Blogger Problem……and how to fix it!

Today we received an email from Mick & Pip (nb Lillyanne) after he noticed that despite them publishing a recent blog post it was appearing towards the bottom of our own blog list.  Mick thought it might be a problem with their blog because they see a similar problem with other blog lists.

I have our blog list configured so posts will appear in chronological order with the most recent at the top.  (see screen dump below)

I usually read the blog list daily from the top stopping when I reach those more than one day old.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered a large number of recent blog posts at the bottom of our blog list!  

What the #$%^& was going on…….???????

Coincidentally I was about to add another blog to our list.  When I copied and pasted the blog address [URL] into the window I received the following message.

“Could not detect a feed from this URL”

I clicked OK and the blog name appears on our list.  However all that appears is the blog post title and the blog appears at the bottom of the list.

Houston we have a problem………

This next screen dump shows the bottom of our blog list.

None of them display the date they were published and some are missing the title and/or introductory sentence.  Notice Oleanna at the bottom.

After examining all the affected blogs I realised they were either written using Wordpress or the blog address ended in [blogname].co.uk    Blogs written with Blogger and ending in blogspot.com were not affected.

After some prolonged logical analysis, I determined there must be a problem with the structure of the blog feed/search (well actually it was an intuitive guess!).

SOLUTION

This is how I fixed the problem

Step 1  In our blog template settings remove the existing affect blog link off our blog list

Step 2  Add the same blog to the blog list and paste the blog URL (address) into the window.

Step 3  [IMPORTANT] Add the following to the end of the URL address /feeds/posts/default  The full address should now look like this http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Step 4  Click the ‘Add’ button

Step 5  Rename the blog if you want.

Step 6  Save the template

Step 7  Load your blog and check the affect blog is now correctly appearing on your blog list.

Oleanna’s blog now looks like this

NOTE:  Doing this doesn’t appear to solve the problem if the blog was written in anything other than Blogger.

My guess is the problem is caused by using the Blog URL rather than the Feed URL.  

I will continue looking for a solution for those blog writers NOT using Blogger. If you find one first then please let me know.