The Real Blogger Status

Some Google products contain features that have limited usefulness, when applied to Blogger blogs. FeedBurner has a feature, "Password Protector", which may be useful, to newsfeed readers that support HTTP authentication. Within FeedBurner, we have the "Email Subscriptions" service - which does not support feed authentication. Your readers will be required to use newsreader or aggregator software that supports authentication to view your feed. Some Google, and non Google, services will have a problem, with a FeedBurner protected feed.

Sometimes, advice provided in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , comes too late. Telling people to avoid use of MS Word , for composing posts, is one example of "too late". But maybe this delinquency can be repaired.

Many blog owners rely upon FeedBurner, for publicising blog updates . Feed delivery in general - and FeedBurner feed delivery in particular - are all subject to problems. FeedBurner provides the "TroubleShootize" tab, with common sense diagnostics.

One blog publishing technique, discouraged by Blogger , involves "automated posting". Content created with scripts and programs , rather than by hand. Some blog owners want to make their blog part of their social networking strategy. That is a laudable goal - but the blog has to have its own distinct content , as well.

We're seeing a few reports, which involve blogs with published newsfeeds with large volume, producing intriguing varieties of symptoms, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . My Followers are not getting email updates! and My blog does not update, on my Followers blogs! and My blog can't be viewed! All that I see is the gears turning!!! All of these blog owners are publishing blogs which produce feeds, which are too large. In general, a newsfeed can be any size necessary. There are two secondary details, however, which can make a Blogger blog, publishing a large newsfeed, problematic.

One very useful FeedBurner service is the Email Distribution feature. Email Distribution is virtually a turnkey subscription management . Email Distribution has one limitation, which not everybody understands, however. FeedBurner delivers any new posts once daily, based on a chosen distribution time. Depending upon what distribution time you choose, for any FeedBurner Feed, you can have anywhere from 0 hours, to 24 hours - of delay, between publishing a post, and having that post distributed by email.

Recently in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , we've seen a few reports of blog feeds that aren't updating promptly.

Recently, we're seeing an assortment of complaints about blog feeds, either not working at all, or updating slowly. Whether presented in a browser display, in a Following Reading List / Google Reader, or in a bloglist gadget, the accuracy of the feed as displayed can be affected by a few issues. Custom feed redirection. Custom Domain redirection. Classic vs New feed URL, and Blogger vs BlogSpot / domain served feed. Feeds served by third party servers (FTP publishing). Feeds from private blogs (which don't exist). Cached feed content. Custom Feed Redirection A custom, redirected feed, redirected through FeedBurner or a similar service , will be affected by problems with the service. When you check out a problem with a redirected feed, it may be helpful to compare the redirected feed content with the non redirected feed content. Custom Domain Redirection A feed coming from a blog that's published to a custom domain will be affected by the custom domain DNS i...

In the midst of the reports about the Atom / RSS feeds in the FTP published blogs having no content, we see a second problem with feeds. Blogs published to BlogSpot / Google, with feeds redirected to FeedBurner, are seeing serious delays in the FeedBurner feed updates. The problem with the FTP published feeds started last Friday and was resolved yesterday ; the problem with the FeedBurner feeds started late last week, and is being reported today. We can compare the native blog feed ("myblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml", which redirects to a FeedBurner feed URL) with the native blog feed, non redirected ("myblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false"), and note the differences in published posts. Here's an example, taken from 3/28 . Here we see the most recent post visible in the feed. " scatterkeir.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false " (not redirected) It Is What It Is Keir Hardie's 'blog' Money For Chips Saturday, March 28, 2009 14:58 and ...