Still Publishing Summary RSS Feeds?
While there is no “correct” choice in the full vs. summary RSS feed debate, I came across a situation this weekend that reinforced my opinion for full feeds.
The past few days, I was at An Event Apart Chicago, and I only had access internet access on Monday and Tuesday during the day. Now, I wanted to read my RSS feeds at other times, so I took my Google Reader offline with Gears, and started to read through them.
This worked great until I got to feeds that only gave a summary. How was I supposed to read the article? Stop begging for page views and give me the content.
I guess it’s just one more thing to consider when trying to decide whether to choose full vs. summary. Have your own opinion? Vote below.
Personally, I don’t mind summaries that force me to open the website itself. It doesn’t bug me because I can just open it in a new tab and get to it eventually. Also helps since I delicious links I like. Your situation does make things somewhat difficult though.
I used to be about page views until a tech savvy friend of mine ripped me a new one. He was sick of my use of summaries and demanded that I fix it.
Turns out there are some slight limitations to using wordpress’ Excerpt field. I had to actually build a custom function set to get around the issue.
If anyone is interested: http://www.wallofscribbles.com/2008/10/02/getting-more-with-the-more-tag/
Full text RSS is, of course, more convenient to me.
I’m sensitive, though, to the desire of some authors or site owners to make money off of their work. As such, I don’t mind much having to click to the site itself (especially in the case of web comics). And many sites are beautiful enough that it’s a nice chance to experience their design for a bit.
@Corey-
Thanks for posting the function.
@Nate-
Very true. But it is just an opportunity for designers to do something unique to make people click to view the actual website (i.e. Jason Santa Maria).
Full Text
Sorry, I’m trying to fix my feed. *embarrassed*
You don’t have to tell everybody. *very embarrassed*
Full posts, definitively.
Full text. I like to scan through articles, and if it’s interesting I open them in a separate tab anyway for reading it full and eventually bookmark them.
Full text, all the way.