post not showing in reader and other things about reader
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Today’s post is not showing in my reader even though I subscribe. Yesterday’s post is showing. This is very disappointing as I put 10 hours of work into this post and find that my likes and views are between 5% and 10% of normal for this post. The one I need help with is http://wp.me/p1R4lY-4y5. Is there something I did wrong?
Also, is there anyway of getting Reader to NOT display a video if there is one in a post? I would like it to display my featured image regardless of other content, especially video if it is not my original content but a background “document” I am including.
And finally, since WP changed Reader format, my views have dropped steadily so that now I have fewer than half the monthly views I did a few months ago. I think that people are reading part of my posts in reader, but I am no longer getting traffic that is counted. That would not be a big deal except I worry that it might be my content is becoming less appealing – I have no way of knowing if it is content or your changes. Is there anyway you can fix this so that views in reader get counted?
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I took a look and everything is working properly, I can see the post in the Reader. This should not happen again in the future. You can follow the steps in this guide on how to get more views and traffic: http://en.support.wordpress.com/getting-more-views-and-traffic/
How a post displays in the Reader is depending on a combination of the post format, the images embedded in the content, other embeds in the content, and the featured image. Note that our developers are aware of this and will keep improving the reader in future features and updates!
You might want to try to set one of your images as a featured image. It not certain this will override the video though. You can follow the steps in this guide on how to set a featured image: http://en.support.wordpress.com/featured-images/#setting-a-featured-image
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Thanks kardotim, though from your reply I am not quite sure what it is that you have done.
Did you change things so my post is showing in Reader now, or did it finally just show up on its own a few days late? Either way, it does not solve the problem (which I have noticed a few times over the past couple of years) that sometimes posts, for no apparent reason, do not make it into Reader. I had other people check their Reader accounts after I wrote about this, and it did not show on theirs either. I am glad to know it is back, though it is unlikely to make much difference a few days later.
I pretty much always set a featured image, as is implicit in my comment, so I don’t need instructions on how to do that. I was commenting that a featured image is always over-ridden by the presence of a video. If this is a known issue, then great. I hope it gets fixed. Please add my voice to the others that want more control over this aspect.
And, I don’t think I am getting fewer views in total, I just think that WP is counting them differently, or has structured things so that they are less likely to get counted. This makes it difficult to understand the views and use them as a tool for improving my blog. In fact, the changes remove a great deal of precision and utility from the stats, at least during the transition from one version to the next, rendering them useless except as an indicator of the effect of WP tweaks on the behaviour of my readers.
Thanks again for getting back to me, that is very much appreciated.
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Our system flagged your blog as potential spam because one of your posts contained an amazon.com link. I’ve confirmed your blog wasn’t spam and approved your blog in our system. Therefore this will not happen again in the future.
Please add my voice to the others that want more control over this aspect.
I will definitely do that!
The drop in views could have been caused by the major change in the Google Images user interface. Before, a click on an image found through Google Images resulted in a ‘pageview’. Now it doesn’t directly redirect to your blog anymore in which you don’t get a pageview at all.
Please let us know if you need any further assistance!
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Thanks so much, that helps quite a bit. Though I only have two links in that post and neither of them are amazon.com links – one is to a local company website and the other is a vimeo video. So that is strange – maybe the local company website is hosted at Amazon?
Also, thanks for the info about Google – it might be contributing a bit to the problem. However, historically I get very little traffic from searches, and especially image searches, compared to what I have lost.
I am pretty sure the loss in views arises from changes in Reader because some days I have more likes than views, and I know people are liking in Reader, but not viewing. Or does Reader count that as a view? It would be nice to know more about how these things work.
If there is a place that explains how Reader works in these kinds of details, i would appreciate a link. If there is not, perhaps there should be?
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The amazon link appeared in https://burntembers.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=12863&action=edit
The reader only shows an excerpt of the post and therefore encourages people to view the full post and interact. This behaviour is similar to an e-mail notification, in which you can read a portion of the post without actually going to the blog.
You can read all about the Reader and Stats at http://en.support.wordpress.com/reader/ and http://en.support.wordpress.com/stats
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Thank you.
While we are on the topic of Reader, I have been getting notifications of comments on some blogs, or at least one blog, in my Reader lately. I don’t comment or track comments on this blog so it is a bit mysterious. Here is an example from this morning’s Reader, one of several:
http://www.hikingphoto.com/2013/05/26/surfing-off-the-coast-of-oregon/#comment-18368 -
Now I understand about the amazon post link and I sure won’t be doing that kind of link again – nice to know.
That post with the link in it is from nearly a year ago, but must have been showing in my list of recently viewed posts and as a result it interfered with the publication of a post of a few days ago on Reader? I think that process could do with some refinement. I have changed that link, since that post is revisited from time to time and could do it again, but WP filtering software seems a bit indiscriminating as well. -
We’ve registered your suggestion and will keep it in mind for future features and updates.
While we are on the topic of Reader, I have been getting notifications of comments on some blogs, or at least one blog, in my Reader lately.
On what page do you see this? Could you send us a screenshot of the page where you’re seeing this?
Thank you.
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I am seeing it my Reader. Here is a screen shot showing a couple of them. There are others too.
http://wp.me/a1R4lY-4z1 -
That’s very odd. Could you please remove that blog from your followers list and try to follow it again?
Also please try clearing out your browser cache.
Thank you!
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Hi – I did that and the comments disappeared from my Reader. However, I am not sure that I am following the blog the same way anymore, that site has switched over to a self hosted site, and WP seems to have transferred followers over. I can’t find a way to follow on the new site without subscribing by email. Anyway, you can see more about his transfer at the link below – it would seem likely that was why Reader started to behave strangely.
http://hikingphoto.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/new-hosting-and-new-design-2/Thanks for all your help, much appreciated.
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It’s possible that the follower transfer had something to do with it. I’m glad it’s now resolved though.
You can subscribe to the self-hosted site using this RSS Feed link in your Reader: http://www.hikingphoto.com/feed/
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Thanks for the link – it actually seems to be broken as it displays an xml file, as does the RSS feed button when I click on it. But, now I know how to do it. I will send the owner a note to say it seems broken.
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Actually, the XML file is your feed.
What you might be seeing is that the browser you’re using is not able to interpret that feed properly.
A feed is a stream of data meant to interpreted by a feed reader, like WordPress.com Reader or RSSOwl. Not all browsers have the capability to interpret feeds, and one of the most popular browsers lacking this feature is Google Chrome.
Users of Chrome and other similar browsers will notice a “This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.” error followed by the raw feed. This is normal, as Chrome was not built to interpret feeds.
I hope that clarifies things!
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I checked it out in Firefox and it worked, except I don’t see how to subscribe into WP Reader. I don’t use the other options it lists. I hope I am not seeming too ignorant here, but RSS feeds so far have not worked out.
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OK, I think I figured it out. I had to go into Reader and then Edit Blogs and then I could paste the link in there, and edit the settings. Now I know how to do that, so that is very useful. Thanks again to both of you for your help.
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