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jayeff · 05-18-2007, 05:40 AM

I have a list (which needs a little updating) of RSS feeds of which I'm currently aware. Several of these are marked "check dates" as a warning that they do not appear to be being updated. One sponsor took me to task because he claimed his feeds were being updated. And we was right, but here is what I discovered.

A few sponsors are adding new posts to the end of their existing feed file. This isn't a problem if your affiliates have their feedreaders/aggregators set to read the whole of a feed each time they pull it, but especially for those pulling in several feeds, that is a grossly slow and inefficient way to proceed. So many, reasonably the majority, set to read - say - the latest 5, 10 or 20 entries. Such limits are almost certainly going to catch any new entries when feeds are being scanned once or twice a day, so that approach makes sense.

The snag is that most if not all readers don't actually identify the latest feeds. To do that, they might have to read the whole feed, which would defeat the object of the exercise. They in fact read the first # entries.

If those entries are your oldest ones, then to all practical intents and purposes, to all those people reading your feeds with limits set, you have no new posts. To prevent this possibility, you must add new entries at the top of your files...

05-18-2007, 05:40 AM
jayeff Confirmed User Join Date: May 2001 Posts: 2,944	RSS Feeds: sponsors heads up I have a list (which needs a little updating) of RSS feeds of which I'm currently aware. Several of these are marked "check dates" as a warning that they do not appear to be being updated. One sponsor took me to task because he claimed his feeds were being updated. And we was right, but here is what I discovered. A few sponsors are adding new posts to the end of their existing feed file. This isn't a problem if your affiliates have their feedreaders/aggregators set to read the whole of a feed each time they pull it, but especially for those pulling in several feeds, that is a grossly slow and inefficient way to proceed. So many, reasonably the majority, set to read - say - the latest 5, 10 or 20 entries. Such limits are almost certainly going to catch any new entries when feeds are being scanned once or twice a day, so that approach makes sense. The snag is that most if not all readers don't actually identify the latest feeds. To do that, they might have to read the whole feed, which would defeat the object of the exercise. They in fact read the first # entries. If those entries are your oldest ones, then to all practical intents and purposes, to all those people reading your feeds with limits set, you have no new posts. To prevent this possibility, you must add new entries at the top of your files...