Plugin breaking RSS feed

  • Resolved oddmonster

    (@oddmonster)


    7 years, 2 months ago

    The RSS feed for our podcast started coming up as broken with the last update to this plugin. When I turn the plugin off, the RSS feed comes up as valid. When I activate the plugin, the feed breaks.

    How can I troubleshoot this issue?

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
  • Plugin Contributor Angelo Mandato

    (@amandato)

    7 years, 2 months ago

    Hello @oddmonster,

    Can you be more specific when you say the feed is broken? I ran the feed through castfeedvaidator.com, podba.se as well as our own internal feed validator and do not see any issues with the feed itself.

    ref:
    http://castfeedvalidator.com/?url=https://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/feed/podcast/ and https://podba.se/validate/?url=https://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/feed/podcast/

    What are you using that is telling you the feed is invalid? Can you provide the specific URL to the feed, I am assuming it is https://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/feed/podcast/ otherwise.

    I do see a warning that your SSL certificate is not from one of the primary SSL providers that Apple supports, but that would not cause an issue with the feed, the SSL problem would stop the application from pulling the feed entirely. See https://create.blubrry.com/manual/your-web-site/secure-ssl-podcast-website/ for more details about SSL certs and podcasting.

    Thanks,
    Angelo

    Thread Starter oddmonster

    (@oddmonster)

    7 years, 2 months ago

    Thanks for the speedy response! https://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/feed/podcast is indeed the feed I’m trying to troubleshoot.

    I’m getting error messages from the W3C validator (https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftiie.w3.uvm.edu%2Fblog%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F) Specifically:

    “This feed does not validate.

    
line 37, column 1: href must be a full URL: https://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/tiie_podcast_square_logo.jpg [help]

	<itunes:image href="https://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/09 ...
 ^
line 38, column 1: Undefined channel element: itunes:type [help]

	<itunes:type>episodic</itunes:type>
 ^
line 46, column 1: channel contains more than one image (2 occurrences) [help]

	<image>
 ^
line 77, column 65: Undefined item element: itunes:order (35 occurrences) [help]

<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">17533</post-id>		<itunes:ord ...
                                                                 ^
In addition, interoperability with the widest range of feed readers could be improved by implementing the following recommendations.

line 2, column 0: Use of unknown namespace: http://www.rawvoice.com/rawvoiceRssModule/ [help]

<rss version="2.0"
line 2, column 0: Use of unknown namespace: http://www.google.com/schemas/play-podcasts/1.0 [help]

<rss version="2.0"
line 57, column 0: Use of unknown namespace: com-wordpress:feed-additions:1 (36 occurrences) [help]

<site xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">65549416</site>	<item>
line 194, column 473: Encode "&" and "<" in plain text using hexadecimal character references. (5 occurrences) [help]

... nt-wide twitter-based book chat as well.</itunes:summary>"

I'm also getting error messages from iTunes and Podcast Addict (https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ryCxi_21YWo/XC-9J_TdnhI/AAAAAAABE4U/tXrakJVXE285NjtZYYNyj91yQ6KDGvMmACL0BGAYYCw/h1920/218147622477356836%253Faccount_id%253D1).
    Plugin Support Shawn

    (@shawnogordo)

    7 years, 2 months ago

    The w3 validator is old and outdated. It puts up a lot of unnecessary warnings due to that.

    As Angelo did before, I ran your feed thru CastFeedValidator, which is a modern validator designed for podcast feeds, and everything came up OK. One thing I did notice, however, is that your artwork file here:
    https://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/tiie_podcast_square_logo.jpg

    Is actually below spec. Resize it so it’s at least 1400px square with a file size under 500k.

    What is the app in the screenshot you linked to?

    Thread Starter oddmonster

    (@oddmonster)

    7 years, 2 months ago

    The app in the screenshot is Podcast Addict. I contacted their support team and from there learned that the app considers our podcast RSS feed broken. Additionally, new episodes weren’t getting pushed out to iTunes.

    I’ve switched the RSS feed to our soundcloud one for the moment, and both Podcast Addict and iTunes indicate that it’s valid, so now I’m just trying to troubleshoot what the issue is with the original feed.

    Plugin Contributor Angelo Mandato

    (@amandato)

    7 years, 2 months ago

    Hello ,

    Like Shawn said the w3 validator as well as validator.org are out of date, way out of date actually they cannot handle https URLs. Please rely on a true podcast validator such as podba.se or castfeedvalidator.com

    I do see an issue. Your theme is adding a duplicate image tag to the feed:

    <image>
	<url>https://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/cropped-biggreen-32x32.jpg</url>
	<title>The 21st Century Classroom</title>
	<link>https://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog</link>
	<width>32</width>
	<height>32</height>
</image>

    This is a relic from many years ago, a theme developer thought this was a good idea to put a favicon in the feeds, except there is not application that uses or displays this 32×32 image from an RSS feed, blog or podcast. Many themes now copy this out of ignorance. It is just an idea that went no where. In other words, preventing your theme from adding this in your podcast feed will cause no harm.

    In Powerpress Settings > Feeds tab, there is an option to not allow other themes/plugins to modify your podcast feed, check this option then save. That should solve this problem.

    Do you mind sharing the name of the theme you are using?

    As for the error “XML or text not at start of entity”, that means that the line “<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>” was found on the 3rd line of the RSS XML, which is wrong as it is indicating. This is telling me that something in your website may have changed and was adding spaces to the top of your web pages and also added it to the feed. I just looked at your feed and I do not see this happening now, but it is possible that your web host is caching based on user agent. Have your web hosting clear your cache then try again.

    Alternatively if your web host is not reliable or you are using a caching service like CloudFlare or Encapsula or a custom build of Nginx that is caching out of your control, you can use a service called http://www.podcastmirror.com to host your podcast feed, it is literally a copy of your feed but without the problems that these services present.

    Last issue, your website is setup to “noindex”, this means Google will never accept the feed. You can still submit it to Apple however. If you have an SEO plugin, allow indexing of your feeds, or if you are using WordPress itself, there is an option to hide the site from the public you need to undo that option, or again, use http://www.podcastmirror.com to get around this problem.

    Thanks,
    Angelo

    Thread Starter oddmonster

    (@oddmonster)

    7 years, 2 months ago

    Thank you very much for this. It looks like the issue has been resolved by checking the option not to allow other themes to modify the podcast feed. Totally resolved.

    The theme we’re using is “Gridlove”

    Thanks again.

    Plugin Support Shawn

    (@shawnogordo)

    7 years, 2 months ago

    Thanks for lettings us know about the theme. Also, glad to see we were able to help you resolve the issue.

    If you’ve found the support we’ve provided here to be of value, please consider leaving a review for PowerPress.

    These reviews help us with future development of the plugin, and we’d really appreciate it!

    Thread Starter oddmonster

    (@oddmonster)

    7 years ago

    Howdy, I’m back. Our feeds are broken again after running the latest WordPress engine update. I have checked the option not to allow other themes to modify the podcast feed, but Castfeed Validator returns “XML error: Reserved XML Name at line 3, column 39”.

    What could have added this error, if I have the option allowing themes to modify the feed blocked? What are the steps I should take to solve this and prevent it from recurring?

    Thank you!

    Plugin Contributor Angelo Mandato

    (@amandato)

    7 years ago

    Hello @oddmonster,

    I just took a quick look, it appears a theme or plugin is outputting spaces before your HTTP headers are sent causing new lines in the top of all of your pages.

    go to https://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/, right click and view source. You will see 2 blank lines at the top. It is happening to web pages and feeds. A poorly written theme or plugin can cause this, it only takes a closing php tag followed by extra lines to cause this. Please use our diagnostic steps and make sure you clear any caches between tests. Diagnostic steps: https://create.blubrry.com/resources/powerpress/using-powerpress/diagnosing-feed-andor-player-issues-with-powerpress/

    Thanks,
    Angelo

    Thread Starter oddmonster

    (@oddmonster)

    7 years ago

    Thank you. This is exactly the answer I was looking for.

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

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