Overzealous RSS Feed Updates?

[rdlugosz]

I'm noticing that my RSS feed indicates certain albums are updated *a lot*... seems like it's almost every time I so much as browse my galleries (when logged in) that those galleries indicate that they've been updated! Any thoughts on this?

[Andy]

I'm noticing that my RSS feed indicates certain albums are updated *a lot*... seems like it's almost every time I so much as browse my galleries (when logged in) that those galleries indicate that they've been updated! Any thoughts on this?

Hi, I'll check on this. Thanks for posting.

[rdlugosz]

Hi, I'll check on this. Thanks for posting.
Hi Andy - if you'd like to report back to the dev team, I've discovered the issue. It appears that the behavior appears when the RSS feed contains galleries which do not have a Feature Photo assigned. The feed therefore contains a random thumbnail URL every time it is loaded, which causes some feed readers to display the feed as "updated".

It may be that this reader behavior is slightly out of spec, since I'm not sure that the actual update time in the XML is modified. However, since this is the behavior of bloglines.com, an extremely popular reader, it would seem that it should be addressed on the SM end.

...actually, if it's really the case that the reader is acting out of spec, there's a good chance that SM is as well - seems that content should not be modified if the last updated timestamp in the XML is not also updated.

Either way, it's a behavior that should probably be considered a bug. I appreciate you relaying this to the dev team on my behalf! :thumb

In the meantime, a good enough workaround is to just always set a featured photo on an album.

[Andy]

Hi Andy - if you'd like to report back to the dev team, I've discovered the issue. It appears that the behavior appears when the RSS feed contains galleries which do not have a Feature Photo assigned. The feed therefore contains a random thumbnail URL every time it is loaded, which causes some feed readers to display the feed as "updated".

It may be that this reader behavior is slightly out of spec, since I'm not sure that the actual update time in the XML is modified. However, since this is the behavior of bloglines.com, an extremely popular reader, it would seem that it should be addressed on the SM end.

...actually, if it's really the case that the reader is acting out of spec, there's a good chance that SM is as well - seems that content should not be modified if the last updated timestamp in the XML is not also updated.

Either way, it's a behavior that should probably be considered a bug. I appreciate you relaying this to the dev team on my behalf! :thumb

In the meantime, a good enough workaround is to just always set a featured photo on an album.

Thanks very much for this.

[pat.kane]

Good info to know. I gave up on the feed thinking it wasn't working for the reason you stated. Maybe this explains it for FF1.5 as well.