Tried & Tested: Removing a Deleted Entry from Feeds
*Blows away dust* Ok it’s been quite a while since I updated. The entry (+ pics) on my trip to Australia will be published later. Hehe. Actually, I *thought* we would be able to visit Brisbane as well. But no, it didn’t happen. We took advantage of Air Asia X’s cheap (like, super cheap!!) fares and flew to one of its hottest (pun intended - it’s summer) destinations, Gold Coast. And we remained there for the whole trip. Anyway, meanwhile I wanna tell you guys about a boo-boo I did yesterday.
I bet some of you saw a password-protected entry in your feeds. And then when you came here and (I quote Angel) ’searched high and low’, there wasn’t any password-protected entry to be found! Look, it’s like this. I accidentally published an entry that I did not intend to make public. Yes it’s one of bloggers’ greatest sins, ever. How can such a stupid mistake be committed? Within seconds, that entry quickly propagated to my Feedburner via RSS and I panicked like a siaokia. Deleting the entry was no use - it wouldn’t be removed from the Feedburner quickly enough. Many of my subscribers’ RSS readers (Google Reader/Feedreader/Bloglines/etc) would have fetched the contents from my Feedburner.
So I tried a trick. In less than one minute after publishing that entry, I deleted it, and republished another dummy entry (the password-protected entry that some of you guys saw, which has since been deleted). This immediately sent a ‘ping’ to my Feedburner to update the feed contents, and voila!, as I expected, my Feedburner sync-ed with my blog contents! That unintentional entry was gone, and a newly-published, password-protected entry was up. *Phew*. Nevermind that the password-protected entry was visible, as long as the unintended entry was removed! Speaking of that ’sensitive’ entry, how many of you actually caught a glimpse of it in your Readers while I was frantically trying to remove it? ;p
Recap: In order sync my blog with my Feedburner, I simply published a new entry to ‘nudge’ or ping my Feedburner. The reason why that password-protected post still appeared (prior to this entry) in your RSS Readers even though I’ve deleted it off my blog, was because I didn’t bother to publish another new entry to sync things. As a result, it stayed in my Feedburner until your RSS reader had picked it up (and cached until now). Uhm… wakarimasuka?
P/s. By the way, someone hotlinked one of my images from her blog, but the image is not visible (cannot appear on her site lah). That’s because I’ve activated a feature that does not allow hotlinking of my images from another domain besides ‘narrowband.org’. Actually, it’s okay to use my images, as long as my watermark/signature is not cropped off. But I’d recommend that the images be hosted on your own server (Photobucket, Flickr, etc), so as to not share my site’s bandwidth. Yougetwataimean? So darling, download the image to your harddrive, and upload it onto your own Photobucket ok? ;D
12 Feb 2008 narrowband

And I wondered what that password protected post was all about. Cheh! Make people all curious for nothing wan… *grin*
Weh tak faham le. How can the old entry nudged out? 2 entries are different wor?
Don’t have to explain la. Hehe
Hai! Wakarimasu!
Anata wa totemo free desu ne!! :P
Tagging you for a meme: http://www.adamok.net/2008/02/dream-gadget-meme.html
interesting and curious to know what is the password protected content until you become SiaKia :-p hehehe ….
means post up sth new, ping the rss for the new post, then delete of the previous post? betoi?
what feature ah? wordpress ada? or kena play by codings… :D
not understand at all..
happy valentine day..
Rinnah - I thought you’d ask me about the ’sensitive’ entry that I was trying to hide, rather than the password-protected dummy entry! ;p
Che-cheh - Ya le, I also not very experienced in this area (ok I don’t mis-publish my entries so often ma :Pp), so I also dunno what exactly happened to me. So I could only make some inferences and assumptions based on what I observed.
Angel - So ka?? Clever desu neh!! :pp Aiyar I already cut down on blogging alot lor… I got many updates tertunggak leh!
Adam - Thanks Adam!
TZ - Hehhehehe… *shakes head* That one really… haihhh… I really made a big stupid mistake :p
Allison - How to ping? How does wordpress ping the rss when there’s an update? This is the main question people should ask. Well, FYI, each time a new entry a published, a ping is sent out! That’s the answer!
So, in order nudge the RSS to cepat cepat update (sync with my blog la, cos I already deleted itu sensitive post ma, but in the rss it belum hilang!), I purposely created dummy entry and published it. This way, a ping was sent and the rss was updated.
Keeyit - It’s ok. I also wasn’t very clear of what I really wanted to tell :p Happy Valentine’s…