure out what it’s doing (and how to do it on their own sites).

    Like

  71. Patrick: cause I’m a user and it’d make it more consistent. The Web got popular because of “view source.” RSS got popular because normal people who aren’t rocket scientists can look at it and figure out what it’s doing (and how to do it on their own sites).

    Like

  72. Patrick: cause I’m a user and it’d make it more consistent. The Web got popular because of “view source.” RSS got popular because normal people who aren’t rocket scientists can look at it and figure out what it’s doing (and how to do it on their own sites).

    Like

  73. Patrick: I love how geeks argue with users when they point out inconsistencies in user experiences. How is that focusing on making it easier?

    Like

  74. Patrick: I love how geeks argue with users when they point out inconsistencies in user experiences. How is that focusing on making it easier?

    Like

  75. Patrick: I love how geeks argue with users when they point out inconsistencies in user experiences. How is that focusing on making it easier?

    Like

  88. Pingback: (parenthetical) » Scobelizer on WordPress.com feeds

  89. Need anyone point out that if maybe RSS was an actual SPEC, there would be a concrete definition for the way that the feeds should look? That’s probably why the ATOM feed worked better.

    WordPress corrected the problem and now produces valid RSS 2.0 feeds. Perhaps this has nothing to do with Atom vs. RSS, and is simply a matter of something invalid that needed to be corrected.

    Before you had a “weblogs.com” url. good thing you were friends with Dave when he shut off that server. (not that he didn’t have good reasons, but if you weren’ Doc or Scoble you were pretty bad off and had to move quick).

    No one was bad off. Weblogs.Com sites moved to Buzzword.Com after a couple of days. Sheesh.

    Like

  90. Need anyone point out that if maybe RSS was an actual SPEC, there would be a concrete definition for the way that the feeds should look? That’s probably why the ATOM feed worked better.

    WordPress corrected the problem and now produces valid RSS 2.0 feeds. Perhaps this has nothing to do with Atom vs. RSS, and is simply a matter of something invalid that needed to be corrected.

    Before you had a “weblogs.com” url. good thing you were friends with Dave when he shut off that server. (not that he didn’t have good reasons, but if you weren’ Doc or Scoble you were pretty bad off and had to move quick).

    No one was bad off. Weblogs.Com sites moved to Buzzword.Com after a couple of days. Sheesh.

    Like

  91. Need anyone point out that if maybe RSS was an actual SPEC, there would be a concrete definition for the way that the feeds should look? That’s probably why the ATOM feed worked better.

    WordPress corrected the problem and now produces valid RSS 2.0 feeds. Perhaps this has nothing to do with Atom vs. RSS, and is simply a matter of something invalid that needed to be corrected.

    Before you had a “weblogs.com” url. good thing you were friends with Dave when he shut off that server. (not that he didn’t have good reasons, but if you weren’ Doc or Scoble you were pretty bad off and had to move quick).

    No one was bad off. Weblogs.Com sites moved to Buzzword.Com after a couple of days. Sheesh.

    Like

  92. Pingback: Havagan’s Mind Spew » Blog Archive » RSS Usability

  93. This brings up one of my pet peeves… RSS feeds are too important to outsource. Users need to have control over their feeds. For me I had some bumps with WordPress but they do provide the source code.. So have your son start coding 🙂

    Like

  94. This brings up one of my pet peeves… RSS feeds are too important to outsource. Users need to have control over their feeds. For me I had some bumps with WordPress but they do provide the source code.. So have your son start coding 🙂

    Like

  95. This brings up one of my pet peeves… RSS feeds are too important to outsource. Users need to have control over their feeds. For me I had some bumps with WordPress but they do provide the source code.. So have your son start coding 🙂

    Like

  96. I have no idea if either of scoble’s comments were directed at me (I signed my first comment as straight Patrick. Other Patrick, hey! I got here first on this post! :))

    Patrick: cause I’m a user and it’d make it more consistent. The Web got popular because of “view source.” RSS got popular because normal people who aren’t rocket scientists can look at it and figure out what it’s doing (and how to do it on their own sites).

    Uh. No. The web got popular because… well… it was pretty easy for anybody and everybody to setup a site. I dispute view source as being the main thing behind it. And for crying out loud, the source back then was not exactly what you’d call great, or consistent. Personally, if the [CDATA[] helps a newbie to put properly formed XML up, and have it work rather than randomly error, then that’s all good.

    RSS got popular because normal people who aren’t rocket scientists have software that reads the feed and shows it to them all pretty like (be it netnewswire, yahoo’s rss reader, or even my.netscape, back in the day), and they have software (like wordpress, or movabletype, or livejournal, etc.) that makes those RSS/Atom feeds for them.

    Patrick: I love how geeks argue with users when they point out inconsistencies in user experiences. How is that focusing on making it easier?

    What does the way the source code of an rss/atom/etc. feed look have anything to do with the user experience?

    Like

  97. I have no idea if either of scoble’s comments were directed at me (I signed my first comment as straight Patrick. Other Patrick, hey! I got here first on this post! :))

    Patrick: cause I’m a user and it’d make it more consistent. The Web got popular because of “view source.” RSS got popular because normal people who aren’t rocket scientists can look at it and figure out what it’s doing (and how to do it on their own sites).

    Uh. No. The web got popular because… well… it was pretty easy for anybody and everybody to setup a site. I dispute view source as being the main thing behind it. And for crying out loud, the source back then was not exactly what you’d call great, or consistent. Personally, if the [CDATA[] helps a newbie to put properly formed XML up, and have it work rather than randomly error, then that’s all good.

    RSS got popular because normal people who aren’t rocket scientists have software that reads the feed and shows it to them all pretty like (be it netnewswire, yahoo’s rss reader, or even my.netscape, back in the day), and they have software (like wordpress, or movabletype, or livejournal, etc.) that makes those RSS/Atom feeds for them.

    Patrick: I love how geeks argue with users when they point out inconsistencies in user experiences. How is that focusing on making it easier?

    What does the way the source code of an rss/atom/etc. feed look have anything to do with the user experience?

    Like

  98. I have no idea if either of scoble’s comments were directed at me (I signed my first comment as straight Patrick. Other Patrick, hey! I got here first on this post! :))

    Patrick: cause I’m a user and it’d make it more consistent. The Web got popular because of “view source.” RSS got popular because normal people who aren’t rocket scientists can look at it and figure out what it’s doing (and how to do it on their own sites).

    Uh. No. The web got popular because… well… it was pretty easy for anybody and everybody to setup a site. I dispute view source as being the main thing behind it. And for crying out loud, the source back then was not exactly what you’d call great, or consistent. Personally, if the [CDATA[] helps a newbie to put properly formed XML up, and have it work rather than randomly error, then that’s all good.

    RSS got popular because normal people who aren’t rocket scientists have software that reads the feed and shows it to them all pretty like (be it netnewswire, yahoo’s rss reader, or even my.netscape, back in the day), and they have software (like wordpress, or movabletype, or livejournal, etc.) that makes those RSS/Atom feeds for them.

    Patrick: I love how geeks argue with users when they point out inconsistencies in user experiences. How is that focusing on making it easier?

    What does the way the source code of an rss/atom/etc. feed look have anything to do with the user experience?

    Like

  102. The primary feed reader that I use is the open source RSSowl. I also use NewsGator (Web and Outlook edition, though I’ve pretty much abandoned Outlook except for testing), AmphetaDesk, and Yahoo!RSS.

    The http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/feed/ stopped working on October 29 and began working again today. I always got full text before the 29th and again today.

    RSSwowl does give the error as to why a feed isn’t validating. Though, I’m afraid that I didn’t note the error message at the time.

    It does sometimes happen. I would guess that very few users or sites hand generate the RSS, RDF or Atom XML for their feeds. The author publishes the post, and some script generates the feed automagically for them. Even SF Gate wasn’t validating for a few hours this morning. BBC screws up about once a week. No doubt better script debugging is the answer.

    Robert, glad to have you back in my RSSowl.

    Like

  103. The primary feed reader that I use is the open source RSSowl. I also use NewsGator (Web and Outlook edition, though I’ve pretty much abandoned Outlook except for testing), AmphetaDesk, and Yahoo!RSS.

    The http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/feed/ stopped working on October 29 and began working again today. I always got full text before the 29th and again today.

    RSSwowl does give the error as to why a feed isn’t validating. Though, I’m afraid that I didn’t note the error message at the time.

    It does sometimes happen. I would guess that very few users or sites hand generate the RSS, RDF or Atom XML for their feeds. The author publishes the post, and some script generates the feed automagically for them. Even SF Gate wasn’t validating for a few hours this morning. BBC screws up about once a week. No doubt better script debugging is the answer.

    Robert, glad to have you back in my RSSowl.

    Like

  104. The primary feed reader that I use is the open source RSSowl. I also use NewsGator (Web and Outlook edition, though I’ve pretty much abandoned Outlook except for testing), AmphetaDesk, and Yahoo!RSS.

    The http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/feed/ stopped working on October 29 and began working again today. I always got full text before the 29th and again today.

    RSSwowl does give the error as to why a feed isn’t validating. Though, I’m afraid that I didn’t note the error message at the time.

    It does sometimes happen. I would guess that very few users or sites hand generate the RSS, RDF or Atom XML for their feeds. The author publishes the post, and some script generates the feed automagically for them. Even SF Gate wasn’t validating for a few hours this morning. BBC screws up about once a week. No doubt better script debugging is the answer.

    Robert, glad to have you back in my RSSowl.

    Like

  105. On my blog I’ve left the terms RSS and Atom behind – I just kall them (news/web) feeds. For a visitor it’s only really important that there are abilities to subscribe to the content and not what format they come wrapped in.

    For the technically inclined it’s easy to see that I serve all the feeds as Atom 1.0. I believe it’s important to have that transparency – we don’t go around and call web pages html-pages or even php-pages or asp.net-pages, do we?

    Like

  106. On my blog I’ve left the terms RSS and Atom behind – I just kall them (news/web) feeds. For a visitor it’s only really important that there are abilities to subscribe to the content and not what format they come wrapped in.

    For the technically inclined it’s easy to see that I serve all the feeds as Atom 1.0. I believe it’s important to have that transparency – we don’t go around and call web pages html-pages or even php-pages or asp.net-pages, do we?

    Like

  107. On my blog I’ve left the terms RSS and Atom behind – I just kall them (news/web) feeds. For a visitor it’s only really important that there are abilities to subscribe to the content and not what format they come wrapped in.

    For the technically inclined it’s easy to see that I serve all the feeds as Atom 1.0. I believe it’s important to have that transparency – we don’t go around and call web pages html-pages or even php-pages or asp.net-pages, do we?

    Like

  108. Oh, and on the matter of services vs running your own. Running your own can take work. We do it. Well over a year ago we started testing various open source blogware, including WordPress, b2evolution and plog. Our web sites were on a shared server at XO at the time. In addition to bandwidth and storage, XO uses a “resource” calculation to see what amount of CPU and RAM your using in the shared environment. Our domain hosting costs shot up – and we were posting infrequently and only one friend read us. After a few months, we settled on b2evolution [we needed the multi-blog, multi-author capabilities PLUS the community was much, much more responsive and helpful than WordPress], and we got a dedicated server from ServerBeach.

    We use so little of the resources of the server, that we’re running a hosting service: open source software for small businesses, including b2evolution. 😉 Hey, it’s cheaper than what XO’s additional “resource units” were costing us, but it’s still a lot of money per month for the machine.

    At any rate, my point is that unless you’re willing to dedicate a lot of your time to maintaining the underlying software, a service, be it Typepad, LiveJournal, WordPress.com, ours, or any other can be fine. Though, I do have to admit that I shudder whenever I want to pick up someone’s feed, and my only option is feedburner. Something just doesn’t feel right there. Also, a service should allow a user to have their own domain [or subdomain like blog(s).domainName.TLD], as well as an exit path that preserves their look and all archived posts if they should wish to move to another service or self-hoting.

    Oh, and on the other point in these comments, I haven’t seen a feed reader yet that doesn’t support RSSv0.92, RSSv1 (a.k.a RDF), RSSv2 and Atom 0.3. Few support Atom 1.x yet.

    I do agree with Marc Canter: the user is best served when the services support as many standards as possible.

    Like

  109. Oh, and on the matter of services vs running your own. Running your own can take work. We do it. Well over a year ago we started testing various open source blogware, including WordPress, b2evolution and plog. Our web sites were on a shared server at XO at the time. In addition to bandwidth and storage, XO uses a “resource” calculation to see what amount of CPU and RAM your using in the shared environment. Our domain hosting costs shot up – and we were posting infrequently and only one friend read us. After a few months, we settled on b2evolution [we needed the multi-blog, multi-author capabilities PLUS the community was much, much more responsive and helpful than WordPress], and we got a dedicated server from ServerBeach.

    We use so little of the resources of the server, that we’re running a hosting service: open source software for small businesses, including b2evolution. 😉 Hey, it’s cheaper than what XO’s additional “resource units” were costing us, but it’s still a lot of money per month for the machine.

    At any rate, my point is that unless you’re willing to dedicate a lot of your time to maintaining the underlying software, a service, be it Typepad, LiveJournal, WordPress.com, ours, or any other can be fine. Though, I do have to admit that I shudder whenever I want to pick up someone’s feed, and my only option is feedburner. Something just doesn’t feel right there. Also, a service should allow a user to have their own domain [or subdomain like blog(s).domainName.TLD], as well as an exit path that preserves their look and all archived posts if they should wish to move to another service or self-hoting.

    Oh, and on the other point in these comments, I haven’t seen a feed reader yet that doesn’t support RSSv0.92, RSSv1 (a.k.a RDF), RSSv2 and Atom 0.3. Few support Atom 1.x yet.

    I do agree with Marc Canter: the user is best served when the services support as many standards as possible.

    Like

  110. Oh, and on the matter of services vs running your own. Running your own can take work. We do it. Well over a year ago we started testing various open source blogware, including WordPress, b2evolution and plog. Our web sites were on a shared server at XO at the time. In addition to bandwidth and storage, XO uses a “resource” calculation to see what amount of CPU and RAM your using in the shared environment. Our domain hosting costs shot up – and we were posting infrequently and only one friend read us. After a few months, we settled on b2evolution [we needed the multi-blog, multi-author capabilities PLUS the community was much, much more responsive and helpful than WordPress], and we got a dedicated server from ServerBeach.

    We use so little of the resources of the server, that we’re running a hosting service: open source software for small businesses, including b2evolution. 😉 Hey, it’s cheaper than what XO’s additional “resource units” were costing us, but it’s still a lot of money per month for the machine.

    At any rate, my point is that unless you’re willing to dedicate a lot of your time to maintaining the underlying software, a service, be it Typepad, LiveJournal, WordPress.com, ours, or any other can be fine. Though, I do have to admit that I shudder whenever I want to pick up someone’s feed, and my only option is feedburner. Something just doesn’t feel right there. Also, a service should allow a user to have their own domain [or subdomain like blog(s).domainName.TLD], as well as an exit path that preserves their look and all archived posts if they should wish to move to another service or self-hoting.

    Oh, and on the other point in these comments, I haven’t seen a feed reader yet that doesn’t support RSSv0.92, RSSv1 (a.k.a RDF), RSSv2 and Atom 0.3. Few support Atom 1.x yet.

    I do agree with Marc Canter: the user is best served when the services support as many standards as possible.

    Like

  111. Yes, these sort of issues you raise have bothered me too. I have been a bit apathetic in the past towards these issues, but I do support your strong comments on this.

    Availability of full-feeds is one of the most important issue to be addressed. After reading the comments I see there is a solution but I think it should be the default view in RSS readers if that’s what the author intended.

    Like

  112. Yes, these sort of issues you raise have bothered me too. I have been a bit apathetic in the past towards these issues, but I do support your strong comments on this.

    Availability of full-feeds is one of the most important issue to be addressed. After reading the comments I see there is a solution but I think it should be the default view in RSS readers if that’s what the author intended.

    Like

  113. > Also, a service should allow a user to have their own
    > domain [or subdomain like blog(s).domainName.TLD], as
    > well as an exit path that preserves their look and
    > all archived posts if they should wish to move to
    > another service or self-hoting.

    1) Feedburner lets you (for a small fee) use yourdomain.com/feed or whatever (while still taking advantage of their cool services).

    2) Even on free Feedburner accounts, if you decide to ditch FB, they’ll kindly redirect accesses to your FB URL to whatever URL on your own server you’d like for 30 days (likely enough time for feedreaders to note the 301 redirect and react accordingly).

    Note that I am not affiliated with FB in any way except as a happy user.

    Oh, and Robert… it’s certainly possible that there’s SOME feed reader out there that can’t handle Atom 0.3, just like there are still some browsers out there that can’t handle proper CSS (and lots of other stuff), e.g., Netscape 4. I don’t know about you, but I gave up on those folks ages ago.

    Like

  114. > Also, a service should allow a user to have their own
    > domain [or subdomain like blog(s).domainName.TLD], as
    > well as an exit path that preserves their look and
    > all archived posts if they should wish to move to
    > another service or self-hoting.

    1) Feedburner lets you (for a small fee) use yourdomain.com/feed or whatever (while still taking advantage of their cool services).

    2) Even on free Feedburner accounts, if you decide to ditch FB, they’ll kindly redirect accesses to your FB URL to whatever URL on your own server you’d like for 30 days (likely enough time for feedreaders to note the 301 redirect and react accordingly).

    Note that I am not affiliated with FB in any way except as a happy user.

    Oh, and Robert… it’s certainly possible that there’s SOME feed reader out there that can’t handle Atom 0.3, just like there are still some browsers out there that can’t handle proper CSS (and lots of other stuff), e.g., Netscape 4. I don’t know about you, but I gave up on those folks ages ago.

    Like

  115. Yes, these sort of issues you raise have bothered me too. I have been a bit apathetic in the past towards these issues, but I do support your strong comments on this.

    Availability of full-feeds is one of the most important issue to be addressed. After reading the comments I see there is a solution but I think it should be the default view in RSS readers if that’s what the author intended.

    Like

  116. > Also, a service should allow a user to have their own
    > domain [or subdomain like blog(s).domainName.TLD], as
    > well as an exit path that preserves their look and
    > all archived posts if they should wish to move to
    > another service or self-hoting.

    1) Feedburner lets you (for a small fee) use yourdomain.com/feed or whatever (while still taking advantage of their cool services).

    2) Even on free Feedburner accounts, if you decide to ditch FB, they’ll kindly redirect accesses to your FB URL to whatever URL on your own server you’d like for 30 days (likely enough time for feedreaders to note the 301 redirect and react accordingly).

    Note that I am not affiliated with FB in any way except as a happy user.

    Oh, and Robert… it’s certainly possible that there’s SOME feed reader out there that can’t handle Atom 0.3, just like there are still some browsers out there that can’t handle proper CSS (and lots of other stuff), e.g., Netscape 4. I don’t know about you, but I gave up on those folks ages ago.

    Like

  117. Garrrh! I can’t believe we’re still doing this. Robert, you’re absolutely right to complain and push wordpress into doing the right thing. Getting a non-validating RSS feed from a hosted service is unacceptable. And if the RSS feed doesn’t provide the information you want to be in it, complain about that as well. And “just use Feedburner” is not an answer. You shouldn’t *have to* use Feedburner. That should be a choice if you want to use their added value, not a requirement.

    A few other thoughts:-
    – We should be way past people handcoding RSS. It should be transparent and just work. If you need to read the XML to work out what’s going on, then you can also read specs and do research.

    – There’s nothing funky about CDATA. It’s a part of the XML spec and has been for years. It’s one solution to the double encoded & and it does just work.

    – Your RSS feed doesn’t have full text in the item.description and some html tags have been removed. Putting the full text into a content:encoded RSS2 extension tag is ok, but it assumes (wrongly) that most aggregators will be able to read it.

    – Inventing new MIME types is a pain in the neck. (people who serve OPML and RDF-XML like this, please note). My browser has a perfectly good XML reader and it can handle stylesheets in XML. If I click on a link to an XML file I want to be able to read it. Not get some dialog forcing me to make a choice I may not understand.

    – I’m not sure if you’ve started in MS word or used an MS system to cut and paste or what but you’ve got high order versions of ‘, “” and a few other characters in there. Character sets are a PITA, and while UTF-8 handles it, the feed may not end up in something that does. I do wish that when the content is basically aasci-7, all the systems involved would use aasci-7 for characters that exist in it. Microsoft please note, your smart quotes hurt developers because we frequently have to write code to convert them.

    And finally, does anyone know who is reponsible for making & a reserved character in XML? Because shooting is too kind. I want to poke them with pointy sticks for eternity! And the same goes for the person who chose instead of / in Microsoft systems for folder path delimiters.

    Like

  118. Garrrh! I can’t believe we’re still doing this. Robert, you’re absolutely right to complain and push wordpress into doing the right thing. Getting a non-validating RSS feed from a hosted service is unacceptable. And if the RSS feed doesn’t provide the information you want to be in it, complain about that as well. And “just use Feedburner” is not an answer. You shouldn’t *have to* use Feedburner. That should be a choice if you want to use their added value, not a requirement.

    A few other thoughts:-
    – We should be way past people handcoding RSS. It should be transparent and just work. If you need to read the XML to work out what’s going on, then you can also read specs and do research.

    – There’s nothing funky about CDATA. It’s a part of the XML spec and has been for years. It’s one solution to the double encoded & and it does just work.

    – Your RSS feed doesn’t have full text in the item.description and some html tags have been removed. Putting the full text into a content:encoded RSS2 extension tag is ok, but it assumes (wrongly) that most aggregators will be able to read it.

    – Inventing new MIME types is a pain in the neck. (people who serve OPML and RDF-XML like this, please note). My browser has a perfectly good XML reader and it can handle stylesheets in XML. If I click on a link to an XML file I want to be able to read it. Not get some dialog forcing me to make a choice I may not understand.

    – I’m not sure if you’ve started in MS word or used an MS system to cut and paste or what but you’ve got high order versions of ‘, “” and a few other characters in there. Character sets are a PITA, and while UTF-8 handles it, the feed may not end up in something that does. I do wish that when the content is basically aasci-7, all the systems involved would use aasci-7 for characters that exist in it. Microsoft please note, your smart quotes hurt developers because we frequently have to write code to convert them.

    And finally, does anyone know who is reponsible for making & a reserved character in XML? Because shooting is too kind. I want to poke them with pointy sticks for eternity! And the same goes for the person who chose instead of / in Microsoft systems for folder path delimiters.

    Like

  119. Garrrh! I can’t believe we’re still doing this. Robert, you’re absolutely right to complain and push wordpress into doing the right thing. Getting a non-validating RSS feed from a hosted service is unacceptable. And if the RSS feed doesn’t provide the information you want to be in it, complain about that as well. And “just use Feedburner” is not an answer. You shouldn’t *have to* use Feedburner. That should be a choice if you want to use their added value, not a requirement.

    A few other thoughts:-
    – We should be way past people handcoding RSS. It should be transparent and just work. If you need to read the XML to work out what’s going on, then you can also read specs and do research.

    – There’s nothing funky about CDATA. It’s a part of the XML spec and has been for years. It’s one solution to the double encoded & and it does just work.

    – Your RSS feed doesn’t have full text in the item.description and some html tags have been removed. Putting the full text into a content:encoded RSS2 extension tag is ok, but it assumes (wrongly) that most aggregators will be able to read it.

    – Inventing new MIME types is a pain in the neck. (people who serve OPML and RDF-XML like this, please note). My browser has a perfectly good XML reader and it can handle stylesheets in XML. If I click on a link to an XML file I want to be able to read it. Not get some dialog forcing me to make a choice I may not understand.

    – I’m not sure if you’ve started in MS word or used an MS system to cut and paste or what but you’ve got high order versions of ‘, “” and a few other characters in there. Character sets are a PITA, and while UTF-8 handles it, the feed may not end up in something that does. I do wish that when the content is basically aasci-7, all the systems involved would use aasci-7 for characters that exist in it. Microsoft please note, your smart quotes hurt developers because we frequently have to write code to convert them.

    And finally, does anyone know who is reponsible for making & a reserved character in XML? Because shooting is too kind. I want to poke them with pointy sticks for eternity! And the same goes for the person who chose instead of / in Microsoft systems for folder path delimiters.

    Like

  120. Yep, noticed your feed in Bloglines was down for a few days. Had to click on the main head to get through to your blog.

    BTW I’ve had the same problem with RSS2 on my standard WordPress blog (via Fantastico). I set it to full text, but nothing happened for a few days, then a partial feed arrived in tha aggregators. So it’s a generic problem, not just WordPress.com.

    Like

  121. Yep, noticed your feed in Bloglines was down for a few days. Had to click on the main head to get through to your blog.

    BTW I’ve had the same problem with RSS2 on my standard WordPress blog (via Fantastico). I set it to full text, but nothing happened for a few days, then a partial feed arrived in tha aggregators. So it’s a generic problem, not just WordPress.com.

    Like

  122. Yep, noticed your feed in Bloglines was down for a few days. Had to click on the main head to get through to your blog.

    BTW I’ve had the same problem with RSS2 on my standard WordPress blog (via Fantastico). I set it to full text, but nothing happened for a few days, then a partial feed arrived in tha aggregators. So it’s a generic problem, not just WordPress.com.

    Like

  123. I’ve had discussion with Matt via Dave Winer about the WP RSS feeds, the implementation regarding enclosures and podcasting usability is terrible – it turns all links to files as enclosures – not just the first or one…great functionality if you need it; if not you can’t turn it off or delete the extra enclosures…in a Douglas Adams way the ‘delete’ button just serves to make you feel better about your life, but doesn’t actually delete. So I followed Ben over at Tracks up the Tree and intentionally ‘broke’ that function…not great, and I’m not the first to do or say this.

    I seem to remmeber I had to do some hacking to get full posts in RSS2 – initially I kept getting the summaries, NOT the post. There are two different WP functions, one for summaries and the other for posts, never the twain shall meet.

    It’s annoying, and a shame because WP is a great blogging platform…but for podcasting and for out-the-box it’s got a long way to go…atm I can’t really tell non-techy types to go WP when I know techy people have issues – WP’s loss is Blogger’s gain, sadly.

    Like

  124. I’ve had discussion with Matt via Dave Winer about the WP RSS feeds, the implementation regarding enclosures and podcasting usability is terrible – it turns all links to files as enclosures – not just the first or one…great functionality if you need it; if not you can’t turn it off or delete the extra enclosures…in a Douglas Adams way the ‘delete’ button just serves to make you feel better about your life, but doesn’t actually delete. So I followed Ben over at Tracks up the Tree and intentionally ‘broke’ that function…not great, and I’m not the first to do or say this.

    I seem to remmeber I had to do some hacking to get full posts in RSS2 – initially I kept getting the summaries, NOT the post. There are two different WP functions, one for summaries and the other for posts, never the twain shall meet.

    It’s annoying, and a shame because WP is a great blogging platform…but for podcasting and for out-the-box it’s got a long way to go…atm I can’t really tell non-techy types to go WP when I know techy people have issues – WP’s loss is Blogger’s gain, sadly.

    Like

  125. I’ve had discussion with Matt via Dave Winer about the WP RSS feeds, the implementation regarding enclosures and podcasting usability is terrible – it turns all links to files as enclosures – not just the first or one…great functionality if you need it; if not you can’t turn it off or delete the extra enclosures…in a Douglas Adams way the ‘delete’ button just serves to make you feel better about your life, but doesn’t actually delete. So I followed Ben over at Tracks up the Tree and intentionally ‘broke’ that function…not great, and I’m not the first to do or say this.

    I seem to remmeber I had to do some hacking to get full posts in RSS2 – initially I kept getting the summaries, NOT the post. There are two different WP functions, one for summaries and the other for posts, never the twain shall meet.

    It’s annoying, and a shame because WP is a great blogging platform…but for podcasting and for out-the-box it’s got a long way to go…atm I can’t really tell non-techy types to go WP when I know techy people have issues – WP’s loss is Blogger’s gain, sadly.

    Like

  126. eek Monday morning and I’m a bit slow..

    Actually just checked my feed and I have the same issue – truncated post…I remember now I tried the full post WP function and got nada…it’s very odd. Let us know if you find a solution…

    It’s odd because aggregated sites from my feed, such as Podcastalley et al show the full post? Curiouser and curiouser…

    Like

  127. eek Monday morning and I’m a bit slow..

    Actually just checked my feed and I have the same issue – truncated post…I remember now I tried the full post WP function and got nada…it’s very odd. Let us know if you find a solution…

    It’s odd because aggregated sites from my feed, such as Podcastalley et al show the full post? Curiouser and curiouser…

    Like

  128. eek Monday morning and I’m a bit slow..

    Actually just checked my feed and I have the same issue – truncated post…I remember now I tried the full post WP function and got nada…it’s very odd. Let us know if you find a solution…

    It’s odd because aggregated sites from my feed, such as Podcastalley et al show the full post? Curiouser and curiouser…

    Like

  132. I don’t know that sucks is correct, how about inconsistent? I’ve been online for the past seven hours and my reader just picked up this post along with 19 others. Sometimes they’re timely, sometimes they’re not.

    Like

  133. I don’t know that sucks is correct, how about inconsistent? I’ve been online for the past seven hours and my reader just picked up this post along with 19 others. Sometimes they’re timely, sometimes they’re not.

    Like

  134. I don’t know that sucks is correct, how about inconsistent? I’ve been online for the past seven hours and my reader just picked up this post along with 19 others. Sometimes they’re timely, sometimes they’re not.

    Like

  135. Robert: Hosted services have to pick reasonable defaults for all customers. The fact that the default doesn’t suit your specific needs doesn’t mean it “sucks”.

    You know this, of course. So I’m left wondering why you’d waste time with virtiol instead of simply asking how to tweak the default.

    “I just tried my Atom feed and I couldn’t even get it to load up in the browser. That certainly is not good usability…”

    Agreed. That means your aggregator is broken.

    When you request a properly-served Atom or RSS file, your desktop aggregator should launch and help you subscribe to it. Unless you use a web-based aggregator, in which case you should be clicking your autodiscovery bookmark instead of playing “hunt the feed”.

    Like

  136. Robert: Hosted services have to pick reasonable defaults for all customers. The fact that the default doesn’t suit your specific needs doesn’t mean it “sucks”.

    You know this, of course. So I’m left wondering why you’d waste time with virtiol instead of simply asking how to tweak the default.

    “I just tried my Atom feed and I couldn’t even get it to load up in the browser. That certainly is not good usability…”

    Agreed. That means your aggregator is broken.

    When you request a properly-served Atom or RSS file, your desktop aggregator should launch and help you subscribe to it. Unless you use a web-based aggregator, in which case you should be clicking your autodiscovery bookmark instead of playing “hunt the feed”.

    Like

  137. Robert: Hosted services have to pick reasonable defaults for all customers. The fact that the default doesn’t suit your specific needs doesn’t mean it “sucks”.

    You know this, of course. So I’m left wondering why you’d waste time with virtiol instead of simply asking how to tweak the default.

    “I just tried my Atom feed and I couldn’t even get it to load up in the browser. That certainly is not good usability…”

    Agreed. That means your aggregator is broken.

    When you request a properly-served Atom or RSS file, your desktop aggregator should launch and help you subscribe to it. Unless you use a web-based aggregator, in which case you should be clicking your autodiscovery bookmark instead of playing “hunt the feed”.

    Like

  138. “I never got complaints” isn’t a perfect measure of how good something is: for a while, when I was using Bloglines, I set my subscriptions to show “Summaries if Available” so I could quickly skim through, opening interesting posts in a browser tab. Since your feed didn’t have separate summaries and full content, I had to scroll past your whole posts when they were on something that didn’t interest me, but since I knew you were using a tool that wouldn’t produce more flexible RSS, I didn’t complain.

    Like

  139. “I never got complaints” isn’t a perfect measure of how good something is: for a while, when I was using Bloglines, I set my subscriptions to show “Summaries if Available” so I could quickly skim through, opening interesting posts in a browser tab. Since your feed didn’t have separate summaries and full content, I had to scroll past your whole posts when they were on something that didn’t interest me, but since I knew you were using a tool that wouldn’t produce more flexible RSS, I didn’t complain.

    Like

  140. “I never got complaints” isn’t a perfect measure of how good something is: for a while, when I was using Bloglines, I set my subscriptions to show “Summaries if Available” so I could quickly skim through, opening interesting posts in a browser tab. Since your feed didn’t have separate summaries and full content, I had to scroll past your whole posts when they were on something that didn’t interest me, but since I knew you were using a tool that wouldn’t produce more flexible RSS, I didn’t complain.

    Like

  144. Pingback: Martin’s bay of thoughts… » WordPress makes perfect use of RSS

  160. I use SharpReader, and since the switch I’ve been getting this error sporadically:

    “Error reading URL: The underlying connection was closed: The server committed an HTTP protocol violation.”

    I also run a WordPress-powered site but I have never seen this error on my own feed (mind you, I’m running WordPress on my own server, not as a hosted solution).

    Like

  161. I use SharpReader, and since the switch I’ve been getting this error sporadically:

    “Error reading URL: The underlying connection was closed: The server committed an HTTP protocol violation.”

    I also run a WordPress-powered site but I have never seen this error on my own feed (mind you, I’m running WordPress on my own server, not as a hosted solution).

    Like

  162. I use SharpReader, and since the switch I’ve been getting this error sporadically:

    “Error reading URL: The underlying connection was closed: The server committed an HTTP protocol violation.”

    I also run a WordPress-powered site but I have never seen this error on my own feed (mind you, I’m running WordPress on my own server, not as a hosted solution).

    Like

  163. The RSS isn’t broken Robert, it’s just a little different than what you’re expecting. The description is your excerpt and the content encoded is your full post. It’s done this way so you can have characters embedded that rss itself doesn’t support. It also allows you to have the rich tagging in your post that rss doesn’t necessarily support either. Just about every feed reader I’ve used recognizes it and knows what to do with it, and it does validate.

    Like

  164. The RSS isn’t broken Robert, it’s just a little different than what you’re expecting. The description is your excerpt and the content encoded is your full post. It’s done this way so you can have characters embedded that rss itself doesn’t support. It also allows you to have the rich tagging in your post that rss doesn’t necessarily support either. Just about every feed reader I’ve used recognizes it and knows what to do with it, and it does validate.

    Like

  165. The RSS isn’t broken Robert, it’s just a little different than what you’re expecting. The description is your excerpt and the content encoded is your full post. It’s done this way so you can have characters embedded that rss itself doesn’t support. It also allows you to have the rich tagging in your post that rss doesn’t necessarily support either. Just about every feed reader I’ve used recognizes it and knows what to do with it, and it does validate.

    Like

  170. Why does WordPress insist on putting the full text in tags? Dave Winer’s site has full text in tags; so isn’t that the right way to do it? I mean, come on, it’s self-evident. Drupal does not see the full text because it is lookin at the tags. Unless you go back to full text the way it use to be Robert, I will be pulling you out of my news feeds. Keep pushing WordPress

    Like

  171. Why does WordPress insist on putting the full text in tags? Dave Winer’s site has full text in tags; so isn’t that the right way to do it? I mean, come on, it’s self-evident. Drupal does not see the full text because it is lookin at the tags. Unless you go back to full text the way it use to be Robert, I will be pulling you out of my news feeds. Keep pushing WordPress

    Like

  172. Oh man, look what happened to my comment! Thanks WordPress if I wrap a word in a “less than” and a “greater than” symbol to denote a tag, the word disappears. Great.

    Here is what the post is supposed to have said:
    Why does WordPress insist on putting the full text in content:encoded tags? Dave Winer’s site has full text in description tags; so isn’t that the right way to do it? I mean, come on, it’s self-evident. Drupal does not see the full text because it is looking at the description tags. Unless you go back to full text the way it use to be Robert, I will be pulling you out of my news feeds. Keep pushing WordPress

    Like

  173. Oh man, look what happened to my comment! Thanks WordPress if I wrap a word in a “less than” and a “greater than” symbol to denote a tag, the word disappears. Great.

    Here is what the post is supposed to have said:
    Why does WordPress insist on putting the full text in content:encoded tags? Dave Winer’s site has full text in description tags; so isn’t that the right way to do it? I mean, come on, it’s self-evident. Drupal does not see the full text because it is looking at the description tags. Unless you go back to full text the way it use to be Robert, I will be pulling you out of my news feeds. Keep pushing WordPress

    Like

  176. The link for your old feed in the blob that is posted here is at http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/rss.xml, how did you get it to not cut off the description?

    My feed is at http://www.door2doortechsolutions.com/blog/wp-rss2.php

    On mine it kuts off the description after a certian number of charters, it is somewere around 300 charters with spaces. I want ot use it so i can jsut update my blog, so i can grab that feed for my web page on my business.

    Please email me back at salesdoor2doortechsolutions.com

    Greg Caulder

    Like

  177. The link for your old feed in the blob that is posted here is at http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/rss.xml, how did you get it to not cut off the description?

    My feed is at http://www.door2doortechsolutions.com/blog/wp-rss2.php

    On mine it kuts off the description after a certian number of charters, it is somewere around 300 charters with spaces. I want ot use it so i can jsut update my blog, so i can grab that feed for my web page on my business.

    Please email me back at salesdoor2doortechsolutions.com

    Greg Caulder

    Like

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  182. On mine it kuts off the description after a certian number of charters, it is somewere around 300 charters with spaces. I want ot use it so i can jsut update my blog, so i can grab that feed for my web page on my business.

    Please email me back at salesdoor2doortechsolutions.com

    Like

  183. On mine it kuts off the description after a certian number of charters, it is somewere around 300 charters with spaces. I want ot use it so i can jsut update my blog, so i can grab that feed for my web page on my business.

    Please email me back at salesdoor2doortechsolutions.com

    Like

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