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abacquer



Joined: 22 Mar 2004
Posts: 193

PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 2:12 pm    Post subject: Extra Pings? Reply with quote

People who use bloglines to track my blog have been complaining over the last couple weeks or so that BlogLines is regularly reporting that my blog has a new articles, but when they click the link in bloglines there are no articles because I haven't actually updated my blog.

I've noticed this behavior myself, but I'm not seeing it in any other blogharbor blogs.

Is my blog sending out pings when it shouldn't be?
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-- Abacquer, A.K.A. Chuck Seggelin
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john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 7:16 pm    Post subject: Re: Extra Pings? Reply with quote

Is my blog sending out pings when it shouldn't be?

No, it is not.

We made a change last week to the way the RSS feeds work. Previously, your RSS feed would display the full text of your article regardless of whether you used an Excerpt or summary when you posted. Now, the RSS feed "respects" your summaries; if the article had an Excerpt, then the Excerpt is what will appear in your RSS feed.

This change caused some RSS aggregators to think your blog had been updated when it had not, the content of the RSS feed had changed however.
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abacquer



Joined: 22 Mar 2004
Posts: 193

PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 9:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well okay, does that mean it's going to stop saying that my blog has new articles when it doesn't? It did it twice today.
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john
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Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 10:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well okay, does that mean it's going to stop saying that my blog has new articles when it doesn't? It did it twice today.

We've neither rebroadcasted pings nor updated the RSS feed format today, so I can't see how this would be related to anything we are doing.

We scan Technorati, Pubsub, and other similar types of services for updates to our BlogHarbor weblogs. Often, those services "hiccup" and rebroadcast changes from hours or even days ago. It may be possible that Bloglines is picking up a "hiccup" from another service and marking blogs as being updated when they have in fact not changed at all.

I'll add some BlogHarbor weblogs to my Bloglines account to see if I can figure out anything.
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abacquer



Joined: 22 Mar 2004
Posts: 193

PostPosted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 6:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

As I noted, it doesn't seem to be hitting other blogharbor blogs, just mine. It's done it multiple times today. Very annoying.

Can't imagine why my blog is being singled out in this way. Sad
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abacquer



Joined: 22 Mar 2004
Posts: 193

PostPosted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 3:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

What does "last build date" refer to in the RSS feed? Does this signify that my blog changed at that time?

Code:
<lastBuildDate>Thu, 24 Mar 2005 02:33:25 -0500</lastBuildDate>

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abacquer



Joined: 22 Mar 2004
Posts: 193

PostPosted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 3:44 am    Post subject: Re: Extra Pings? Reply with quote

john wrote:
We made a change last week to the way the RSS feeds work. Previously, your RSS feed would display the full text of your article regardless of whether you used an Excerpt or summary when you posted. Now, the RSS feed "respects" your summaries; if the article had an Excerpt, then the Excerpt is what will appear in your RSS feed.


Not to be a whiny jerk, but for the record, I liked it better the way it was. I didn't want excerpts in my RSS feed. I just wanted them on my main page.

Is there any way to have excerpts on my blog but NOT in my feed?
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john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 3:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

lastBuildDate is the date that the RSS feed was generated. All of our feeds are generated dynamically at the time they are requested, so list the current time.

This is not an improper way to implement lastBuildDate, and it does not seem to cause any problems with any of our blogs in Bloglines or other aggregators.

Are you by chance sending your own "pings" by using a blogging client or some other service like pingomatic? Have you asked Bloglines support what might be causing this issue?
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john
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Joined: 16 Mar 2004
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 3:54 am    Post subject: Re: Extra Pings? Reply with quote

Is there any way to have excerpts on my blog but NOT in my feed?

Not at this time, though we'll definitely note your request...
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abacquer



Joined: 22 Mar 2004
Posts: 193

PostPosted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 4:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

john wrote:
Are you by chance sending your own "pings" by using a blogging client or some other service like pingomatic? Have you asked Bloglines support what might be causing this issue?


If I am I'm not aware of it. Very Happy

I haven't asked the bloglines folks yet... that's probably what I'll do next. It is happening multiple times a day... they report me as having 1 new article, but then when I click Unbecoming Levity in the feeds, nothing comes up.
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DrMomentum
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 7:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The syndication feed and the front page exist for two completely different purposes; they are two different contexts. Excerpt settings on the front page allow you to manage the look of your front page. In syndication, the idea of experts may seem equivalent, but it isn't, because it has actual content implications.

It's similar to the idea of having only so much room on the front page of your newspaper, so you send people off to page 23 to read the rest of the story. Makes perfect sents in that ocntext. Now, if you reprinted the story in a magazine or on the web, would you automatically assume that the reader needed to be sent off to another page after you'd exceeded the column inches that appeared on the front page of the original story? No - you're looking at a new context to which that front-page-management issue no longer applies.

Tying together two similarly named but unrelated contexts is very confusing.
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 7:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That last sentence of my first paragraph ought to read: "In syndication, the idea of excerpts may seem equivalent, but it isn't, because it has actual content implications. "
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DrMomentum
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 7:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wow - I ought to preview my messages before I send them. The typos exceed my usual pre-caffeine morning level.

In any case, hopefully you get the idea. It makes sense to me that BlogHarbor wants to give its authors flexibility, but just because someone wants to syndicate the full content of their entries shouldn't disqualify them from managing the density of their front page.
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john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 7:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

DrMomentum wrote:
It makes sense to me that BlogHarbor wants to give its authors flexibility, but just because someone wants to syndicate the full content of their entries shouldn't disqualify them from managing the density of their front page.


Points well taken, we appreciate your sharing them with us and we do not necessarily disagree with any of them.

The fact is that until we made this change, there was simply no way to set your RSS feed to syndicate anything but the full article. At least we now have a means to allow those of you - and there are quite a few as we have heard a lot of feedback on this issue - who want to have an RSS feed which does not contain full articles a means to do so.

Our service will always be a work in progress, and we do hear you on this issue...
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abacquer



Joined: 22 Mar 2004
Posts: 193

PostPosted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 9:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

john wrote:
<tt>lastBuildDate</tt> is the date that the RSS feed was generated. All of our feeds are generated dynamically at the time they are requested, so list the current time.

This is not an improper way to implement <tt>lastBuildDate</tt>, and it does not seem to cause any problems with any of our blogs in Bloglines or other aggregators.


I don't doubt you John, you've always been good to me! Smile I just asked because I noticed it was different.

I hit my bloglines feeds this morning at about 4 AM, and saved my current RSS feed. It had a LastBuildDate of today at 3:35 AM. Then at 8 AM when I checked again, bloglines claimed that my blog had been updated at 7:47 AM, which is not true, at least as far as I can tell. So I saved out my RSS feed again, and ran a diff tool on the two feeds. The only thing different between them was the LastBuildDate. Now it is set to today at 7:33 AM. The only other thing that happened on my blog is a comment was posted at 7:30 AM. That is not reflected in the RSS feed of course.

I don't believe LastBuildDate is the problem, as the same field on other BlogHarbor blog feeds seems to be changing regularly, but not causing them to "update" in BlogLines. So something else must be going on. I'm going to contact bloglines as you suggest... I don't know if they keep a record of the pings they receive. Maybe they can say where the notification that my blog updated at 7:47 AM came from.

Thanks for your help!
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