Derailed!

Loyal reader Benjamin Eavey alerted me a few days ago to a major problem with this blog’s RSS subscription feed:

I usually check your blog through RSS, and I haven’t seen anything in a couple weeks. I assumed you were taking a break, but when I went to the site today, I noticed you had all kinds of new stuff up there! Looks like the old address I was using for the RSS feed (http://becoming-a-writer-seriously.com/feed) doesn’t work anymore. I took the “feed” off the end in my RSS reader and all the new posts came through.

As some of you may recall, I wrote about the inexplicable crash of my blog on 16 October. My webmaster and I thought all of the essential problems had been solved. Obviously not.

I immediately went to my Feedburner account, which manages the RSS subscription feed. I was dumbfounded to discover that on the 16th my subscription numbers dropped from almost 500 subscribers to 167. In other words, two-thirds of the subscribers simply disappeared, with no clear explanation that I can figure out.

That’s like a sword in the stomach for a blogger. It’s taken 22 months of build up my subscription list just shy of the 500 mark, the most important indication that the effort of maintaining the blog has been worth it. To be completely honest, I simply wilted into inaction nearing despair. I still haven’t really recovered.

I hope that other subscribers, like Benjamin, will check in and discover the RSS subscription problem and apply the fix that Benjamin describes above.

WHEN IT RAINS…

When I finally returned to my senses last Sunday, I decided to write a post about the misfortune. And I discovered that my broadband internet service was down — for 3 days. In fact, I’ve been having trouble with the connection for 3 weeks now, off and on. [I'm at my Philippine residence at the moment, with a presumably premium broadband account with the country's leading internet provider.] Today, yet another service person showed up at my door with yet another “fix.” Where the previous five service teams provided fixes that lasted only a few hours, this one may have resolved the problem.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Well, I’ve got lots of potential and very interesting posts on my list. I hope I can muster the discipline to keep going. And mostly, I hope that my lost subscribers somehow find their way back here and either re-subscribe or fix the feed address in their RSS reader. I miss all of you. It’s you the readers who have kept me going, even when discouraged.

I am encouraged by the fact that the subscription number has risen to 192 over the past few days. I’m hoping, as my Christmas present, we’ll be back up to 500. And my New Year’s wish is to breach the 1000 mark during 2009.

Thanks for bearing with me. And Benjamin, thanks especially for alerting me about the problem.

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    Comment by
    Sal
    30 Oct 2008

    I am glad you have everything fixed after the visit from Murphy. For some reason, my reader didn't have any problems. I don't know. Well, glad to have you back up and running, now let's get that reader count back up!

    Comment by
    tomcolvin
    30 Oct 2008

    Thanks for your comment — and glad to know that your feed is one of the
    “survivors.” I still cannot figure out just what happened — and why the
    problem affected some and not others.

    Comment by
    Matt Gibson
    6 Nov 2008

    Not that I'm the world expert on this, but if you're using Feedburner, shouldn't your RSS links point to Feedburner? And then Feedburner point to your (unpublicised) feed URL? Otherwise how is Feedburner going to count your subscribers?

    Incidentally, your feed links currently seem to be pointing at http://becoming-a-writer-seriously.com/wordpres..., rather than either of the links mentioned in the article…

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    Comment by
    tomcolvin
    6 Nov 2008

    MATT: Thanks for your imput. You are correct that about the current feed
    address:

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