Google Feeds Gone Wild, Part 2

Posted on May 15, 2009 
Filed Under Rant, Say What?, Tips & Tricks, WordPress

First of all, I’m back! Did you miss me or didn’t you know I was gone? Either way, I’ve just returned from my short maternity leave after the birth of my second daughter. I’ll be sure to post a special announcement soon, but there is some business to discuss first.

If you subscribe to my blog feed, this may be the first update you have received in ages from In The Worx…that is of course if you solely rely on your RSS reader to keep up with your favorite blogs. Well if that is the case for you, let me apologize. Although I have been away for a few weeks taking care of my new baby, there has apparently been a problem with my feeds since JANUARY!

After having a major hiccup in early March when I was forced to move my FeedBurner feed to my Google account…you can read about that here…I thought this problem had been licked. Apparently not so much. It seems that there has been another issue with my feeds this entire time that I was unaware of until a few weeks ago. Anyone subscribed to my blog through their RSS reader hasn’t seen an update since January 25th. Well rest assured that I have in fact had many posts since then so please catch up as soon as you have a few minutes.

Of course I began researching the problem as soon as I found out.  I scoured the Internet for answers, searched through the FeedBurner knowledgebase and FAQs, and even posted my dilemma on the FeedBurner Google group hoping someone there would be able to help. Not only did I find that people were having similar problems, but they were also getting nowhere and couldn’t get any answers from Google. In fact I was unable to find any kind of support from Google directly.

Now, being the relentless researcher that I am when presented with a problem…seriously I will spend hours and hours if that is what it takes…alas, I finally figured it out! Honestly this was a total fluke that I even found it, but I am so glad that I did because I *pray* that it is the solution for someone else so they too can finally stop searching for answers. So here it is folks:

How To Fix Your FeedBurner Feeds After They Stopped Working

Just by accident, I came across this page on Creating your WordPress feed (self-hosted WordPress) in the FeedBurner Help knowledgebase. Seriously folks, technically this topic has nothing to do with my problem and I just happened upon it by accident. Nothing on this page would have been of value to me, but this one little side note happened to catch me eye. It reads:

Note: If you currently use the old, 2005-vintage version of the Ordered List FeedBurner plugin that generates a FeedBurner-specific URL (an example: www.yoursite.com/feedburner_838196/), that URL is no longer available or necessary. You will have to reset your FeedBurner feed’s Original Feed address to now use your standard blog feed address. Additionally, you should examine any .htaccess files that control access to your WordPress installation’s content and remove any existing references that forward or redirect your feeds, as these references will no longer be necessary.

Hmmm, interesting I thought. I figured what the heck and went to check my Original Feed in FeedBurner. This was such a long shot at best given the fact that I don’t even use the plugin that it is referring to. But guess what? My Original Feed address was exactly in that format. I wondered if changing this would further screw things up, but decided to give it a shot. In fact, at the top of your Feed Details, there is a warning message that reads:

“You should not change “Original Feed” unless you move your original feed to a new domain or a new location on your existing server…”

So first I copied the Original Feed address it was showing and pasted it in Notepad for safe keeping just in case. I retrieved my blog feed address, pasted it in the Original Feed field, and saved it. Then I used the Ping FeedBurner page to ping my site to make sure that it worked. The ping worked so that was a good sign so far.

feedburner-details

Now it was time for the ultimate test. I opened my blog in my browser, clicked on one of my RSS button links and voila! There they were…every post I’ve made since January 25th and prior to that date as well. It was a beautiful thing!

Now let the record show that I DID NOT change my Original Feed address at any time so it had to be changed by FeedBurner because I can’t think of any other explanation. So I’m not sure what Google did in January that would affect my Original Feed address, but I’m sure I wasn’t the only unsuspecting user. Maybe this was when they decided to change our Feed Address to include a ‘2′ (http://feeds2…), which caused millions of headaches, but nevertheless this whole conversion has been a debacle for me.

I hope this information helps solve someone else’s problem with their feeds. As for Google, I said it before…I’ve been a huge fan of many of their apps and offerings, but seriously, what the heck were y’all thinking? Or should I say NOT thinking?

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