f you’re not already subscribing to the RSS feed from your own blog using a feed reader e.g. Google Reader it’s time you did! You can’t always guarantee readers will tell you there is a problem 🙂 .
What happened to Martin Weller (The Ed Techie) yesterday is a classic example of the need to subscribe. Martin uses Typepad which unfortunately experienced a brief problem with their feed service on TypePad. Some TypePad users were affected, where another blog’s entries appeared to be coming from their feed.
Yesterday in the feed from Martin’s blog was 10 new posts on motherhood which surprisingly enough weren’t his, but were from Jumping Monkey’s blog. I read his blog and didn’t realise the problem due to the sheer number of blogs I subscribe to; I thought I must have added an unusual blog to my readings.
He wasn’t alone in experiencing this problem; Craig’s Movie Blog and Not About Tech were both replaced with The London Blog. Michael Willits (Not About Tech) contacted Typepad who advised him that the problem was with Typepad and not Feedburner.
Added benefit of subscribing to your own blog feed is you see your posts how they are seen by readers. Means you pick up any problems such as issues with font sizes, image size/alignment and removal of content (e.g. embeds like SlideShare, Voicethreads and videos may not appear in your post when viewed in a feed reader — appears to be influenced by which blog platform you use).
While I’m at it! My personal request is if you want me to subscribe to your posts please make sure you have your feed set to full feed not partial. I virtually never click on the more link for posts that are partial feeds — I don’t have the time SORRY.
Sue Waters 
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