Pottery Barn Trunk
Let’s talk about trunks!
More specifically, let’s look at stylish coffee and side table trunks—and talk about why truncating blog feeds has become necessary.
I’ve been blogging for five years, and during that time the web has changed a lot. Blogging used to feel more experimental: fewer guides, fewer large blogs to model, and no clear roadmap. We learned through trial and error, figuring out what worked as we went.
Blogging still requires adaptability. You learn as you go and make decisions based on what feels right as opportunities come up.
Country Living
One tool many bloggers and readers have relied on is RSS feeds and feed readers. These services let readers follow many blogs in one place by providing a feed address that delivers full posts into a reader like Google Reader once did. Reading via a feed is convenient and keeps you up to date without visiting each site.
Personally I like visiting a blog directly to enjoy the visual layout, banners, and sidebars, but many people prefer the simplicity of a reader or email delivery.
Recently, however, full RSS feeds have been abused. Some sites harvest entire posts from feeds and republish them as their own content. That practice takes our work—often hours of writing, photographing, and editing—and uses it without permission.
Pottery Barn Trunk Side Table
There’s a big difference between featuring another blogger’s work with credit and a link—and outright copying an entire post. Proper features and roundups are welcome and appreciated. But republishing complete posts, even with a link back, is not acceptable. Creating original blog content is hard work: researching, photographing, writing, and maintaining a consistent publishing schedule is time-consuming and often a full-time commitment.
I enjoy blogging, but it takes effort. When someone copies entire posts to build their own site, it undermines that effort.
To protect our content and the integrity of original blogs, I’ve decided to truncate the RSS feed for this site. That means this post will only be available in full on The Inspired Room site itself or via email subscription; feed readers will show an image and an excerpt with a link back to the full post.
If you use a feed reader, you will see only a preview and a link—clicking that link will bring you here to read the complete post when it’s convenient.
Note: If you use Chrome, there are reader-friendly options that allow you to open truncated feeds without leaving your reader; consider options that respect creators while preserving convenience for readers.
Pottery Barn Coffee Table Trunk
My blog remains free to read. The only change is how posts are delivered to feed readers: titles and excerpts will still appear to let you know there’s new content, but to read the full post you’ll come to the site. Email subscribers will, for now, continue to receive full posts for convenience.
If you prefer full posts in your inbox, consider subscribing by email through the sidebar; email subscribers will continue to get complete posts for the time being.
Thank you for being supportive readers and for understanding this change. I’m grateful for your visits and encouragement during these five years of blogging. Let’s discourage sites that steal content and keep blogging original, ethical, and fun for everyone.
Thanks again for your support. Here’s to the next five years of creating and sharing!