Dilbert RSS

25.6.13

Written late in the morning in English • Tags: RSS, web

Since yesterday the Dilbert RSS feed no longer includes an image element, so I revived my feed of long ago:

https://kimmo.suominen.com/stuff/dilbert-daily.xml

That’s actually a new address, because the old one wouldn’t work in Feedly. However, the old address is also still valid:

https://kimmo.suominen.com/stuff/dilbert.xml

The “reviving” of the feed constituted of not just updating the XML file but also removing a permanent redirect I had put in place when the official Dilbert feed was created. I thought the redirect would have helped existing subscribers transparently, but it turns out very few feed readers actually update the feed address in their configuration. Instead, I kept seeing accesses to the feed regularly. But from what I can tell, the redirect was also followed, so for the humans reading the feed it was still transparent.

But it looks like Feedly has taken the “permanent” nature of the redirect to hart at some point and isn’t checking my web server anymore. Not at least since I revived the feed and removed the redirect. Using the original address of my feed just results in the official Dilbert feed being displayed instead.

Thanks to all the commenters who posted about the problem.

Revision history

4.7.2013: Based on the feedback in the comments I’ve moved the feed to a new address, so that it would work on Feedly as well.
9.7.2013: Switched to HTTPS.

25 comments

Sweet. Thanks, Kimmo! And thanks for hosting.

JVimes — 28.6.13 @ 4:30

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for the workaround, and for hosting it! Ace stuff.

Hax — 28.6.13 @ 18:12

Thanks.

ykcvrioe — 29.6.13 @ 15:00

sweet. thanks. using feedly and they’re not showing proper content, they’re showing the “changes with our feed, now link to website” message, but I can clearly see that your RSS file doesn’t have any of that text, probably a bug with feedly.

JVTod — 29.6.13 @ 19:14

Some feed readers do odd things. Maybe they don’t like the fact that the content is just an image? Works fine in NewsBlur :)

Kimmo Suominen — 30.6.13 @ 23:14

Nice one, works fine in newsfox

lukerazor — 1.7.13 @ 4:56

great

ando — 1.7.13 @ 6:19

Thanks for hosting

Stephen — 1.7.13 @ 10:54

Thanks so much!!

I don’t really understand how someone as tech savvy as Scott Adams is would alienate his fan base like that by stopping RSS feeds.

Tim — 1.7.13 @ 13:14

When you add it to Feedly, just rename it to something other than “Dilbert”

I named mine “Dil bert” (with a space) and now it shows! Thanks!

deep — 1.7.13 @ 19:19

Thanks for the tip!

Kimmo Suominen — 2.7.13 @ 0:23

You rock! Thank you for providing a fix to the PHB’s apparent decision to try and milk the website for all it’s worth rather than provide the user-friendly, useful RSS feed.

Josh — 2.7.13 @ 21:40

It’s blocked by Feedly for me.

I think Feedly are deliberately making this hard, and the big brotherness of this I’m not liking at all.

Ended up making my own RSS using Yahoo Pipes and it’s working with Feedly now.

Aidan — 3.7.13 @ 0:52

Works great in digg reader. Thanks for the feed.

Gordon — 3.7.13 @ 17:35

Thanks for this – I also had the same issue with Feedly, which I resolved using Yahoo Pipes as well (thanks Aidan).

Keane Ingram — 3.7.13 @ 20:58

Hm, ya, Full view in Feedly doesn’t show the image, even if I rename the feed. And even if I try subscribing “manually” using

http://cloud.feedly.com/#subscription/feed/http://kimmo.suominen.com/stuff/dilbert.xml

The Old Reader displays the image great, in all its high resolution glory. Their mobile web site has a few kinks to work out (which I’ve reported, so we’ll see). Not quite as pretty as Feedly, but so far not as commercialized. I just wish they had a “save for later” feature that wasn’t a public “like”.

JVimes — 4.7.13 @ 8:34

Thank you – it really bothered me that they’d broken the real Dilbert RSS.

Paul — 4.7.13 @ 8:51

Okay, I think I know what the deal with Feedly is. I’ve added a second address for the same feed that can be used in Feedly without issues. I’ve updated the post to reflect this.

Kimmo Suominen — 4.7.13 @ 23:54

The feedly workaround works great, as does your original scraper. Thank you.

On a side note, I’ve emailed feedly support detailing this bug, and I’m sure they’ll get to it eventually. They’re probably more focused on stabilizing their fledgling backend at the moment, than fixing obscure client bugs, understandably. FWIW, I think they’ve done a great job so far.

Anmar Mansur — 5.7.13 @ 7:26

Thanks for reporting the issue to Feedly, Anmar. An active user reporting it seems better to me — I don’t really use Feedly myself. I was also too tired last night to do it myself (excuses, excuses — I know).

On a permanent redirect (301) they should just update the subscription URL (possibly merging it with an existing feed entry in their database) and remove the original address from their database. This way the old address can be reused in the future. If they do cache the old address after the redirect, it should be for a limited time.

Reviving an old feed like in this case might be less common, but it is not uncommon for domains to change owners. The new owner might provide a feed at the same address a previous owner had redirected. (E.g. “http://example.com/feed”)

Kimmo Suominen — 5.7.13 @ 11:23