Stop the repetition!

September 17, 2007 9:42 AM

My blog seems to be 'reposting' its feed regularly. Why, and how do I stop it?

I read a number of blogs through Live Journal's syndication mechanism and periodically, they seem to 'resyndicate' a million posts from a particular blog. That is, I see a dozen old posts all at once as if they were brand new. I've always assumed that this happens if the blog owner somehow edits old posts, and although I know that can happen (I check my own blog through the LJ syndication, and have seen specific individual old posts reappear if I edit them), yesterday my entire blog 'reposted', and I hadn't changed anything at all. My blog is hosted by blogger.

I use LJ as a feed reader because it gives me access to some real-life friend's 'locked' private entries.

There is nothing on the help pages of either Blogger or LiveJournal that explains this issue.

My questions:
1) Why is this happening?
2) Does this problem happen with other feed-readers?
3) How can I stop this from happening?
4) Or, at the least, is the problem located with my blog (on blogger) or with the LJ's syndication function?

Thanks!

posted by serazin to Technology (6 answers total)

2) Does this problem happen with other feed-readers?

Yes. Sometimes, as you suspect, it's because they edited/republished an entry. Other times it happens for no reason that I can discern.

I use Bloglines, FWIW
posted by chrisamiller at 9:48 AM on September 17, 2007

I used to use Netvibes as my reader, and this happened almost daily, for several different sites. I switched to Google Reader a few months ago, and the problem almost vanished - there is still one particular site where this issue pops up, albeit far more rarely than before.

I have no clue what causes this problem, but it certainly seems to hit most if not all readers.
posted by mjgrady at 10:21 AM on September 17, 2007

With Bloglines, you can choose whether or not to display "updated" articles in the feed reader (it's an option when you first add the feed). Maybe look into the LJ options and see if you can turn it off?
posted by almostmanda at 12:30 PM on September 17, 2007

I don't know what is causing this problem in your specific instance. It could be that livejournal is forgetting the last modified times or GUIDs on RSS items they have already retrieved. It could be that blogger is changing the GUID or last modified times on items that haven't actually changed.

One thing though. If you use a desktop RSS reader, there is a way to login to live journal so you can get protected feeds from your friends. Check the help. Unfortunately this isn't much good with online feedreaders since they don't support handling HTTP auth for private feeds (nor am I convinced that they should).
posted by Good Brain at 1:18 PM on September 17, 2007

Response by poster: Thanks everyone. Unfortunately, my concern is mostly that other readers will see my blog posts a million times than that I have to look at other people's blogs multiple times, if that makes sense.

I'll keep digging.
posted by serazin at 2:22 PM on September 17, 2007

I just unsubscribed from Zeldman for this reason. I am using NewsFire on a Mac. His feed constantly resets itself in my reader. Not sure why.
posted by squink at 2:30 PM on September 18, 2007