I like blogs. I like them a lot.
One of the things I like the most about blogs is that I don’t have to read them in my browser! Sure, frequently I do, so I can see the nice formatting you put so much work into, but, just as often, I’ll read them in my RSS reader.
With an RSS reader, I can subscribe to your blog, get updated whenever you post something new, and keep track of exactly what posts I’ve read!
However, unfortunately, most blogs and feed generators, by default, only put the newest 10-or-so posts in the RSS feeds! This means that I don’t have a local copy of your old posts and I can’t easily keep track of which posts I’ve read!
I recently ran across a random blog while looking into Gemini protocol stuff (I’m considering mirroring this site on Gemini and ActivityPub), and I was delighted to see, upon adding it to my feed reader, all 105 posts listed right there! You should do this! It’s great!
Additionally, many blogs will only include some of the post’s content in their feed! So in many cases, I can have the backlog, and I can keep track of what I’ve read, and I can get notified of new posts, but I can’t read posts offline! This is even more annoying for webcomics (most of which also have RSS feeds), because most of them will include a thumbnail version of the comic, instead of the actual comic! Infuriating!
Hugo, the static-site generator I use for this blog, has no feed length limit by default. However, by default, the feeds it generates only contain post summaries. Awful!
So, this is a call-to-action. If you run a blog, and the software/service you use has any option to include full content in your feeds, and not limit those feeds’ lengths, please turn those options on!
If you run a blog, and your software doesn’t have those options, consider switching to something that does. I get it if you have reasons for using whatever you use, but consider making this a reason why you’d prefer to switch. If it’s a small platform, also consider reaching out to the developers and asking for this option.