At Dave Bonta's urging, I'm changing my feed settings to publish full posts rather than excerpts. My reasoning has always been that I spend a lot of time making my weblog look the way it does - I'm a designer after all - and I've wanted to encourage people to click through and read the post, if they're interested, on the site. That's what I do when I go to Bloglines - I use the service to see what's new, and almost always go to the actual site to do my reading, coming back each time to Bloglines which I use as a kind of hub for my blog reading excursions.
But I gather from talking to Dave and other readers that this is not the way a lot of people use their aggregators - and in fact, not publishing a full-content feed discourages or even stops many people from reading my posts. So I bow - reluctantly - to technology, acknowledge that the words are more important than the visual content, but hope that if your feed doesn't publish photos, you will still go to the site occasionally and see the visual content as well.
Let me know if you have any trouble with the new settings. The last time I checked, the feed was still publishing as excerpts, despite the changes. I'll keep after it during the day and try to get it squared away.
UPDATE: I think everything is working fine now. I've exported by own Bloglines subscription list to the new Google Reader, and will be trying that service out over the next week or two - it seems very good to me.
Beth: I do prefer this, because I read blogs in the morning at home where we are still on dial-up (one of the last households in California, I'm sure). Waiting for photos to load in the aggregator is tiresome. I almost always click through also, but when it's going to be image-heavy, I wait till I get to work where we have a fast connection.
Posted by: Pica | January 23, 2007 at 09:59 AM
Thanks, Beth! It seems to be working now. I am puzzled by your and Pica's comment about images, though. Full content feeds by definition include images. When I was on dial-up, Bloglines was especially useful because, even in the case of partial-content feeds, it allowed me to go straight to individual posts, which invariably load more quickly than an an entire blog. Whether the photos come into the reader, or whether one has to click on the post link to view them, the download time is the same.
Bloglines, and I guess some other feed readers, do give subscribers the option of subscribing to excerpts, so people should still be able to keep images out of their feeds, I think.
Posted by: Dave | January 23, 2007 at 10:34 AM
This worked retroactively, too. Google Reader, which I just started using, includes older posts I've already read (one of the nice features that makes me prefer it over Bloglines). Your posts back through January 12 are full content with images intact. Before that, for some reason, there are only excerpts - must be some sort of automatic cut-off.
Posted by: Dave | January 23, 2007 at 10:38 AM
One final thought: You said that you "hope that if your feed doesn't publish photos, you will still go to the site occasionally and see the visual content as well." I haven't checked out more than a handful of feed readers, but isn't it the case that those that don't publish images also don't publish full content? Users of such aggregators would expect to have to click though, I should think.
Posted by: Dave | January 23, 2007 at 10:43 AM
I've been wondering about the same issues, about wishing people to read my blog directly, so this is more food for thought!
Beth, I just happend to notice that your "Recovery" series looks a bit odd in my news reader - all the apostrophes are triple question marks ???
Posted by: marja-leena | January 23, 2007 at 12:55 PM
Which news reader are you using, Marja-Leena?
Posted by: beth | January 23, 2007 at 02:08 PM
Thanks for doing this; I love to be able to read full posts at Bloglines. Makes me feel *a little* more productive and *a little* less guilty about how many I read as I make my blog rounds! ;)
Posted by: Diana | January 24, 2007 at 11:25 AM
Thank You for switching. I too have dial-up at home.Ok,I'll admit. I rather spend my money on books than a faster connection. But some days I do go to the actually site to read post
Posted by: Cathy | January 24, 2007 at 02:21 PM
Cathy and Diana - thanks for letting me know, and for reading!
Posted by: beth | January 24, 2007 at 02:50 PM