Saturday, October 24, 2009

If you delete it then it is saved forever / Blog Damage Control

...But if you save it, you can delete it, (Maybe forever. Maybe not)

Was talking about blogs with a friend who rushes to delete anything that could be awkward every time she finds out a new person who reads her blog...

It's best to not post anything online that you would mind anyone reading. Ever. (Unless your blog is private.)

But if you've post something to your blog, and wish it hadn't been posted. The best thing to do is NOT to delete it.

The problem with deleting a post is that the RSS it is still forever saved in feed burners memory. If you delete something you've written it's removed from the blog, but it is left in feed readers. Anyone who is subscribed to you, or anyone who subscribes in the future, can still read it.

But there is a way to get around the feeds. Instead of deleting the post just open the post in 'Edit Posts'. Save it to drafts. Then write a new post to replace the saved one in the feeds. (The old post will remain until you post over it.) In a few hours Google Reader will update your RSS Feed changing the old post to the new one. In other words If you save it (to drafts) you can delete it by writing over it.

Short and Sweet:
  1. Save as draft
  2. Write something else
  3. Post the replacement

I'm not sure if all Feed Readers update saved posts when they are changed. Google Reader is the only one I've ever used.

*If a person has already read the original post, any post you write over it will not show up as new in the feed reader. (So whatever you write over the post probably won't get read as much.)

[Edit: Google reader only updates changes made on the last 30 posts, You can't change a post farther back than that in the feed readers via overwriting. Any changes will only show up on the blog itself. If you have unwanted things in your blog past life you can request Google to delete the RSS which will keep anyone who doesn't already have you saved in their feed burner from pulling up the blog you thought was deleted. I hope I didn't give anyone a false sense of security.]

Happiness And Stay Safe Sweetie

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I try not to post anything that could be harmful on my blog. Because it's (currently) open and anyone can read my stuff.

I did have 1 short post I deleted, (because the thought wasn't clearly explained.) I might post on the topic again at some point. But so that people can understand what I was saying.

Also while I was learning about texting posts to my blog I sent too long of a text message post, and posted 7 messy posts. I promptly deleted 6 of them, and wrote an explanation post over the other. (So yeah now I have 6 posts in my google reader feed that are full of annoying nothingness. Ugh messy.)

If I had known, I could have saved each of them as drafts, then rewritten over them.

3 comments:

bored at home said...

you're awesome.you could be like a blogger teacher or something

Anonymous said...

Here and so too happens:)

Anonymous said...

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