On this site, I transferred the ‘Sign up for Posts via Email’ to the right and added a Search and RSS Feed icon to the top right. I copied the feed that the site was using for “RSS Feed” links that were under each post (I’ve since deleted). The code was the auto Feed WP uses (see below). Several people tested the link and said that it was all code and gobbledygook in certain browsers so I created a Feedburner account and linked the RSS icon to it and removed the small RSS Feed link under the posts (from about 3 php files).
The problem: Ever since I did all this, no one has been receiving their RSS Feeds??? I thought the code I removed was for the sign up. I thought the Feed was automatic in WP. Why aren’t they receiving RSS Feeds anymore? When I created the Feedburner account did it cancel the WP auto feed?
Here’s code or similar (RSS Feed at bottom):
This entry was posted
<?php /* This is commented, because it requires a little adjusting sometimes.
You'll need to download this plugin, and follow the instructions:
http://binarybonsai.com/archives/2004/08/17/time-since-plugin/ */
/* $entry_datetime = abs(strtotime($post->post_date) - (60*120)); echo time_since($entry_datetime); echo ' ago'; */ ?>
on <?php the_time('l, F jS, Y') ?> at <?php the_time() ?>
and is filed under <?php the_category(', ') ?>.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the <?php post_comments_feed_link('RSS 2.0'); ?> feed.
Sounds like there’s a few things that might be going on.
As far as the “gobbledygook”, I’m guessing they were using IE that shows the XML in “tree” format, and the tags were what they called “code”. AFAIK there is no way to change this except maybe by associating an xsl stylesheet with it. Not sure how to do this so it fixes IE without breaking everyone else though.
On my wildflower feed I put a comment under the xml declaration
<!-- This is an RSS feed meant to be viewed in a feed reader -->
but I don’t know if you’ld want that. I figure it’s better than leaving them wondering.
Of course to get the feedburner feed they’ll need to subscribe to that URL.
As for the WordPress feeds, seems they should still be there even if you don’t show their links. AFAIK showing their links is not involved with creating the feeds. But I’ll poke around a bit and see if I see anything suspect.
The default RSS feed is working for me. I just subscribed to it via the RSS icon in the Firefox address bar.
The RSS links in the footer also work, though I notice that they have /index.php/ in them, while this does not seem to effect it in Firefox, not sure what IE (other browsers) might think of this.
The feedburner one in the sidebar also works for me.
I poked around the WordPress core files a bit and AFAIK they’re created when they’re requested. Both default feeds, domain/feed/ and domain/comments/feed/ work fine for me in Firefox. And both pass the W3C feed validator. “feed” has a few “recommendations” but nothing that should break it. I’m wondering if you may have recently changed to “RSS2” from something else and their feed readers are expecting the old format?
AFAIK the feed “flavor” default has been RSS2 for as long as I started using WordPress a couple years ago. Themes can provide links to the other formats, but it seems it would have taken some conscious effort on your part to change to the default. Maybe not. And I’m not sure that in itseldf would be enough to break a feed reader anyway.
If there was some kind of mess up in the date/time, feed readers might not recognize a new changed feed as new, but it looks like those are up-to-date
<lastBuildDate>Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:43:05 +0000</lastBuildDate>
<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
<pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:35:15 +0000</pubDate>
[OT]AFAIK - As Far As I Know
It’s used fairly often. You may also see
TIA - Thanks In Advance
WTF - What The ****
RTFM - Read The ******* Manual
IMHO - In My Humble/Honest Opinion
IANAL - I Am Not A Lawyer
and others. The meaning can usually be figured out by the context, but don’t be afraid to ask.[/OT]
