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A Deleted Post Affects The Blog Posts Feed

We've seen a few reports in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue, mentioning mysteriously resurrected posts, appearing in email or on peoples desktop displays.

When investigated, the blog owner will observe that a new post, which had been originally published after the one mysteriously appearing, was recently deleted. Further investigation shows that the mysterious post, that just re appeared, was the 26th most recently published post.

With those two details determined, we see that the mystery involves the blog posts feed, and the deletion of a post in the feed.

The blog posts newsfeed contains the 25 most recently published posts.

At any given time, the normal blog posts newsfeed contains the most recently published 25 posts. If one of the 25 posts in the posts feed is deleted, the feed is rebuilt - and will now include the (previously) sequenced 26th post.

If a post from the 25 is deleted, the 26th post becomes the 25th.

With a post present in the feed, which was not there earlier, that post becomes newly visible. That post is then distributed, in a desktop display or in email - because its new appearance is treated as if it was just published.

It's quite simple. Email distribution detects when the feed has changed - and any item now in the feed, that was not previously there, is treated as a new item that needs to be distributed. Anybody subscribed to the feed gets the "new" post, in their feed.

It's mysterious - but obvious - when you see the connection.

Comments

Trisha Ray said…
This explains it - random posts were being sent to my email list - and I hadn't touched them in over a year! I COULDN'T figure it out. Thank you!
Gloria Sinclair said…
Thank you for this info. But, I need to know how I can delete an old post without triggering a notification that something new is posted when in fact it isn't.
Nitecruzr said…
Thanks for the feedback and question, Gloria - and welcome to Nitecruzr Dot Net.

Unfortunately, I don't have a real solution for this. I'll do some reading, and see if anything comes to mind.

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