Thread

I’m trying to figure out why this happens: If I edit one of my blog posts, even slightly, then I see Google Reader (and probably some others) display it as if it were a new post. I often see the same post title several times in Reader. If I look at my Feedburner feed, it doesn’t behave that way. In other words, the post isn’t listed twice and doesn’t jump to the top of the list in Feedburner.

I’m not pinging any of the feed services (well, Technorati but I think that is broken), so I’m wondering how I can stop this behavior. Maybe it is just the way that most feed readers work and there is nothing that I can do. It does seem to generate more interest in the post from what I can see, so it is a good thing in that sense. It is just frustrating that if I fix a spelling error, update a link, or whatever that it looks like a new post.

Any insights?

I just finished replying to the same issue I had opened here:
http://ellislab.com/forums/viewreply/446305/

I believe it has to do with including the entry time in the guid part of the rss template.  I’ve made the change I posted in the link above and when feedburner retrieves my latest feed, I’ll know whether it worked.

triom, thanks that looks like it might work. If I understood your solution correctly, you are taking the time off of the URL served in the feed. I know that Google Reader does include that in the link to the post, so it makes sense that they would think it is a new post since the URL (the #When:22:56:09Z part) is different.

I did a test a few minutes ago, and it seems to have worked. I’ll have to wait awhile to be sure, though.

Thanks.

I’m ready to call this one fixed. In my RSS template, there was the following line:

<guid>{title_permalink={template_group_name}/comments}#When:{gmt_entry_date format="%H:%i:%sZ"}</guid>

Notice that the date is appended onto the URL. Every time the post is edited, that time gets updated and feed readers that pay attention to that part of the URL will think it is a new post. Removing the date part at the end of the URL fixes the problem.

Yup, exactly the same thing for me.  My Feedburner feeds have updated and I’ve verified that all is well 😊