Evan Sheehan highlighted a problem with changing article IDs in his Atom newsfeeds.1 I use an RSS feed instead but the principle is the same. Each new item has a unique ID that should not change because if it does, newsreaders detect the original article as new, and presents it for reading once again.
I recognise the problem and the annoyance it can cause. My feed is built using Quartz which uses the URL of the original post as the unique id. Unfortunately, that’s not persistent. Something as simple as correcting a typo in a name will cause the next site build to use a different URL and tell your newsreader I’ve posted something new.
Like Evan, I have locked in past blog entries with their original URLs. From February 2025 onwards, I have a unique URI now and have modified Quartz to use it rather than a URL generated from the post name. Why not update past entries to use the same? It sounds nice but each would then appear as a new post!
The form of my URI is:
`tag:theqg.info,[publication date as YYYY-MM-DD]:[MD5 of title]`
This page’s URI is:
tag:theqg.info,2025-02-15:7155b7361c179e2c6bb43f7fe670e38b