There are a lot of blogs that I read regularly. In order to stay on top of them, I’ve come to embrace RSS feeds. Years ago I used to simply bookmark the URLs and visit all the blogs one by one. With the burgeoning blogs I read though, that’s a very time-consuming undertaking, so I very much prefer to read via RSS feed readers.
What are RSS Feeds?
RSS feeds are a means to syndicate updated information from various websites or blogs. This means that instead of visiting every single blog to check for updates, I can sit down with my mug of tea, while Feedly aggregates all the updates in one feed. I then only need to open up an app for RSS Feeds on my iPad (I use Newsify, occasionally Feedly‘s official app) while lounging on my balcony.
Perks of RSS Feeds
Saves Time and Data
The main reason I like RSS feeds is that they save time. I can hop from one blog post to the next without having to load new websites. This is particularly great when I’m on the move and leeching off my mobile data plan. My 4GB are precious, alright! I also save time because I don’t end up visiting blogs that don’t have new updates. This maximises the pockets of time that I have to read blog posts.
Latest Updates
RSS feeds pull the latest updates fairly quickly from all the blogs. This means that I can easily see at a glance what’s new. And I can decide if I want to read it immediately or wait till I have more time. If I had to visit a hundred blogs to see what happened in the past two to three hours, I’d never get to do anything else.
When RSS Feeds are Redundant
Given the wonderful perks of RSS feeds, there’s nothing much to complain about, no? Wrong! For me, RSS feeds become redundant when only excerpts are shown and I’m forced to visit the blog anyway. I visit blogs when I want to comment. But I decide if I want to comment after reading a blog post. Being forced to visit a blog via an RSS feed is counterproductive. I lose interest quickly and move on to the next blog post in my RSS feed.
In fact, I always wonder why anyone bothers setting up RSS on their blog if they’re not actually going to allow their whole content to be available via RSS feeds. I suppose, there’s the hope that throwing a bone will persuade readers to chase the meat. Not me. There’s enough meat to go around on my RSS feed. Inconvenience won’t attract me.
For example, take a look at the photo above with my review of Scarlet and how it shows up in RSS feeds. There’s just the cover and two sentences. In order to read the rest, you’d have to visit my blog. Who has time for that? And then some readers might think that that’s all there is to my review — the book cover and two sentences gushing about the book. Doh.
On the other hand, I know of bloggers who genuinely didn’t know how to adjust their RSS settings, so that their entire blog posts would be available instead of measly snippets. If you need help, here’s how to allow complete blog posts to be show up in RSS feeds.
How to Show Full Posts Instead of Excerpts
WordPress
Go to your settings under your dashboard. Select Reading. Then look for the option, “For each article in a feed, show”. Change the setting from “Summary” to “Full Text” and you’re golden! This applies to both WordPress.com and WordPress.org blogs.
Blogger
I’ve not used Blogger since 2007 but Google Support is very helpful and explains how to change your site’s feed settings. Be sure to set “Allow Blog Feed” to full. Other than that, the set up’s simple.
YES. I use feedly and I follow literally hundreds of blogs and everything is super categorized. Of course, I don’t have time to read all the blog posts that are posted every day, but I do like to keep track of some blogs and read them when I don’t feel like doing anything else.
I also don’t like when blogs put only part of their post in the RSS. The New Yorker, NPR, and NY Times are just about the only ones that can get away with that. It’s actually kind of helpful in those cases as they publish so much content. Even in just the books section at NPR, they post tens of articles a day. It’s helpful for me to super quickly browse through things until something catches my eye.
But your average blogger? Nope. Maybe they want to see how many readers they have and don’t know how to track RSS subscribers efficiently?
One tool that perhaps people don’t know about is Feedburner. It’s a free, Google-owned service, and basically with just a very simple set up you can see how many feed subscribers you have across all platforms. IDK why it’s not automatically integrated with Blogger. It’s better than using only Blog Lovin’, because that only counts how many blog lovin’ followers you have, for example. Feedburner is kind of like a doorway that all RSS users have to pass through, and then it gives you an average of how many passers you get.
That’s a great point you raised about news sites and RSS excerpts. When there’s dozens of posts to keep track of per day, they could easily clog up RSS feeds with full posts. But yeah, the average blogger doesn’t post more than once a day, so there’s no reason to stick to excerpts.
I haaaaate it when they don’t show the whole post in RSS. There are so many bloggers who want to avoid showing the whole thing AT ANY COST and I don’t understand it at all. Not to be mean, but are they that hungry for page views?
Most of the time I will either not read the post or unsubscribe if I can only see an excerpt.
I’d rather people read my post via RSS and not visit the blog than not read my blog at all.
I suppose some bloggers don’t realize that there’re ways to track their RSS stats, so they feel like they have to get the page views by only allowing RSS excerpts? When I first started blogging, I was a little concerned about that but after doing my research, I laid those worries to rest.
And I agree, I would also rather people read my posts in the very least via RSS because then at least I’m reaching someone and not writing in to a void. RSS excerpts just encourage me to not stick around and to expand someone’s void instead.
Yes! When I’m reading in my feedreader, I want all the content available to me. If I have to click “read more”, I will unsubscribe.
Sometimes I feel ruthless doing so but it looks like quite a few people like you agree on doing it anyway.
Jo! Here I am! AND I’m so glad you tackled this nagging complaint of mine! I used to use bloglovin but I was so frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t read entire posts on one page and so I switched over to the RSS feed reader. BUT I do find that certain blogs only do the preview thing and it’s just this bump in my so called brilliant plan. I love the convenience that RSS offers, but I guess we can’t always win :(( Lovely post!
HI JESS! We must keep telling people about the wonders of showing full blog posts on RSS, so that everyone will switch over. This is an important message to all! ;)
Well, I love Bloglovin’! I like going to the blog itself to read, and the design was nicer for me. I have no idea, though, if my RSS feed is malfunctioning because I don’t really use it, and I hope it doesn’t! If it does, though, I’d love it if someone would tell me about it, especially for something like this.
But yeah, your process is totally different from mine. I don’t like reading in some standard space! I’m fine with opening ten tabs, thank you very much.
I like reading in a standard space because it’s quicker and more streamlined :) But there are some blogs that I read on the actual website instead of Feedly because I like the look and feel of the blog. [Psst, that includes your blog ;)] But for others, I can’t stand the blog layout, so thanks to Feedly, I have no problem reading the blog posts anyway.
I use Bloglovin’ as a feed reader and I use it mostly to save/mark the posts that I want to read so that I can get to them when I have the time because of this the excerpts really don’t bother me.
Later in the night or on weekends when I click on my saved posts, I browse the list of saved posts and click on the ones I want to read-This takes me directly to the blog post.
Maybe I’ve never come across this problem because I read posts only on my PC and not my mobile?
Actually, even on my laptop, I prefer Feedly over Bloglovin’ because I like the organization better. Haha. And I like that I can jump very quickly from one post to the next. On the other hand, Bloglovin’s does encourage more interaction, I guess, since we can choose to follow bloggers on top of their blogs and we can see what posts everyone’s been bookmarking.
If a blog does not have a full feed, I unsubscribe. I will visit a blog to leave a comment, but to have to visit a blog to read every single post? No. I hardly have time going through Feedly :)
I generally don’t subscribe to those blogs either. But sometimes it tears me up inside when I really love a blog. Then I subscribe anyway, so I at least know if they have new content but it does frustrate me, so I end up interacting less with those blogs.
Thanks for the tutorial on how to show full posts in RSS feeds! :)
Personally, I also tend not to read Feeds that do not show the whole post. It’s just too troublesome to open a separate webpage.
Thanks for sharing your approach,, Jessica! I’m glad I’m not the only on who thinks it’s too troublesome.