Sunday, July 01, 2007

Site change pending: the 301 redirect didn't work!

[This has been updated from the original. I was optimistic the 301 redirect would mean that feed readers would find the new feed, but neither Bloglines nor Google Reader did.]

I'm going to move this blog to a new google apps domain, but the feed will still be managed by Google/Blogger. You shouldn't won't have to do anything, because:
  1. Google will do a URL redirect indefinitely.
  2. The specific URL redirect is a "301 redirect", meaning a permanent move. Many feed readers will automatically update their feeds, even though the old feed address will continue to work. The update will take a few minutes to occur.
If, however, you find your feed has gone silent, this post can guide you to the new address (won't work until the move btw).

The main side-effect of the move will be that the last 10 posts will be treated as "new". I've written a bit about how the move is accomplished previously.

The new site, kateva.org, has its own "main page" and will eventually hold two blogs, this tech blog and my "everything else" blog. The urls for the pages will eventually be:
  • Gordon's Tech: googlefaughnan.blogspot.com will become tech.kateva.org (today)
  • Gordon's Notes: jfaughnan.blogspot.com will become notes.kateva.org (in a week or so)
My other family, community, and special needs weblogs will stay where they are for now.

I've two reasons to make the move. One is to get away from the whimsical URLs I chose to play with years ago, the other is to move my pseudonymous identify (John Gordon) a few degrees away from my "true name" (John xxxxxxxx).

More after the move ...

Update 7/1/07: After 14 hours neither Google Reader nor Bloglines have updated pre-existing subscriptions. Yech. You should update manually if you can read this. Google Groups Help discussion here.

Update 7/2/07: The Blogger help group samaritans found that Blogger is returning a true 301 redirect, so the fault seems to lie with Bloglines ...

Update 7/3/07: I've not heard anything from Bloglines tech support. One clue might be that the pattern of the Blogger feed has changed:
This is what the good people on Google Groups help found the 301 message was:
7/2/2007 18:58:21 Trying http://googlefaughnan.blogspot.com
Redirect!
Header:
HTTP/1.0 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://tech.kateva.org/
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Cache-control: private
Content-Length: 205
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2007 01:57:37 GMT
Server: GFE/1.3
Connection: Keep-Alive
I'm going to try the redirect using some tools suggested on the Blogger group and see what happens when I try to hit the old url directly.

Update 7/3/07: Bloglines may be absolved! Google uses a different syntax for RSS feeds on custom domain vs. traditional blogger. It appears the 301 redirect only changes the domain, so a subscription that references the RSS feed will break during a transition and cannot be updated.

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