RSS Summary

[kumarharsh]

Normally, RSS feeds give you a summary, and when you follow the link, you get to read the whole blog post.
It seems like Ghost does not offer a way to specify a "summary" block in the post, and thus the whole post is downloaded, which is unnecessary and eats up bandwidth.

Is there a way to specify a summary for Ghost posts?

[halfdan]

Hi @kumarharsh, this is a question most suited for our forums. To answer your question: There is currently no way of doing that, but it will be possible once apps are available (most likely in Ghost 0.5).

On a personal note: I don't like blogs that do this as it forces me to visit their website. I usually unsubscribe from feeds that don't give me the full content.

[ErisDS]

Not sure what you're basing your 'normally' on, but I echo @halfdan on this.

It's something to talk about in #2263, but I don't think we are doing it wrong.

[kumarharsh]

@ErisDS I am basing my normally on the fact that for all the feeds I encountered till now.

@halfdan I'm more ambivalent on the issue of blog posts not supplying a summary. Of course, you shouldn't be dictating how people serve their content. As for the unsubscribing, I'd do the same if it was link-bait or upworthy kind of summaries, but sometimes it really is required. A good usecase would be saving up on internet bandwidth in the not-so-connected parts of the world
Would you throw out a book which had a summary on it's back cover?

[javorszky]

It is a talk for #2263 or apps. On a new note, according to this: http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification#hrelementsOfLtitemgt, the only content field of an item is description. As soon as apps land, I would expect people to build one that allows you to filter that. We're collecting use cases for app ideas here: https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/wiki/App-Ideas, and the ability to filter rss feeds is already one of them.

[halfdan]

@kumarharsh Personal experience is very subjective - https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal. As for bandwidth, when a user has to visit a website to view the actual content rather than seeing it embedded in the RSS feed he'd waste a lot more bandwidth.

As @javorszky already said, this is something for which you'll be able to build an app for. While I agree that description is misleading if you provide the full content it's also worth noting that the Atom format comes with both summary and content (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4287#section-4.1.3) for feeds. (On a comparison between the two see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS#RSS_Compared_to_Atom).

[kumarharsh]

@halfdan yes, I agree with your last point. Anyways, you're the guys building Ghost, so you'd have more knowledge in this regard. I'll probably have to implement a plugin or something for the blog.

On a lighter note: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-fallacy-fallacy