Confusion About Your Blog Feed, Not Updating Properly In Gadgets On Other People's Blogs

One of the stranger confusions, seen occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, refers to the posts feed, from our blog, displayed on other people's blogs.

I just published a new blog post - but it does not show up on my friends blogs. Is there a problem, with my feed?

When we investigate, the blog feed shows no problem. We display the feed in the browser, and compare with the blog main page - and everything on the main page is in the feed. It just does not show up on our friends feed gadgets.

So, what's the problem here? Were we imagining a problem? No, it's not imagination.

When we view a blog or website, what we see is subject to caching, on our computers.

Our browsers don't waste time (and bandwidth) downloading content from every blog or website we may wish to view, without checking what's in cache - in our browsers, on our computers, and elsewhere. If the blog or website in question has not been updated since we last viewed it, the browser just shows us our cached content.

With a Blogger blog, and our need to view the main page, what's in cache is simply the blog, as displayed on the main page. If no post was published or updated since we last viewed the main page, what we see is the main page, from cache. Simple enough.

Since the content of the gadgets is not cached separately, any updates to the gadgets only gets displayed when we view a blog from a Blogger server. Any gadget updates - such as newly published posts, from our blogs - will only be displayed after the blog owner publishes a new post.

If we publish posts daily - but our friends only publish weekly - we're going to see our updates displayed weekly. That's not a problem with our blogs, with our blog feeds, or even with our friends blogs - it's just how cache affects us.

To diagnose the problem, we can clear or refresh our cache, and see if that makes our friends blogs "update more regularly". This strategy is subject to limitations, though.

• If we clear cache, this will make all of the blogs and websites load directly from the servers (not just Blogger).
• We may be subject to caching, which we can't control.
• Whatever we do, to force our feed to update, on our friends blogs, when viewed from our browser, will have no effect on what our friends viewers see, when viewing our friends blogs.

In some cases, we may just have to shrug our shoulders, and get to work on our blogs. And wait, patiently, for our friends to work on their blogs.

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Redirecting Any URL In Your Blog, To Another URL In Your Blog

Several months ago, Blogger Engineering gave us a new Blogger feature - the ability to redirect any URL in a blog, to any other URL in the blog. Like any feature, we found an immediate use for it - something much requested, for a good while.

Other people have found more uses for the redirection feature - and still others have found confusion. The syntax used in the redirection "From" and "To" values is not always obvious - and occasionally there is confusion about what can - and can't - be done with redirection.

This is the URL of this post.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2012/12/redirecting-any-url-in-your-blog-to.html

Using the redirection feature, I can redirect another URL in this blog, to this post - or conversely, I can redirect the URL of this post to another URL, in this blog.

Both the "From" and "To" values in "Custom Redirects" accept any static blog URL, less the base URL of that blog. You cannot specify the base URL - so all redirections will be within the blog itself. You also cannot use a dynamic URL (containing a "?") in a redirect.

The initial use for the redirection feature (at least, for me) was to replace the Home page of the blog, with another page or post - possibly, this post.

From: /
To: /2012/12/redirecting-any-url-in-your-blog-to.html

I could change the Home page of this blog, to start all new readers on the Topics Index page.

From: /
To: /p/topics.html

If I was to change the Title of this post, when re published, the URL would not change. If I wanted to change the URL of this post, I could redirect the desired URL, to the actual URL.

From: /2012/12/redirecting-any-urls-in-your-blog.html
To: /2012/12/redirecting-any-url-in-your-blog-to.html

If I want to allow this post to be accessed from a shorter URL, I can do that. If you click on the shorter URL (below), you will note that you still see the longer URL in the browser address window!

From: /redirecting-any-url-in-your-blog-to.html
To: /2012/12/redirecting-any-url-in-your-blog-to.html

I recently created a shortcut to my Topics index, as "blogging.nitecruzr.net/topics".

From: /topics
To: /p/topics.html

To get the "From" and "To" values for any redirection, I simply take any two URLs in the same blog. Choose any two examples - one for "From", the other for "To".

• The Home page: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/
• A post: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2012/12/redirecting-any-url-in-your-blog-to.html
• A static page: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/p/topics.html
• A label search: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/search/label/Redirecting
• A shortcut URL: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/topics

And drop the base URL: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net

Giving:

• The Home page: /
• A post: /2012/12/redirecting-any-url-in-your-blog-to.html
• A static page: /p/topics.html
• A label search: /search/label/Redirecting
• A shortcut URL: /topics

Having developed the proper "From" and "To" values, adding a "Custom Redirects" entry is simple enough.

Having setup a useful complement of Pages, and redirected the Home page, you may wish to remove the "Home" page tab. Just edit the Pages gadget, using the dashboard Layout wizard, or the on blog quick edit icon - not the dashboard Pages wizard - and de select the "Home" page.

A simple example, showing the result, may be seen in my demonstration blog, Home Page Redirected To Label Search.

From: /
To: /search/label/Home%20Page

You may also wish to remove the "Showing posts with label ..." notice, if you like a cleaner display. In my demonstration blog (mentioned above), I did not do this - to make my examples more obvious.

The possibilities here are endless. Just use common sense - and again, note the limits on redirection.

Click here, for instructions. Note again, that the actual address, displayed in the browser address window, will not change.

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Blogger Magic - A Static Home Page, Improved

For many years, Blogger blog owners have been asking for the ability to have a static Home page, on their blog.

We came up with a basic solution for that, a couple years ago. Last year, I packaged the procedure.

1. Set "Show" to "0 posts".
2. Add a static HTML / Text gadget.
3. Tweak the template for the new gadget, to display only on Home page.

This was an obvious solution (to some of us) - but it's painfully complex, and it involves editing the template HTML. It's an interesting techie solution - and that's about it.

Today, I realised that Blogger recently gave us this option, in a far simpler solution, last month - but not so many people noticed it.

The "Custom Redirects" feature is just what you need, to create a static home page.

1. Setup a Static Page. Use the dashboard Pages wizard, make a "New page", and select "Blank page".
2. Use the "Custom Redirects" dashboard wizard, and redirect from the Home page to the new Static page.
3. Work on the static home page, and make it attractive.

I setup a test blog - Nitecruzr Redirected Home Page Test, and added a Static page - "Static Home Page".

nitecruzr-test-redirected-homepage.blogspot.com/p/static-home-page.html

Having setup the static page, I redirected the Home page to the static page, using the "Search preferences" - "Custom Redirects" feature.

• From: /
• To: /p/static-home-page.html
• Permanent: Yes

Edit "Custom Redirects".

1. Enter "From:" as "/".
2. Enter "To:" as "/p/static-home-page.html".
3. Select "Permanent".
4. Click the "Save" link.
5. Hit the "Save changes" button.

And, that is it. You can see my test blog, as a basic demonstration.

Note that just as easily as redirecting the home page to any static page, you can redirect to any dynamic page (aka a "post"). So, you can pin a post to the main page, using Custom Redirects.

Once the "Home" page / tab is static, you can index the posts using any sidebar gadget - such as an Archive or Label index gadget. Or, you can index posts, as if they were pages.

• Publish your posts to a given label - I used "Posts".
• Add a label search entry, as a "Web address", to Pages.

Thus my Pages entry, "Posts".

Now, anybody can have a blog with a static home page, in 10 minutes (don't overlook steps #3 and #4, above - as I did, the first time). Click here, for more examples.

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(Update 2012/06/30): See The Video, for a live demonstration.

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