Deleted Posts, And The Blog Feed

Occasionally, a bewildered blog owner will write into Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, and ask

How do I completely remove a post? I deleted a post - but my readers still could read it, in Google Reader!

Some owners are not clear about the nature of post deletion, and the blog feed.

One of the solutions for recovering a deleted post is to retrieve it from Google Reader. Even if you have not subscribed to the blog feed, you can, at any time, subscribe, and retrieve the text content of any previously published post. This solution works because once published, a post will remain in the blog feed for eternity.

Until the post is published, it's in Draft status. As soon as the post is published, the published copy goes into the blog feed. If you immediately revert the post to draft status, the post disappears from the blog main page (subject to clearing browser cache) - but once published, the post remains cached in the feed.

As long as the blog exists, and the blog feed exists (the blog remains public, and the feed is enabled), all previously published posts will remain cached in the blog feed. It may be possible to reset the blog feed - though both of these solutions should be examined carefully - for how your existing readers might be affected.

• Make a private blog, even momentarily. A private blog does not publish a feed.
• Turn off the feed, explicitly, momentarily.

Depending upon local caches of feed content, the blog feed may, or may not, be reset for everybody, with either procedure.

This is both good, and bad - but it is simply something that you can't change, easily.

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