Reader βPer from Canada sent me a tip that’s useful for those who follow this site with an RSS readers (I prefer subscriptions, of course, as seeing the numbers go up is one of my few pathetic pleasures). Here’s βPer’s note:
I’m writing to inform you of a problem I experienced recently accessing your website posts, its cause and the way I dealt with it. I think some of your readers may find the information useful if they’ve encountered the same problem.
Unlike most of your readers, I don’t subscribe to your site, because I use an RSS reader to follow all my favourite websites, including yours. If I subscribed to your site through WordPress, the resultant stream of emails would be redundant and a burden. I use the Feedly news aggregator (and RSS reader) to read the posts of dozens of websites, all of them via their RSS feeds. BTW, I click through from Feedly to read each of your posts actually on your website, so you get the page hits just as if I were subscribed.
On Wednesday the 9th, your posts stopped appearing in Feedly. The last post I saw was Rescued fox cub befriends his saviors – the last post you made on the 8th. I figured there was a temporary problem related to the site rewrite you’re in the midst of, so I ignored the problem for the day, assuming it would be corrected. I just manually checked your website the old-school way for the day.
Today (the 11th), the problem persisted, so I decided to investigate. Turns out, your RSS feed URL changed subtly. I’ve had it configured as:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/feed
for years. Now, it’s:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/feed
You’ve moved to making the link to access your RSS feed secure and private (HTTP -> HTTPS). That’s a good thing, as far as I’m aware.
To correct the problem and start seeing your posts again in my RSS reader, all I had to do was modify the URL to your RSS feed in my RSS reader’s configuration to include the little ‘s’ before the double forward-slashes. I couldn’t find a way to edit the URL in an existing Feedly source, so I just created a new source with the HTTPS URL.
I know that I’m not your only reader who uses RSS, and at least one other person has mentioned that he uses Feedly (a very popular RSS reader), so there may be other readers who would appreciate knowing why their WEIT fix has dried up and how to restore it.
I use an RSS reader. I actually use “akregator” which comes with the KDE desktop in linux. It seems to handle the “http” to “https” switch without issues.
I am currently not signed up as a follower on wordpress, because the RSS reader works fine. However, it is possible to follow in wordpress without being bombarded with email. If you configure it this way, there is a wordpress reader page that can be used to read the blogs you are following.
I am reading this via the RSS feed and I just checked and the URL uses “http” rather than “https”. I have never heard of or used Feedly so perhaps that was your problem.
I subscribe both ways; on RSS feed (Feedly) and direct via WordPress. Both are working fine for me. WordPress sends me an email for every new post and Feedly puts them in a list with many other sites that I look at several times a day. I don’t mind the duplicates.
I subscribe to wordpress but results are intermittant at best. Have not had an email of a new posting in over three weeks. When tried to resign into wordpress the response was I was already subscribed. I go directly to the website. Dan
This is exactly my situation also. I stopped receiving email notifications weeks ago and everything I have tried results in the same circular non-resolution.
I use Vienna, which is an RSS client for the Mac. Interestingly, the URL for your web site in my Vienna subscription was already set to use HTTPS.
You’ll be pleased to know that, although I use Vienna RSS to notify me when you have a new article, I am also subscribed to the site through my WordPress account. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive.
I have monitored the site via a feed reader (Inoreader) for years. I just checked and it was already using https. I am not sure if I made that change some time ago or if Inoreader did it for me. I suspect the latter. Regardless, I have had no problem before or after the recent redesign that I can blame on my feed reader. To be truthful, I usually open the posts that I decide to read into separate browser pages so that the order of reading them is independent of my feed browsing process.
RSS works for me correctly also with the Feedbro extension on Vivaldi.
Feedly, RSS works for me. Have been using it for years and have not had any problems accessing site. Must say this is my favourite site and always look forward to new feeds.
Hi all. Sorry for not showing up earlier, but we had a scheduled power outage here earlier today and I’m still catching up on things. Doesn’t help that I’m also having problems commenting …
I’m glad to hear that no other readers have had the same RSS problem I did. Then again, if they don’t notice that they’re no longer getting WEIT posts in their feed, they wouldn’t see this post, would they?
Of course, as soon as I sent off my email to PCC(e) late last evening, my original Feedly source (using HTTP) sprang back to life and delivered all the missing posts since Tuesday to me! Grrr. Now both my HTTP and HTTPS Feedly sources for WEIT are working. I’m starting to think this is an out-in-the-weeds bug in Feedly. I use both the Feedly web interface (in Firefox on a PC) and the Feedly Android app, both connected to the same Feedly account. The problem came and went on both interfaces.
Oh well, if nothing else was accomplished here, perhaps if a reader has an RSS-related problem in the future, they will be reminded to check to see of the RSS feed URL has changed.
βPer
I have to say, WEITis so prolific with posts these days, way more than 5 to 10 years ago, that it is far & away the most prolific source of emails I get… maybe an RSS feed would be useful…
HEY!
I use Feedbin, which apparently also already used the secure link, since I didn’t see any stoppage in the feed.
I use inoreader to subscribe to new posts. I also used it to subscribe to new comments in certain posts in which I was interested, but the option to subscribe to new comments via RSS seems no longer active.
I’m on Feedly. Haven’t had an issue or seen any interruptions.
I use Feedly, and it hasn’t changed for me yet
I simply keep a pinned tab of the latest WEIT post permanently in my laptop browser, and refresh it each morning. Then when I’ve finished reading the comments I scroll back to the “Previous” & “Next” section, and move on to the next post.
The last step was easier when I had the WordPress bar across the top, with the “Return to top” function, and the next post link there. Also (yet again) I miss the bell notification icon in that top bar.