***If it's all gobbledygook to you just scroll down to
the last 3 points & MAKE SURE YOU DO THEM!***
Looks like I managed to fix all my techy problems! {in a sense!!} by creating my new feed.
PLEASE RESUBSCRIBE IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY - ALL DETAILS IN MY SIDEBAR.
{no need to resubscribe to BLog Lovin', Google Dashboard or Email - only other readers}. Any suspected problems in future DO LET ME KNOW WON'T YA?!? I feel like the world has been lifted off my shoulders as it sure was a worry to me.
Now WHO CARES about all this stuff?! Well none of us do but it's important that you know a few basic things because otherwise you could be producing beautiful work, even blogging it all, but you MAY NOT BE AWARE that it is not reaching some or even your entire audience.
It all depends HOW people follow your blog. Of course if they click in manually to your blog you know your posts are there so no problem, but how many people do that? Not many...
HOW TO AVOID YOUR BLOG FEED BREAKING
1) Why would your feed break in the first place?
2 reasons. a) It gets too big. Yup, that actually happens...
How to avoid it. Go to Feedburner HERE.
Once in Feedburner (part of Blogger & Google) it will open straight on your page.
CLICK ON THE NAME OF YOUR BLOG & it will take you
to a page full of details, CLICK UP AT THE TOP LEFT
where it says EDIT FEED DETAILS. You'll get to this:-
To stop any possibility of your feed becoming too big over the course of your years of blogging, you need to add an easy peasy little extension to your ORIGINAL FEED. This should NOT change your Feed Address. My problem began when I added this code & somehow DID change my original feed. NO IDEA still how I managed that but if you watch carefully when you are making the change to the original feed you can ENSURE THAT THE FEED ADDRESS DOES NOT CHANGE. If it does just click "cancel and do not make these changes.
HOW TO FIX YOUR FEED IF IT DOES BREAK
To get the little extension you need to add click on the TROUBLESHOOTIZE tab (see it above?), scroll to the bottom where it talks about how to MAKE YOUR FEED SHORTER so that people get to see the last (anything from 1 - 500) posts. Depending on how often you blog set the number to be between 8 and 16 for example (as many posts as you would typically make in one month)
This page HERE is the link that opens from the Troubleshootize page which explains how to make your feed shorter. The code is just ?max-results=8 for example. I did this for Scrap Around The World last night & it worked fine so now I'm a pro :0)
SOMETIMES YOUR FEED BREAKS BECAUSE OF OTHER PROBLEMS.
Mostly because of "bad code"that gets into it from COPYING & PASTING FROM WORD! Well I never!! I don't do it myself but sometimes am given text for blog hops, etc, that may quite likely have been written out in Word by others...OOPS!! REMEMBER NO WORD!!! {As in Microsoft Word} and if you are copying & pasting into your blog from something you've been given & you don't know where it originated HIGHLIGHT ALL THE TEXT then click this little icon at the top right of your open blog page when in "Compose" {where you change your font, add images, etc...
That will mess things up & you will have to get them looking good again (line spacing etc) but it's the only way to get rid of the offending code that COULD BREAK YOUR BLOG FEED!
------------------------------------
If this happens you need to go through your latest post & unformat them all!! Yup it would take FOREVER so you end up burning a NEW FEED altogether like me that loses you half your following SO the moral of the story! Don't let it break in the first place!! {although for me it was unavoidable as I didn't have this information} THAT'S WHY I'M SHARING IT!! So you can avoid the same thing happening to you!!!
How do you know if your feed is broken?
NO-ONE {Blogger/Feedburner/ Blog Lovin' tells you when your feed is broken. You have to work it out for yourself. Mine was broken for 5 weeks before I became aware of it being broken. I suspected a problem but was not sure what it was or how to fix it.
BUT I have worked out that there are SOME SIMPLE THINGS YOU CAN DO TO MAKE SURE YOUR FEED IS ALWAYS WORKING. Nowhere else is this written & I have read through half of Google & Blogger Help on this issue so you can thank me later if your feed breaks & you pick up the problem immediately!!
---------------------------------------
HOW TO CHECK THAT YOUR BLOG FEED IS ALWAYS WORKING!!
1. ADD YOUR OWN BLOG TO YOUR SIDEBAR in a standard "Blog List"gadget. This will ENSURE that if it stops updating YOU WILL SEE IT IMMEDIATELY so have it somewhere really visible, close to the top of your sidebar.
2. Subscribe to YOUR OWN BLOG via Blog Lovin' or whatever Reader you use. Yes you can easily subscribe to your own blog through your own profile that is linked to that very blog.
3. Sign up for E MAIL UPDATES to ensure that you receive your blog updates via email.
These 3 updating methods are all affected by your FEED & IF IT BREAKS THEY WON'T UPDATE & you will know right away! Problem solved before it happens :)
If it DOES happen go into Feedburner & fix it like I told you! Scroll up!!