Sunday, May 24, 2009

Be aware of this technical issue!


I know this is a food blog, not a technical one! But thought of informing my fellow bloggers so that they would be aware of this small issue if they aren't already and save them from the situation I had to face.

After few months into this blogging world I was fortunate enough to have known sincere fellow bloggers who always drop by my blog and post lovely words of appreciation/suggestions and make their presence felt. Well it makes my day! But few days before, I noticed that my blog traffic suddenly reduced and suddenly I seemed to have lost contact with my fellow bloggers who always dropped in and left their valuable comments whenever I posted something. I seemed to be missing something. But what? Everything seemed to be working in perfect order to me! Pondering over the issue made me doubt that somehow my friends weren't getting my updates. I checked with few fellow bloggers who responded promptly by saying that they were indeed not able to view my updates on their dashboard and some even said that my blog kept closing and going blank whenever they tried to visit. I even checked for updates by becoming a follower of my own blog! There werent any.As one of my fellow blogger suggested I too thought that Google Reader was getting delayed in posting the updates as it happens sometimes. Your blog updates may be visible only after a day!

But mine exceeded more than two days and still the updates weren't visible. Now I doubted I had a serious problem in my hands which I guessed if left unnoticed would even threaten the very existence of my blog. I searched google for help and came upon this link which suggested that the problem could be with the blog feed. Wow! I caught the culprit!

Let me explain in simple terms for you. Blog feed is something with the help of which your followers and subscribers get your blog updates. The Google Reader uses this feed to display your updates which is visible from all bloggers dashboard. If you have not created a customized feed, your default blog feed will be at http://name of your blog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default which your Google reader fetches to show your updates. I had created a customized feed using Feed Burner and used this feed instead of default blog feed. Hence my Google Reader was fetching my customized feed instead of the default blog feed to show my blog updates to all my followers and subscribers. If you want to know more info on how to do this you may check out link1 and link2.

But I hadn't noticed an important point when I created this feed-the maximum feed size. If you write lengthy posts the size of your feed may exceed 512K limit and then it would stop indexing and updating. This was what exactly happened in my case! To solve this issue I came across the following link that helped me reducing my feed size. I used Feed Validator to check if my feed was valid. I then updated my new customized feed in Settings->Site Feed->Post Feed Redirect URL to use this feed instead of my default blog feed. And in a few hours Google Reader picked up the new feed and started displaying my updates! It took me more than half a day to solve this issue but it was worth it. Right now my blog is up and running and I would like to specially thank the following fellow bloggers who responded quickly to my queries which helped me catch the culprit- Aruna, Ramya, Vrinda, Shabs, Vineela, Lena, Dhanya & Pooja. Thanks a lot friends..I owe it to you :)

23 comments:

Renus Kitchen said...

very important info, will bookmark this page for reference

Pooja said...

Thanks Renu :)

VineelaSiva said...

Thank u for the valueable information pooja.Me too will bookmark this.

Lena Jayadev said...

Pooja..Its great that you included it as a post. and thanks for including my name...i knw how much you where tensed on that day...it can happen to anyone..you did a great job.. :)

Pooja said...

Important and useful info...Saved this link.....

Sailaja Damodaran said...

thanks for the information

Priya Suresh said...

Very informative post pooja, definitely helpful for many of us!

Valarmathi Sanjeev said...

Useful information and very important too. Me too bookmarked.

Parita said...

Thank you dear..thats really very very helpful info..i too need to check my feed as sometimes my updates are available in google reader only after a day :(

Gita Jaishankar said...

Thank you very much for such a valuable information Pooja....this is going to be very useful to everybody...I have bookmarked your page for future reference...thanks dear :)

Pooja said...

Thanks Vineela, Lena, Pooja, Sailaja, Priya, Valar, Parita and Gita for your lovely words. Do check your feeds for updates regularly.

Kalyani said...

thanks for this imp. info ... Will be bookmarked & is very useful in future ....

Seena said...

Loved your mushroom curry, and it is good you wrote all these, will help others, definitely. I was away for five days, so couldn't find this issue..

dsdsds said...

Bravo pooja... its a big work i should say... i wasnt aware of it.. thanks a lot for the information.. Will bookmark it for future reference

Pooja said...

No prob Seena :)
Sure Kalyani. Thanks Hema..would be helpful in case you need to check out :)

lubnakarim06 said...

Oh wow.....healthy and droolworthy curry...Bookmarking the issue for futire reference.....

Pooja said...

Hi Vincent thanks for dropping by. I am a member of Petichef and I have added my blog too. Please tell me if there is anything else to be done.

Ann said...

Pooja,
I had the same problem till yesterday but I still dont know how it got fixed.Padma had sent this link today to me. Glad I could get help here, gonna fix the way you said to avoid future mess! :) Thanks for sharing this info with us :)

Pooja said...

Happy to hear that the prob got fixed Ann! I was wondering on looking at the updates how many of your posts appeared all at once in my Reader! And everything says Posted by Ann 11 hours ago! May be you need to fix it too. Glad that this could be of help :)

Rahin said...

hi pooja , i have tried to fix the problem with my feeds using your tips , since u have already subcribed to it , plz lemme know if its working , thanks a ton , rahin

Pooja said...

Your updates are visible in my Reader Rahin, even if I subscribe using your blog link which many of the readers have done before. Guess they would be able to view your updates from now on. You have done a great job :D

Nivedita Thadani said...

HI
First time here,
Thanks a lot for the information!! It really helps.

Shabs.. said...

Hey pooja, thanks....And you know what, among the names of the fellow bloggers u mentioned at the end, I am also there!!!I used be in touch and we used to pass comments alot those days....those initial days..then commenting took up all my time, then i started just looking and enjoying, which just takes half the time:)....Thanks alot for this info, Let me see if it works, I have updated my feed now...
Love,
Shabs