Turning the RSS feed off or on again

By default, public Blogger sites offer an RSS feed.  But there may be times when you need to turn it off, either for good or temporarily.

RSS and Blogger

Previously I've explained what RSS is and why it's important for bloggers.

But there may be times when you want to turn off your RSS feed, either because you don't want to offer one at all, or because you want to make some posts, or changes to existing posts that are not notified to  your RSS subscribers.

Or you may need to turn it back on again - for example, if you want to use a dynamic template, to offer a subscribe-by-email option, or to enable automatic posting to Google +.

How turn off a blog's RSS feed:

In post-Sept 2011 Blogger (aka the new interface):

• Go to the Settings > Other tab.

• Under "Site Feed", use the drop-down to change Allow Blog Feed to "None".  
  (This is the only option that totally turns your feed off:  the others, including Custom, leave some aspects of the feed on.)

In pre-Sept 2011 Blogger (aka the old interface):

• Go to the Settings > Site Feed tab.

• Beside Allow Blog Feeds, use the drop-down to change the value to "None". 
  (This is the only option that totally turns your feed off:  the others, including Custom, leave some aspects of the feed on.)

How turn on your RSS feed:

This is just the same as turning the feed off (see above), except that your need to choose one of these options instead:

• Full - the whole post is shown in your feed
• Until Jump Break  - only the part of the post before the jump break is sent to your feed
• Short - only the first 120 (ish) letters, or less if the jump break comes first, are sent to your feed.

Also, the new interface has a Custom option, and the old interface has an Advanced Mode.   If you use these , you can individually set the value for post feed, comments feed (all comments), and comments-feed-per-post.


Private blogs 
Blogs that are not public do not offer RSS feeds, because they cannot be secured.   So if your blog is private, then it does not matter what setting you choose, your blog will not offer an RSS feed.

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Related Articles:



Understanding RSS - why it's imporant for bloggers who want to grow an audience

What are dynamic templates

Linking your blog and the social networks

Follow-by-email gadget:  an easy way to offer email subscriptions

Private blogs aren't as secure as you might think