STARTING 4/8/17: Six Word Saturday is now being hosted by the lovely Debbie at Travel With Intent.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

A brief affair

On Saturday, I finally set up Feedburner on this blog. I know next to nothing about it but since I'm mildly interested insanely obsessed with who is visiting, this seemed like the best way to measure people using RSS readers or other feeds. (As opposed to Google Analytics for actual site visitors, which is awesomeness).

Setup was simple and almost immediately it seemed to be responding. Except for one small thing - I don't subscribe to my own feed so I didn't really know what the messages looked like when they went out. Until I spotted my feed in Joe's reader. It looked like this:







Post title and an ad, no content. Great. Especially once it prompted this comment yesterday from Lora:

your feed is kinda effed up. in my google reader your feed is totally empty (not even partial) except for ads about jesus. it's happened for the past ten posts or so.

true story.
She claims to be amused by my Jesus ads. I'm just not amused at Feedburner.

My preference is to do the "short" feed. This probably annoys some people but I've noticed that for me personally, I'm way less likely to comment if I can read the whole post in my Google reader. Pure laziness on my part. So that's why I go with the short feed.

My preference is definitely not to send out an "advertisement only" feed. So I apologize for the nuttiness this week if anyone (besides Lora the Observant) noticed and I've broken up with Feedburner after less than 4 days. If someone can clue me in on what I'm doing wrong (or if it's their fault, maybe they can fix it or at least respond to the related messages in their Google group?), I may rekindle the old flame.

Or just sit around and make bad jokes. That's probably more my style anyways.

23 comments:

Sass said...

Heck, I can't even figure out my Google Reader. There, I said it.

I'm a tool.

Hey, I was going to ask you about switching to your own domain name...

Good choice? Easy to do?

Sassy Britches said...

Pttthtt. I tried it for about a day in January. I couldn't figure out the html for making the whole thing portable should I ever leave (or something), so I got out. Help!

Lora said...

I have to admit, I miss my daily Jesus today, but I liked your feed better.

TMC said...

I'm so clueless I don't even know what the problem is. Doesn't it show your full post in GR if you select "Full" in the Allow Blog Feeds section? Oh dear... I guess I don't know what my feed looks like. Hey thanks for adding something else to my to-be-worried-about list. :)

mo.stoneskin said...

So that's where I can take my aggressive puppy!

I was curious, do people ever click on the adds?

blognut said...

Yeah, I don't have a clue. I'm no help.

I use stat counter to stalk my blog lurkers and one day I'm going to spam all of them if they don't start leaving me a comment at least once a week. Fair? Maybe not, but I swear I'm going to do it.

Grand Pooba said...

Well I think Jesus needs to pay you now for doing so much advertising for him!

Anonymous said...

Pu-leaze, I couldn't help you there. My brother help me set mine up and I still don't know what's going on.

Ryan Ashley Scott said...

Oh my holy cow, Cate. There I go again, shooting snot out of my nose. I'm have to remember to read with my mouth open.. and keep tissues handy. Those are freaking hilarious! I'm going to go read them again just so I can laugh some more. Hello tissues.

Ryan Ashley Scott said...

Yes. Yes, it's still just as funny the fifth time over. Sprinkles thinks I'm nuts.

Donnetta said...

I'm a doofus. No help here. Sorry. :(

Annelie said...

That long vs. short feed logic might sound like it makes sense, but I don't know about that... I always read my bloggies in my reader, and then I separately open the blog and leave a comment. The short read stuff is so not my cup of tea.
But clearly you have a point.

Sorry Feedburner is giving you a hard time. I barely have a clue what it even is, and am no help at all, but I did enjoy those title-add-nothing else posts the last few days :D

Anonymous said...

I have no idea what any of that means. Yeay? Boo?! Hope it works out ......?

Call Me Cate said...

Sass - I found it pretty easy to switch to a domain but then that's the kind of thing I do for a living. I think if you buy through Blogger they make it super simple (not sure what they charge). I'm glad I did it though!

Sassy Britches - I wasn't even doing anything fancy with the HTML. It just decided "your content sucks really bad, we refuse to broadcast it!"

Lora - I'm sure Jesus still loves you for the new low price of $14.95.

TMC - mine does the "full" or "short" properly as long as I don't use the Feedburner. Your feed looks fine, don't add it to your worry-list.

mo.stoneskin - I've made a total of $3.88 in ads on this blog. Not even enough to pay for the domain name. I try to click on other blogs when I see something of interest.

blognut - you are totally within your rights to spam them. Or throw rocks at their cars if that's more your kind of thing.

Grand Pooba - my blog seems to have a mind of its own. It loves Jesus so much it's willing to advertise him gratis!

Mrs Cooper - hmm, maybe I need to bribe your brother for help!

RAS - maybe instead of Ryan Ashley Stupid you should be Ryan Ashley Snot! And don't you love how even my ads know about Angry Neighbor enough to reference Aggressive Puppy?

Donnetta - I would never call you a doofus. Though I did once have a cat named Dufus. The mother named him - and spelled it wrong.

Snarky A - I'm always torn on the feed. But when I read blogs from the Blogger dashboard, there was no choice but to open them to read. And then I left lots of comments. But I also lost track of what I had read or left for later so I moved to Reader. And then I've slowed down with leaving comments. Maybe I'll take a poll. Thanks for your input though!

Call Me Cate said...

SF - you snuck in. But that's why I love you. You may have no idea what I'm babbling about but you're always supportive and it's always his thought.

Betty said...

I just joined feedburner too and am no wiser than you are. Still trying to get figure it out. But I like your jokes about it. Keep them coming... :)

Juliet Colors said...

I've been using FB for a while and never had a problem except for a few occasions when it got confused about the number of subscribers I have. (That number is back to normal today, fwiw.) But I don't have ads on my site and I use the full setting for the feed. I'm with Snarky A. on that. I read most everything in G-Reader, then open the post to see/leave comments.

Btw, I never saw any ads in your feed, but G-Reader was for a while having trouble registering when you had a new post. I figured that problem had something to do with the adjustment to your new domain name. But maybe that was just FB screwing with you. I think they have technical support...

Tiffany said...

I know squat nada about feed burner. Hope you get it worked out.

Please stop by my blog, Eat at Home and leave a comment today. Each comment is worth $1 for the Global Food Crisis fund and all you have to do is comment.

Call Me Cate said...

Betty - I keep hoping the next person to comment will have the answers. Not that I don't <3 you all, but SOMEONE MUST HAVE ANSWERS!!!

Juliet - I can't explain how much it aggravates me to have tech issues. I *do* this stuff for a living. It's just that I'm used to programming it myself so I have total control. Also, FB ignores tech support requests so far.

Tiffany - I commented AND tweeted it for you. Awesome cause and I hope you reach your 100-comment goal!

Sarah said...

Too much stuff. You broke my brain. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Hahaha!

All I do to track is the feedjit and the blog frog. That should be plenty! ;)

Call Me Cate said...

Sarah - is it possible your brain may have already been broken?

Yaya - thank you! Feedjit is the other one I wanted to check and couldn't remember it. You rock!

Ryan Ashley Scott said...

Goodness me, it's still making me laugh. Note to self (for the hundredth time!): do not drink coffee and read. I could maybe write a post about all my possible names. Thanks for the Fodder. :)