Read More? It’s Just Not Right!
I must confess, I’m an avid user of the <!–more–> tag in my posts. I just like my homepage to be compact, light, neat, and tidy, and using the more tag helps me to achieve this. I also think it helps the visitor to scan down the page to see the posts, with less chance of missing one; something that can happen very easily if a short post is sandwiched between two long posts.
However, using the more tag creates it’s own problem, and if you’ve been around long enough, then you’ll no doubt have come across it.
By using the more tag, not only do people on your site have to click through to continue reading, but also those who read your site via a feedreader.
In your WordPress dashboard (admin area), you have the option to choose whether your subscribers will receive your full post, or an excerpt. The problem is, if you use the more tag, it won’t matter if you’ve chosen full post or not, WordPress will break your post at the more tag, and only the information before the tag will be sent, and so far, the WordPress guys haven’t included any way to fix this.
However, in my opinion, the whole point of RSS is that you can go to one place (your feedreader), and have all the latest information from your favourite websites, sent to you. To force people to visit your website to get the information even though they’ve subscribed to it, is just wrong, and I can’t put it any better than that. It flies in the face of online usability, and instead of the RSS saving time, it wastes time.
The Argument
Now I am fully aware of the debates and arguments that come from both sides. But I don’t want to go down the road of saying who I agree with and disagree with, I just want to express my thoughts on a heavily debated issue.
Think of it like this. Years ago, I remember my mum buying groceries at a local, family owned supermarket. They offered a free service, whereby they delivered your groceries right to your door. This allowed my mum to get the food shopping out of the way first, and then visit other shops without having to carry around all the groceries (we didn’t have a car). Now imagine the supermarket that offered this service, arrived at your door with half your shopping, and told you that if you wanted the rest, you have to go to the shop to get it?
My point is, if you’re offering a service, don’t give people 25%, 50% or even 90% of the service; give them 100%, or don’t bother at all. RSS feeds weren’t directly designed to benefit the site owner, but the user. Probably for that reason, partial feeds came up as the (unofficial) third highest reason why people unsubscribe from a blog feed. Feed readers know that the feed is supposed to serve them, not the blog owner.
The Problem Paradox
I’ll now try to deal with three of the most common arguments against delivering full feeds.
Problem 1 - Revenue
“My site is my income. I don’t like full feeds because I’m afraid of a revenue drop because less people will visit.”
Allow me to let you in on a little secret - the people who subscribe to RSS Feeds aren’t the people clicking on your ads!
Now, I might be wrong in the above, but I don’t think so. The following ‘equation’ describes me, but I think it describes thousands of others too:
RSS User = Web Savvy = Ad Blind!
Therefore, there is little to worry about.
Problem 2 - Authority
“In order to have more online credibility, I want to rank high in Alexa, and that means I need site visitors and page views.”
I’m sorry to tell you, but that’s so five years ago. RSS Subscribers is the way of the future. It’ll not be long until it is seen as the key determining factor in measuring the ‘authority’ or ‘credibility’ of a site. Get working on building up your number of subscribers now.
Problem 3 - Interaction
“Full RSS feeds minimise interaction. I want to build a community, and encourage more people to leave comments on my blog so we can all learn from each other.”
Wake up Sleepy! The main reason people leave comments, is because they’ve found the post compelling, and beneficial to them. If you write great content, people will still come and leave comments.
But allow me to go further. In a comment section of a blog, it’s generally the same people that leave comments. Let me make my point in another ‘equation’;
Majority of Commenters = Regular Visitors = RSS Subscribers
Therefore, you’ve nothing to worry about. Your feed readers already like your blog, that’s why they subscribed, and because they like your blog, they like to support you, and interact with your thoughts in the comments section.
Again, you may argue the above point, but it’s what I’ve found, and I’d love to hear from you to see what you think. Maybe you’ve found something else?
The Main Point Of This Post
Even though WordPress doesn’t have an option to allow full feeds when using the more tag, there is a plugin to solve the problem. Full Text Feed is a WordPress plugin to remove all legitimate excuses for not serving full feeds.
So if you’re a WordPress user, and you’re providing half a service, get with the program, and download the plugin now.
- If you enjoyed this, you should read:
Comments
12 Responses to “Read More? It’s Just Not Right!”
Share your thoughts...
I offer a full feed on my blog, but haven’t really thought about the effect of the read more tag.
I use it for the same reason that you do, but only on days that I publish multiple posts.
[…] Blog, Sean, Paul Enderson, Charity, Zoe Feast, J Phill, LaurenMarie, Beth Ellen, PG, Ian Stewart, Armen, Sera, Johno, Chisa, Mark Penix and […]
[…] Feed - Again, I’ve already discussed why this is a necessity. It concerns all who use the ‘read more’ tag. If you’re offering RSS feeds, why not give people what they’re subscribing […]
Очень вам признателен, полезная инфа.
хорошая информация
А чё, неплохо.
cool, clasno pishesh, prodolzhay v tom zhe duhe
pishite esche na podpbnue temu
,
clas, dolgo etot post pisali?
Great stuff. Thanks for sharing!