Thursday, August 14, 2008
I should just keep my big mouth shut
It seems that since I posted these blogging safety tips, several of my friends and family have switched their blogs to be private. Perhaps I’m being egotistical in thinking I have that much influence on anyone, and the trend is purely coincidental. But regardless of the rhyme or reason, several of you have gone private. While I totally respect your reasons, can I just vent for a moment and tell you how much it sucks for me? (Insert your polite “yes” here.) I am completely lazy and totally rely on my google reader that has become a time and sanity saver. In a few brief seconds I can see who has updated their blog and then choose where to begin. There’s no clicking to favourites and scrolling down, trying to remember whom I’ve checked last… except for you private people. Inevitably I forget about you. I’m so caught up in my ease of blog checking that you escape my radar and ultimately it takes a slap in the face (or most commonly you leaving a comment on my blog and me remembering how much I want to know what you’re up to and clicking over through your profile) for me to get back to reading your blogs. So I’m opening this up to all my techy friends, and wondering if there isn’t an easier way – a google reader for private blogs or something? Or perhaps I may use my slightly non-existent influence to convince you privateers to go public once again? Or should I just shut it?
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8 comments:
Amen sister!! May you have an influence on the 'private people' because I'm not checking either! I did finally make a separate folder in my favorites called 'private blogs' and I read it about 1 time a week. But if you learn something better-share it!!
LOL! Love it! I second all that. . .Totally agree with everything you said. . except for the keeping your mouth shut. :)
I don't like the fact that my blog is private for that reason, but it's the only way I can feel safe about blogging. I don't like that I have idea who wants to read my blog, but can't because they don't have access.
I agree on the private blog google reader idea!!
Wow, I'm lame. I don't know what a google reader even is! I just put everyone's blog on my "blog list" on my own blog and just click on it to go there. Then I don't have to remember anything, I just go down the list whenever I'm working on my own blog.
Regarding the private blog - google reader question: there is no way currently to subscribe to a blog that has been set to private (i.e., only people listed can view it). Blogger, wordpress, etc. just won't send out a feed that can be subscribed to.
That being said, there are different "degrees" of privacy you may want to consider. The most strict on the blogger platform is in the Settings - Permissions - tab option that says only people you choose can view the blog. This is the subscriberless version.
There is another group of settings in the Settings - Basic - tab that can help provide some privacy without eliminating your subscription feed. If you set the "Add your blog to our listings?" box to "No", "Let search engines find your blog?" to "No", people won't be able to find your blog on search engines, but you will still have a feed that people can subscribe to.
Hiding your blogs from your profile (by clicking "Hide" next to the title of the blog in your dashboard) will also keep people who don't know the URL for your blog from finding it that way (i.e., by following your comments on other people's blogs back to your profile and then to your blog).
If you've had issues with unwanted visitors to your blog, you would probably need to get a different URL before applying these postings, and then ask your friends not to give out the new address to strangers.
With the setup I've described above, you can significantly increase your privacy without completely locking out your friends. Hopefully this will be helpful.
Thank you Aaron. I knew there were some techy friends out there who comprehend the blogging world and world wide web much better than I do.
I am sadly a much less reliable reader of my privatized blogging friends, since I too rely on blogger to alert me to new posts. I've done what Arron stated, since starting with blogger back in Jan 2005 and it's worked really well for me so far - even with friends linking to my blog on their public blogs.
I agree with this. What I do (which I don't in any way claim it's best) is put those handful (I think I have about 7) of friends' blogs in a folder in my bookmarks. Occasionally I click the folder and "open all" and then all 7 open in separate tabs and I can read them that way. Anyways good luck and if you find a better way let me know!!
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