RSS Feed Now Showing ‘Summary’ Only
This post will serve as an official notice to all who are subscribed to my blog, either through an RSS Reader or by Email.
It is with great regret and sadness that I have changed the RSS feed to only show a summary, or excerpt, of posts rather than the entire post content. This means that rather than being able to view and read a new blog post from your favorite RSS Reader or by email, you will now have to actually come here to the blog to read new posts in their entirety.
Why Have I Done This?
Honestly, this decision was not made lightly. If you’ve been subscribed for more than a few weeks, you will know that all posts were shown in their entirety on the feed. I originally started this blog that way, and I truly wanted to keep it that way.
Sadly, it had gotten to a point where I could no longer jeopardize my blog and its content by keeping the feed as it was, so I was left with no choice but to change it.
You see, out there in the great distance of the internet, there lies a few dishonest, unethical people who like to outright steal legitimate blogger’s RSS feeds and use the content as their own on their blogs. Through plug-ins or other methods, the content from the feed can be published to a WordPress blog just as a normal blog post.
Their blogs, if you even want to call them that, are basically the result of multiple RSS feeds being scraped for content. These scraper/farming blogs are completely worthless and usually never rank in search engines.
The problem, however, is that my blog posts are showing up on sites like this, sometimes instantly after I publish a new post. This bugs me, alot.
I have links pointing to my site and blog that I DO NOT want on those kinds of sites. If a search engine like Google were to find my scraped content and index it, I can only imagine the consequences. Perhaps nothing bad will happen and Google would deem those sites useless like everybody else does, but really, why chance it? I can’t take the risk.
I realize this is a huge if, but I do not want to jeopardize my blog and everything I’ve worked so hard on to be penalized based on the actions of an unscrupulous few.
What This Means for You
I fully realize the inconvenience this puts on all of you, and I sincerely apologize. Believe me, I would prefer to keep the full content shown in the RSS feed. As a reader of many other blogs in the industry, I prefer to read entire posts through email.
I guess what I’m saying is, I understand the hassle. Really, I do.
From now on, if you want to read the entire post with all content included, you’ll be required to visit the actual post page. A link is included to make this step convenient for you, however.
There’s a slight chance I could change it back to showing full posts. More on this later.
Previous Steps I’ve Taken to Avoid This
Implementing an RSS Footer
If you notice on the feed, I have a footer in place that links to the home page, the blog’s home page, and the page where the specific post is located. I implemented this RSS Footer a long while back to serve a few purposes.
- Provide links to you for quicker access to my site and blog.
- “Thank” you for being a reader. I really do appreciate the support.
- If someone did steal my feed and use my content as their own, the footer would be included, making it obvious that my content was stolen.
Blocking Specific IP Addresses
A neat little tool I get with my web hosting is an IP Blocker. It comes handy when I need to block certain people for spamming or other mischief, based on their IP address. This can also be done through your .htaccess file if you don’t have an IP Blocker available.
Since the beginning, I have blocked the IP addresses of those I’ve known to rip my RSS feed and blatantly steal my content and use it as their own. This is usually done when I see that it becomes a habitual act. Comments in the form of Trackbacks from the offending sites show up in the comments waiting to be moderated, so if I see multiple Trackbacks originating from the same site, I block them so they can no longer pull my feed and steal my content.
What Now?
What will happen now is that whenever a scraper/farming blog does steal my content using the RSS feed, they will only get a short summary of the post, along with the RSS Footer attached.
My goal in doing this is that it will deter offenders (I’m not holding my breath), and that it will also keep my content in its entirety along with any links off of these types of sites (This I know is true).
Now that this is said and done, I want you to chime in and let me know what you think. I would appreciate any feedback or experience you can provide in how to deal with this issue, and if you can answer any or all of the questions below, I would greatly appreciate the help and support.
1. Will this have an impact on whether or not you read my blog? Be honest, please!
2. Do you agree with my decision based on the circumstances I presented, or do you feel I’m being too irrational?
3. Could you provide any cold-hard evidence to suggest that this isn’t necessary and that it is ‘OK’ to keep full posts in the feed?
I’m really curious to see who has an answer to that last question. Seriously, if you can provide evidence to show that this move isn’t necessary and that I’m just being silly about this whole thing, I’m all for changing the feed back to showing full posts.
Okay, let me know below in the comments, and thanks again for being a reader!
