Reader changed?
-
I have decided that life is too short to set myself up for repeated disappointments and frustrations. My needs and wants re: the WordPress.com Reader were very simple and yet have not been met and are not likely to be met. All, I wanted and needed was a list of permalinked post titles (direct links) to the most recent post published on the blogs I follow.
It’s clear to me that what I want and need will not be delivered by the WordPress.com Reader and if I continue to use it I will continue to be pissed off every day – day in and day out – by the frustratingly unintuitive design. Therefore, I made the happiness choice this morning and put a smile back on my face. I unfollowed all blogs I used to follow in the WordPress.com Reader.
-
-
@rakmilphotography
I’m not much into stats watching and I haven’t been well so I’m simply doing the bare minimum while I recover. As I haven’t been publishing as frequently as I previously did, I don’t believe I can attribute any stats decline accurately to the Reader changes alone. -
-
Is there a way to find an RSS feed for Topics available in the Reader? I’m experimenting with an RSS reader (and WordPress provides a handy export option for all of the blogs I follow). If I can pull those topics into a reader, I’ll use both side by side for a while and see which one I like better.
One advantage that the Reader does still have over an external reader is the Topics–many of the blogs I follow I originally found by following topics and finding new people writing about things that interested me. I know that others have found my blog the same way.
-
@timethief
I went in and reset everything to get emails from everyone I follow. I’m with you on this reader thing—-waaaayyyyyy too annoying and not saving me any time clicking all around. Until they make the reader “good” again, I’ll be happier with an overflowing email box than with an underperforming reader! -
I follow 162 blogs using the reader.
A few of these I follow by email as well, but I find that I never view them there. It is (was) much more aesthetically appealing to use the reader. Following by email requires two clicks (one to open the email and another to open the post in the blog). It was one click right to each blog in the reader and a lovely scroll through blogland.
Maybe I should set up a new email just for my WordPress blogs.Are we to assume that those in charge have no concern for our writing or reading pleasure? There has been no notification, explanation or communication.
In the meantime, we lose faith in those that run this site. I loved WordPress and it saddens me that they don’t seem to care. -
ecumenicallife I use the topics as well.
I’ve exported my list to bloglovin which has a similar look. It also has topics, but not limited to wp blogs, probably there will be mostly blogspot coming up in searches, but I haven’t tried.
-
I’m the same as you, most of the blogs I follow have been found via topic searches. They are quite diverse blogs because I’ve often stumbled across a blog in a topic search that was for example a Land Rover related post but the blog itself was generally about a completely different subject matter or interest. Previously, clicking the Land Rover post took me into the blog and after reading that post I’d then read the about page, other recent posts etc and in many cases I decided to follow as the blogs were well written and were enjoyable to read even though on a different interest to mine, an example being a blog about fly fishing! :-)
-
@colourcottage, I’ve signed up with bloglovin now. However it seems bloglovin only searches blogs that are registered with it so I’ll be going through the registration process later (you have to add some HTML to a new post andg et bloglovin to find it). Hopefully that will then mean my blog will be found by the bloglovin topic search :-)
Bloglovin has a mobile friendly site version too and it works fine on my windows phone and is far less buggy than the wordpress reader however it still formats the post the same as the new wordpress popup when viewed in this mobile friendly view so not much gain for me over using the WP reader. The bloglovin app is only available for iPhones and Android phones so no good to me on a windows phone.
-
@mudforfun I’ve noticed that on any given day Bloglovin shows me more posts from my subscriptions than WP, so I’m not missing out on as many that way. But yes, the WP reader is still great for topics, so I alternate.
Claiming your blog on BL is very easy and instantaneous once you do the process.
-
I’m lovin’ bloglovin’ :-)
The reader is nicely formatted, clear and concise AND it takes me directly into the full and properly formatted post when viewed on my PC and into the concise version when viewed on the phone – PERFECT!
Why on earth the WP reader can’t have been made to work like this I have no idea but it would have saved alot of upset!
-
Just registering my vote, which will be with my feet er mouse well you all know what I mean if WP don’t fix this by the end of the month. Will check out Bloglovin’ meanwhile.
-
-
@smallhousebiggarden they can import the bloglist that you export from wp, so it’s very simple to set up.
-
I’ve just imported all my followed blogs into Bloglovin’, it took just a couple of minutes.
Also be aware that to ‘claim’ your blog on bloglovin if you have a static front page like me you need to put the HTML from the bloglovin claim into that static front page NOT a new post as suggested by the bloglovin help text. It is the front page of the blog that bloglovin trawls for that HTML. I did this and it worked fine.
-
The only thing I’ve found so far that is bad about the Bloglovin reader is its lack of proper topic search. The search seems to only search the blog name for a matching phrase which is pretty useless. I can get around that by using either google or wordpress to find the blogs and then add them manually to bloglovin in order to read future posts. It seems that the WP reader is far superior in terms of finding blogs but Bloglovin is now superior for reading them! What a crazy world we live in.
-
I do not like the many clicks I now have to do in order to 1) read a new blog post and 2) get back to the reader. something like 3 clicks now. It used to be I’d click on the blog post link, my browser opened a new tab, I’d read the new blog post happily and when I was done I’d close that tab. when I went back to the reader I could continue on. but now I have to click out of the new window that appears. so now we’re up to three more clicks? disagreeable :( Not happy with this change at all.
-
or in other words….I don’t like reading the new post in the tiny window that now opens when clicking on the link to the new post…..
-
People are liking the posts but are hardly coming to the blog, I’m registering many likes but number of people that are coming to my blog has substantially decreased.
We can’t come each day to register our problem, If you want to continue with these changes then at-least bring out a post in the new and in the daily post and tell the people how they can navigate from the blog to the readers.
Do leave it for “trial and error”, be responsible enough to post the changes and best way to navigate through the reader. Regards.
- The topic ‘Reader changed?’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 