Starting with MacStories 3.0, we had to make some changes to the site’s RSS content that didn’t please a lot of people - we truncated our feed. Lots of things were happening in our workshop that we weren’t ready to roll out, namely a feature for previous subscribers who represented our original audience.
Working with WordPress, readers pointed out that a simple “switch” in WordPress would put things back to normal. Honestly, we didn’t want to do that. By default, we do want people to see the truncated feeds, and we wanted to offer it as an option. Poor timing and the inability to reach out privately to our existing RSS subscribers had eyeballs rolling - we launched with truncated feeds as the only option. Quite frankly, that sucked. But our intentions are good (and we’re good on our word).
In the MacStories workshop, we were looking at building a special announcement feature that only subscribers have access to. We initially planned to launch with that in mind, however, the additional code broke MacStories Featured content. After a work around, we finally had our additional feed system in place: subscribers will be occasionally receiving exclusive announcements and site content that the outside world cannot see on our homepage unless they know the specific permalink. If you unsubscribed before or aren’t keeping up with your RSS feeds, you’ve already missed out on a hidden gem pertaining to this very topic.
For everyone else and new readers on the fence about subscribing to our feeds, MacStories 3.0 now has full content available with ads. Just click the RSS icon in your address bar in Safari to subscribe. You can also use the link available below.
feed://feeds.feedburner.com/macstories/ad-supported
There will be “read-more” links at the end of each full post in the feed, but they won’t take you to any additional content unless you want to browse comments or something. With our backend in place, you now have the choice (finally!) between truncated and full feeds.
We’ll be listening closely to any feedback or ideas you might have: remember, you can always contact us via email to request features.
