I want those entries gone!

January 12, 2008 10:58 PM

I deleted every single entry from my blog so that I can start fresh. But all the old entries are showing up in RSS and Atom feeds. How can I make those go away too?

I use Google Reader and all my old entries are showing up there both in RSS2.0 and Atom.

My blogging platform is Expression Engine. I deleted all the entries manually through the EE control panel, not by doing something with the back end database (because I have no idea how to deal with mysql or phpadmin). As far as I can tell, these entries are gone forever, though I can't check the database to be sure because of said database ineptitudes.

So, how can I clear the feeds or delete the feeds or whatever for those old entries that are still showing up? I will want feeds for when I get back into things, but I don't want these old entries hanging around.

I don't know much about feeds or databases or tech-y things. Dumb it down for me.

posted by misanthropicsarah to computers & internet (6 comments total)

The RSS feed in your blog will show only the last few entries, usually - however, services like Google Reader will archive all the past entries of an RSS feed so that you can a subscriber can see and search through the entire history of something they've subscribed to. There's probably not much you can do to purge the collective memory of everyone that's subscribed to your feed with a service like Google Reader other than asking Google nicely to unremember you.

However, if you are only concerned with clearing the history of the entries for your own creative/mental fresh start, you might try unsubscribing in Reader and then subscribing again. Not sure that this will work, though, as they may just find the history and show it to you again when you resubscribe.
posted by thedaniel at 11:26 PM on January 12, 2008

Google reader probably caches a copy of your feed on its servers, so that's why you are seeing it there. It is possible that EE writes to a static RSS feed, but not likely. If you visit your blank site and subscribe to the feed with something other than google reader (bloglines, newsgator, etc), do you see the old entries? My guess is no. But if yes, you may need to delete your feed XML files using an FTP client. (if your 'subscribe' link is http://example.com/feeds/rss.xml, you need to delete the 'rss.xml' file from the feeds folder on your server.)
posted by misterbrandt at 11:30 PM on January 12, 2008

Never having used Expression Engine, I'm not sure how it works but if there is a setting for how many posts it includes in its RSS feed, maybe you could try setting that to '0'?
posted by tapeguy at 4:51 AM on January 13, 2008

Google Reader caches entries as soon as someone subscribes through their service.

If *your* feed doesn't show any entries (go to it directly in Firefox or IE -- if you've set FF to auto-subscribe, try a diff. browser to see what's there), that's as good as your going to get.

I just popped in an install of expression engine to see if it writes static feeds, and it does not, so unless there's a major bug where deleted entries appear in feeds (unlikely, but again, you can verify by looking at a feed in your browser) you're pretty much at the mercy of the almighty google caching engine. the internet does not forget.
posted by fishfucker at 10:03 AM on January 13, 2008

that's pretty much what i thought. but i thought i'd ask just in case.

thanks!
posted by misanthropicsarah at 6:37 AM on January 14, 2008

One possible solution if you want to 'hide' those old entries from new Google Reader subscribers might be to set up a redirect or otherwise move where the feed is located. My guess is that Google Reader's cache is keyed from the URL.

It's unclear how much you'd have to alter EE to get this change, however.
posted by fishfucker at 10:03 AM on January 14, 2008