Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Feed me


Subscribers of the RSS feed for this blog have probably noticed that I've changed the settings for the feed so that only the first few lines for each post is sent, which means if you want to read the whole thing, you have to click through and read it on the blog.

The reason for the change is because I noticed my feed was being picked up and run in full by a number of scraper sites, and I didn't like the way it looked. So the move to limit the RSS feed is in an effort to tame the monster that this blog has become, and regain some control over the content.

It's too bad. I preferred to offer the full feed, and I prefer other websites that offer their full feeds. But I have a strong dislike for scraper sites. Seems the only options in the Blogger system are the full post or almost nothing at all. Feedburner offers all kinds of options and tweaks, but nothing I can find that lets me regulate the length and appearance of the posts. It'd be nice if at least a thumbnail photo could be offered, but I'm not sure how or if I can fine-tune that. If anyone knows a better solution, or other ways to stave off the scrapers, let me know.

There are advantages and disadvantages of the full feed and the truncated feed. I encourage comments from readers to help me sort those out.

2 comments:

  1. WK, sorry this has happened to you. You might want to consider tynt or fairshare. It doesn't prevent your content from being stolen, of course. But at least you're aware of it when it happens. Then it's just a matter of finding out who the perpetrators are so you know where to send the DMCA notice.

    It happens a lot to food bloggers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. doh, you better make that first line really descriptive so I click over!

    ReplyDelete

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