About the blog RSS feed
This page explains how your blog’s RSS feed works — what it is, who can read which posts, and why members-only posts stay safe even though the feed is a public web address.
The short version
Section titled “The short version”RSS is a simple, standard way for readers to follow your blog in a reader app instead of checking your site or waiting for an email. Your public blog has an RSS feed built in. Anyone can subscribe to it and get your public posts as you publish them. Members-only posts are never in the public feed — they’re kept for signed-in members and protected by a secure token, never a password in the link.
How it works
Section titled “How it works”Think of RSS as a plain, behind-the-scenes list of your latest posts that a reader app can check on its own.
- What readers see. On your public blog there’s a Subscribe via RSS link. It points to your public feed. A reader app checks that feed and shows new posts as they appear, so members can follow along without email.
- The public feed. Anyone — signed in or not — can open the public feed. It includes your public posts only. A members-only post is never included in it.
- The member feed. MapleGather can also serve a feed that includes members-only posts, but only to a request that proves who the member is. It does that with a secure token carried along with the request — not a password written into the feed’s web address.
- What stays out. Drafts and scheduled posts are not in either feed. A scheduled post joins the feed when its publish time arrives; a draft never does.
Why it works this way
Section titled “Why it works this way”Two things are at stake: privacy and safety.
Members-only posts are for members, so the public feed must never leak them — that’s why the public feed carries public posts only. And a feed’s web address is easy to copy or forward by accident. If a password lived inside that address, anyone who got the link could reuse it. So MapleGather keeps the secret out of the address entirely: the member feed proves who’s asking with a token that travels with the request, the same secure approach used across the rest of the product.
Edge cases & boundaries
Section titled “Edge cases & boundaries”- Most reader apps show only the public feed. Common RSS reader apps can’t send the secure member token with each check, so in practice a reader app shows your public posts. To read members-only posts, a member reads them signed in on your blog instead of in a reader app.
- The blog is one-way. The feed carries the posts you publish, from your organization out to your readers. It isn’t a place for replies or discussion — that’s what the Community area is for.
- A members-only post and a non-member. A non-member’s reader simply never receives a members-only post. Even if one somehow reached them, the body is withheld, so the private content is never exposed.
- The feed follows your posts. Rename a category or unpublish a post and the feed keeps up on its next check — it always reflects what’s currently live.