I’m going to try using summaries in my feeds for a while. I plan to track the stats and see if it matters in my traffic count.
I sort of resent it when I have to click through from my RSS reader to get the rest of a post. But I’m doing it to you anyway. It’s an act of desperation.
OK. Maybe I’m not actually desperate. I just want to try it out and see if it makes any difference. Will I lose visits? Will my visits increase?
Will YOU hate it or not even notice? If you hate it (or love it) (or don’t give a fig) (or whatever) I’d like to know. Thank you. Thank you.
I’ll always click through, Virginia.
I detest partial feeds and tend to delete these blogs from my list unless they are exceptional (and very few are THAT exceptional).
Thanks for letting me know what you think, even though the results are mixed.
The way it came out in my RSS Reader (NetNewsWire) there’s no ‘read more . . .’ automatically included, which is confusing. Back to trying to figure that part out.
Brenda, hang in there a while, it may not stay this way.
You’re a nice person, Virginia. I would have told Brenda to not let the door hit her in the back on her way out.
But then, I’m not a nice person.
Shelleys last blog post.. Oh, look. It’s not just us Semantic Web Dweebs who noticed.
I understand her feelings. I hate having to click through to read the full post myself. But I had a spike in the stats yesterday, which may have been from the feed change or may have been from a link in a popular article on BlogHer. Too soon to tell.
My stats have continued to go up since I switched to short feed, so I think people who like the blog will still visit. I hate it to, but I was spending hours every week dealing with scrapers. For me, I’d never go back.
I do wish I knew how to stop the feed where I wanted to though. If you get that figured out, I’ll hire you to do it on my blog (seriously!).
Kalyns last blog post.. Recipe for Phase One Turkey Meatballs with Romano Cheese and Herbs
Kalyn, I looked at one of my Blogger blogs. It looks like you can choose only between the first paragraph or the first 255 characters, whichever is shorter. Writing a strong hook in the first paragraph seems like the only option.
I’m using WordPress here, which allows me to write a custom summary, but I can’t figure out how to include a ‘ continued . . .’ link to the rest of a post that hasn’t been published yet.
Virginia, you can modify the feed template to add a continued for the summary element. You’d have to copy the file for when you upgrade, but the feed templates rarely change.
There’s probably a way to make the mod using a plug-in, but you know I’ve been away from WP so long now, I haven’t a clue what the new architecture is like.
Shelleys last blog post.. Web Stats