Save Your Wordpress Feed, Two Fantastic Plugins

Posted on Monday, February 12th, 2007

It was bad enough that I have found it difficult to update this blog recently, but when I discovered that I was only giving out a partial feed I felt even worse that I couldn’t fix it. There is plenty of debate over whether feeds are better as full or partial, but I can’t stand only reading part of an article in my feed reader then having to visit the site. I subscribe to a feed so that I don’t have to visit a site, save for commenting. Still, this is a long running issue and my opinion lies on the side that full feeds are king.

Given that my own site was violating my own beliefs, I had to fix it. Since I upgraded to Wordpress 2.1 and found out that this is now intended behaviour when using the <!–more–> quicktag, though is also subject to a debate. Thankfully Ronald Heft came to the rescue and has released Full Text Feed, a plugin that exports the full article, whether you use the quicktag or not. This is now in action, so if you check my feed, you should now find the whole article available (can I take this opportunity to suggest subscribing too? I’ll be writing loads of great stuff soon!)

Not Satisfied!

Since I was upgrading the Wordpress version, changing the design and fixing the feed problem, I decided not to stop there. Now at the bottom of each feed article you should find a bit more information about the post, including copyright, links to tag on del.icio.us, search on Technorati and how many comments there are so far. I like all of this as it makes interaction with the site easier, giving more information as well as making it easier to react. This is thanks to Ozh and his Better Feed plugin. It is highly customisable and allows you to put a footer on your posts including all the stuff I mentioned above. Ironically, one of it’s features contradicts the two paragraphs above this one by allowing a ‘Read more’ link in your feed, but I turned that off pretty swiftly so as to avoid confusion.

All in all, my feed is now what I want it to be, full and loaded with extras so that you out there will read it. My thanks go to the plugin writers, let’s just hope it works!

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Comments

  1. 1February 12th, 2007 at 5:13 am

    Nyssa Says:

    Thanks for the tips. I’m not sure what my feed is like. I have neglected my feed since concentrating on my theme. But this article is definitely making me check it out lol

    Thanks again. :)


  2. 2February 13th, 2007 at 12:50 am

    Phil Says:

    Hey Nyssa, your feed looks fine to me! Then again, if you plan to upgrade your Wordpress to 2.1 and use the More tag, then you will have to decide what type of feed you want too. I’m just glad that there was a solution for me!

    Anyway, I feel bad reading your blog in a feed reader when the theme is so beautiful!


  3. 3February 13th, 2007 at 9:53 pm

    Ozh Says:

    Thanks !
    Indeed the “read more ” link option in my feed plugin is a bit ironical considering the fact i too think that partial content feeds suck, but hey, I wanted to give users a choice on the option :)


  4. 4February 14th, 2007 at 2:28 am

    Phil Says:

    Hi Ozh, thanks for dropping by. I understand why you would put in the read more link, choice is what a plugin is all about. I totally agree with your points on partial feeds too!

    Thanks for a great plugin too.


  5. 5February 16th, 2007 at 3:57 am

    Nyssa Says:

    Well, I ended up using the Better Feed plugin like you suggested. I just need to modify it a little bit.

    I will end upgrade eventually but right now, I don’t have the concentration for it, and knowing me, I’ll break something. lol That’s more or less my luck.

    Don’t feel bad about not visiting the site to read, I don’t mind at all. ;) I use RSS as well, but I tend to visit sites directly more. I just like the more personalized atmosphere. :)


  6. 6February 16th, 2007 at 2:41 pm

    Phil Says:

    Nyssa, I think you need to disable the “Read more” part of the plugin! Your last post has this at the bottom:

    (…)
    Read the rest of This Week (0 words)

    I do agree that personalised atmospheres are much nicer, but feed reading is sooo easy!


  7. 7February 16th, 2007 at 9:01 pm

    Hans Says:

    great read!

    I’m also using the plugins and it’s pretty nice


  8. 8February 17th, 2007 at 6:13 am

    Nyssa Says:

    Thanks for pointing that out. I forgot to change it in Better Feed. :D


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