RSS: The Fixening?

by 9:44 am. It has 27 Comments.

Bold (RSS) readers:

Are things improved? For Feedly users, all should be well going forward, if not, I need to know!

Also, any other RSS users out there having issues? I need to know the service/company name so we can narrow our search, but all things should be humming smoothly.

On that note, open thread.

I’m stuck in tax and estate things all day instead of being on my fishing getaway because when the lake’s 30 feet too full there’s not much fishing gonna happen and I might as well be productive.

 

So that’s it for me today, most likely. I find that if I give myself a break from some of these admin/paperwork/detail tasks, that break can often expand and when I return, I find something to obsess over and so leave tasks undone.





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RSS On The March!

by 10:15 am. It has 16 Comments.

An issue with RSS was found that affected Feedly users. I need to c0mtact their support but there is no way without being a Pro member. So, can a Pro member use the c0ntact form and let me know who you are? I’ll email you some text to submit.

 

Now, for other RSS reader/service users, please let me know what the name of it is so we can look to see if they’ve been being blocked for similar reasons.

 

Open Thread!





This post is in , and has 16 Comments.

Ah, The Woes Of RSS

by 8:27 am. It has 33 Comments.

For those folks still facing RSS issues, I’ve escalated this to our wonderful web hosts, Hosting Matters. They’re very responsive, very skilled, and are now helping solve this issue.

I’ve received a number of reports over the past week, but I didn’t respond to many of them. Just making sure that you issue-submitters know were heard, even if I didn’t respond directly. Normally I respond to all issue emails from the contact form, but in this case I had little to offer as I was gathering more information.

Since this issue affects more than one RSS service, I’m pretty sure that the issue isn’t something on our pages that sometimes causes their RSS parsing engine to puke. We’re now looking at HM’s security setup blocking automated requests and so mucking things up. Hopefully that’s it, and this issue will ease away over the next day or so.

 

Open thread!


Site Updates Today: RSS, the explainaning

by 9:15 am. It has 12 Comments.

Folks,

It being a rainy day here, and just a few hours until Spring begins, I’ve decided to do some site work. I’ve got some plugins to update, then the main site. I hope this fixes a few things that bug many and makes it perform better. I expect we’ll make a few more enhancements early Spring; more on that when appropriate.

 

RSS

One issue that many folks have reported in the past few days is RSS not working. This seems to happen every few months, so let me explain how things are setup in hopes that it helps those so afflicted.

RSS feeds from Balloon Juice are an automatic part of WordPress; we host a URL at https://www.balloon-juice.com/feed/ that is our RSS feed. It is not a service we pay for or otherwise configure – we host a URL, which is automatically served by the same WordPress engine that powers the main site.

There are many RSS readers and services that folks use. These point to our URL and give you the results.  Should your reader or service not have updated content, the first thing to check is that URL, in FireFox (as it has a great RSS feed reader in it). If it shows current content, then the problem isn’t on our side, it’s you or your service.

Some users have reported that removing the Balloon Juice feed from their reader, then re-adding it, makes it sync properly again. One user had to do that twice to succeed.

If I could figure out why this happens, or what triggers it, I’d love to nail this down. So, should this happen to you, please let me know via the contact form the last post that shows up for you.  I suspect there’s a character in some posts that throws things off, and perhaps I can figure that out with user help.

 

That all said, a few weeks ago I posted about site issues and have not followed up on anything that was mentioned. In my defense, I’m not really working for myself these days as I’m dealing with my mother’s affairs and getting used to the new life/new normal. So I’ve worked on tech things when I’ve had the time and brainpower bandwidth to fully engage with things. I’ve found that working on site issues when tired and semi-braindead is a recipe for bad things, so caution has been my lantern.

So today I’m not overpromising, but I will work through outstanding suggestions and issues as time permits after I do the main stuff today. And I’m scheduling a few hours later this week to continue that work.

On that note, I’m going to kick off some plug-in updates then get a cup of tea.

 

 





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Site Updates and Open Thread

by 11:45 am. It has 72 Comments.

Folks,

I’m applying a couple of quick updates this morning and plan to update the theme early next week.

As that entails me editing a bunch of the files, this is a time when I’m deeper into the code and more able to tweak things without dedicating lots of time to that task.

So, consider this thread your chance to make suggestions, complaints, etc. I will not promise to do everything, but I’ll try to incorporate good ideas.

Otherwise – open thread!





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And We’re Back Live

by 1:38 am. It has 63 Comments.

I forgot to re-register the domain name so we were down for a spell. We’re back live and good for five years (if blogs and the internet even exist then- we need some new blood, an influx of young kids to come shake things up in the comments and rouse us old farts). To make up for this, an adorable picture of Steve after I have tucked him into the bed he made out of blankets on the couch:

Such a good boy.





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Turbulence Ahead: Site Updates

by 2:01 pm. It has 24 Comments.

Folks,

I’ll be updating the site today and tomorrow to bring everything up to date. I’ll also be investigating some issues that have been reported. I’ll be hitting low-hanging fruit today and prepping to update the theme tomorrow.  Feel free to use this thread to report issues or otherwise bitch about functionality. No promises, but I’ll see what I can do, if not today or tomorrow, then soon.

 

Otherwise, Open Thread!





This post is in , and has 24 Comments.