A New Format For Blogger Post Feeds

Blog feeds offer a means of reaching a wider audience and allow our readers to stay up to date with the latest posts.

Until recently, we had little control over how our feeds were presented using the Short or Long feed options available in our Blogger dashboards. Short Feeds display only the first 400 words, stripping that content of HTML and images, while Long Feeds display the entire blog post.

Now the Blogger team have added a third choice to the length of our feeds, which we can use to display item content in feeds up until the Jump Break in our post. This enables any HTML-based content (such as images and links) will be displayed for each feed item, with a link to read the full item on summarized posts.

To enable this new feed setting, go to Settings>Site Feed in your Blogger dashboard. Next to Allow Blog Feeds, choose the option in the drop-down sajian which says Until Jump Break then save this setting:

Summarize your Blogger Post Feeds

Now any subscribers to your feed will be able to view a summarized, HTML version of your latest blog updates with links to read the entire post online:

's summarized posts feed

If you redirect your Blogger post feed through Feedburner, there's no need to change any further settings. Since Feedburner uses the Blogger feed we specify, this is updated automatically.

Do you prefer the summarized feed?

As posts here on are often image/code heavy, I decided to begin using the new feeds option instead of the Full feed. I hope this will prove more useful for subscribers, particularly those who receive updates by email, as it will save time for images to load and read the full item on with more illustrative formatting applied.

What do you think?

Have you tried the new option for your own post feeds? Do you prefer this new format, for your own sites and also the change for subscribers?

Please feel free to leave your comments using the form below.

Image credit: Rafa[EU] via Flickr Creative Commons