Okay, I have some questions for y’all.
First, why do you truncate your blog’s feed? It seems to be the vast majority of the “personal” bloggers I read truncate their feeds, while the majority of the business bloggers use a full feed. I’ve seen lots of debates on which is better, but I’m curious as to why YOU do it.
Care to take part in my highly scientific poll on the matter? If you have more to say, you can always leave a comment, too!
And for those of you simply reading feeds instead of publishing them, what do you think? Does it matter to you whether the author publishes the full post or just a snippet?
FWIW, I leave the full feed simply because that’s what I prefer when I’m reading. I’ve had some issues with scraping, and had one site shut down for using my content without attribution, but now that I’ve figured out how to add an attribution tag through feedburner that says “This item is from Postcards from the Mothership” I haven’t had any problems.
And now, a more technical question for the Web savvy among you. In the feed reader, I notice that some blog titles have an avatar or icon beside them. Occasionally, this even appears beside the URL in the address bar or beside my favourites in IE.
How do you do that? How do you get your little icony avatar thing to be picked up by the feed readers?
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Ooohhh. Nice poll gadget!
I leave my feeds whole because I prefer to read them that way. When I’m pressed for time (when am I not?) I’m less likely to click through. However, if I’ve already clicked through, I’m more likely to comment. I haven’t had issues with scraping because nobody reads me anyway!
Thanks for the tip about using attribution tags through Feedburner.
To get an icon beside the URL in your browser (for those browsers that support this feature) you need to have the following code in the HEAD section of your pages:
The filename MUST be favicon.ico
You can make your own .ico file from webistes such as this:
http://www.htmlkit.com/services/favicon/
(I don’t endorse this site, I’m showing it as an example.)
I can’t wait to learn how to do the other stuff you asked!
I thought I had one, but it doesn’t show for me. It used to. Hmm. Does it show for you?
I have a favicon which appears next to my url in a browser but I don’t know how to get it to appear in a feed reader. I’ll be interested to see what the answer is.
Lee, you’re a rockstar, you know that? Thanks SO much! I’ll try it whenever I get a spare minute – okay, hour.
Andrea, I see your favicon (is that what it’s officially called then? So much less bulky than “little avatar dohicky-mcgadget”, which is what I’ve been calling it to date) is visible in the URL window when I visit your blog, but no longer through Bloglines – at least, not on my account.
Can’t help you because I do full feeds. It’s absolutely what I prefer to read myself. I then only click through when I’m going to comment. The partial feeds are a drag and I often times don’t read them unless they’re one of my favorite bloggers.
Lee, it worked!! Thanks a million! (Well, it worked in the address bar, anyway. We’ll see if it updates to the feed readers.)
Now I’m not sure if I like the favicon, but at least I know how to do it and I can play with the image later.
I publish a full feed because that’s what I prefer reading. Some of the blogs that I read have light text on a dark background which I find really difficult to get through. I read them in the feed reader and then click through to comment.
I switched to the partial feed after bitacle scraped me – and I was kicking myself for not doing it sooner because it really is just creepy to see your whole blog, pics and all, on some weird Spanish site. Since the whole debacle died down, I’ve felt guilty about it sometimes (because it’s definitely convenient to be able to read the whole feed) – but it’s hard to give up the traffic. ;(
I don’t like partial feeds. I am on dial up (the joys of living in the sticks) so to have to load the same post twice is a real pain in the rear.
I really wish I knew what on earth you are talking about.
really. I have no clue.
oh. And it makes me feel like I SHOULD be doing something that I am not.
Oh. I don’t think the favicon has any impact on feed readers…. My husband rolls his own RSS feed and managed to squeeze an image into it… but I don’t know how to do it with the off the shelf variety.
I used to publish full feeds, but after Bitacle started stealing my feeds (and making them searchable — when I don’t even allow robots and engines to search my blog, for anonymity purposes) I truncated them.
I’m sure I’ve lost readers over it, but I would prefer to control access to my content, and it made me mad that Bitacle would generate ad revenue from MY content.
I’m still mad even though Bitacle’s gone. Grr.
I pay no attention to this, because for me, it’s not about stuff like that. (snerk!) Mine is whatever it defaulted to.
But, I like it when people don’t publish full feeds, because then I don’t get to be lazy. Full feeds get read in Bloglines, and I only click through when I’m compelled to comment – not often anyway. Full feeds in Bloglines have allowed me to amass over 70 subscriptions (again – once I’d cut myself down to 35, but it’s climbed back up there). That click-through happens less and less often, and I do forget how nice it is to read blogs on their own page. There’s nothing so tantalizing as one line from Keri Smith, that leads me over to her online world, where I’ll then spend hours. But, I’m also considering that I like that site because…well, what I say next.
I also like full feeds, because then I don’t have to look at annoying advertising, or other stupid shit all over some peoples blogs. I just want the words and pictures – not the weather (checking to make sure you don’t have that silly weather thing…) or avatars or tickers or linky cause things I don’t want to clutter my head with. I’m all about cutting down on the visual noise on my screen, and sometimes the feed reader is a useful tool.
I dread the day when I open up a book and see that someone has used those beautiful blank margins as sidebars.
I use a short feed because I also got scraped by bitacle and I’d like to avoid that happening again. Also, I like to see the visitors.
That said, full feeds are pretty convenient for all the reasons people have already said. Like B&P, I sometimes feel guilty for not switching back to the full feed.
No idea about the favicon thing…
One thing I do like about the partial feed (I just remembered) is that I can edit a recent post (or add labels to an old one) and it won’t reappear in Bloglines unless I’ve changed something in the first few sentences.