The Blog Herald and Full Feeds
26. Mar, 2008 
3 Comments - Leave your comment
Today I read my first ever WordPress Wednesday in my feed reader.
Blog Herald Partial Feed
It’s sort of my Wednesday tradition. I wait for Lorelle to publish, I head over to the Blog Herald, and I read over the latest news. But today I opened up Google Reader, clicked on the post, and it was ALL there. No “read more”, no teaser — the whole shebang.
I didn’t quite know what to do. I was floored. And perhaps it happened because of a few outspoken Blog Herald readers?
When Jonathan Bailey wrote why not to switch to partial feeds, several readers cried foul.
The article mentioned:
The second exception [to sites having full feeds] would be sites, such as the Blog Herald itself, that have used partial feeds for a very long time. In those cases, the audience has been built using partial feeds and the readers have shown that they don’t mind.
But the readers had a different take, including our very own reader Sue.
Hope I’m not being inappropriate, but, I DO mind. Every time I have to click on your partial feed to open the whole post, it annoys me.
Jonathan obviously had no say in whether the Blog Herald turned on full feeds or not, but the readers sure let him have it, some telling him to practice what he preaches.
I challenged the Blog Herald twice to turn on full feeds.
Just one day after Jonathan’s post, David Peralty wrote on the Blog Herald about creating barriers between your readers.
Again, the call to turn on full feeds was mentioned:
If I enjoy your blog, and I want to subscribe, then you are gaining access to a piece of my mindshare. If you publish partial feeds, I will no doubt unsubscribe.
In my second challenge, I weighed in:
Two articles in as many days discuss having full feeds. Any chance of Blog Herald trying this out? I’m sure your readers would love it.
David responded, saying that an attempt at full feeds on Blog Herald was being made, but won’t be made complete until WordPress 2.5′s release.
I was quite pleased with David’s response. So imagine my surprise today when I was able to read WordPress Wednesday for the first time in my feed reader. What bliss!
I hope I’m not jumping the gun here, as David said some posts will still have issues, but I’d like to personally thank Blog Herald for turning on full feeds. Hopefully it works out for you all over there. And thank you for listening to your readers.
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YAY! *does the happy dance* Good for them
I am glad you like it. We never had partial feeds selected on Blog Herald. The issue arrises from our custom theme. It automatically inserts the Read More tag in posts, which we all know also effects the RSS feed. I have used one of the “Full feed” plugins that is supposed to help ignore the Read More tag.
In WordPress 2.5, the read more tag won’t interfere with our RSS feed at all, and as such, Full feeds for everyone!
We at Splashpress Media love full feeds and think the value is much higher than the risk. So we are glad people spoke up.
Also, feel free to let us know if you notice any other nagging issues. We want the sites to be as useable as possible.
Interesting times!