RSS feeds. Why don't they work?
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RSS feeds. Sometimes they work. Then, inexplicably, for long stretches of time, they don’t.
Blog url: http://jleagan.wordpress.com/ -
I don’t see anything wrong with your feeds.
What are you using for your feed reader, and what about them doesn’t work?
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I use the combo of Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird.
What doesn’t work? The feed.
Seriously, I admit I’m ignorant about the mechanics of RSS, but there’s one function it does, and that does not, right now, for anything involving WordPress. All other RSS feeds continue to function.
Anything from WordPress, right now, either:
1. Does not update new material from existing WordPress sources as it appears on the web..
2. Will not add any new RSS feeds from any WordPress source, if I try to add a feed.Irony, of course, in the fact that this very page shows a link “RSS feed for this topic”, which, naturally, does nothing.
Again… all other sources of RSS feeds from around the web continue to happily function and do their updating feeds thing.
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When I visit your feed in Firefox, everything is displaying properly for me. I’m able to see your most recent post from December 25, 2011.
When you try to add a WordPress.com feed to your feed reader, do you see any type of error message? If so, can you let me know what it says?
If possible, sending a screenshot of how the feed appears for you may help us get a better idea of the problem you’re seeing:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/make-a-screenshot/You can upload the screenshot directly to your Media Library.
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Back to this again. Why?
Because, somehow, the feed started working again.
Then, it stopped working again.
For some WordPress (or “WordPress powereed”) feeds.
Manually using the Thunderbird “Get Messages” function just gets an error of “<URL for feed> is not a valid feed”.
Gee. It WAS…. then wasn’t….. then was again…. then wasn’t again.
Removing the feed URL from Thunderbird’s feed subscription and trying to resubscribe just gets nothing.
Trying to subscribe as it was just gets Thunderbird kicking back and error message saying that I’m already subscribed to this feed, and then doing what I just said draws a blank.
I really don’t understand why it would be suggested to grab a screenshot to show what I’m seeing. There’s nothing to SHOW. (Other than what I’ve already said…. nothing at all, or else the error messages of “…already subscribed” or “…. not a valid feed”.
And, AGAIN, while I could see it as a reasonable to consider that Thunderbird is a buggy POS when it comes to RSS, it must be remembered that these problems are and have been problems ONLY WITH WORDPRESS FEEDS.
Incidentally, while this is a trivial side item, I mentioned earlier that attempting to use the link on this very page to subscribe to a feed for posts on this page didn’t work in getting the Firefox/Thunderbird combo to set up the RSS feed in Thunderbird.
NOW, it does work.
So, apparently, this is all just fucking RANDOM.
Seriously, I truly would appreciate it if somebody could get their act together there.
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I’m sorry, but I’m having a hard time replicating this problem in Thunderbird on my own computer with your feed and the feed for this page.
That said, I’ll continue to keep an eye on my own Thunderbird application to see if I’m able to come across the same problem in the future, since this doesn’t seem to happen immediately, based on what you’ve told me.
Can you also let me know what version of Thunderbird and Firefox you’re using, as well as your operating system? Do all WordPress.com feeds cut out at the same time for you or only some?
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I’m sorry, but I’m having a hard time replicating this problem in Thunderbird on my own computer with your feed and the feed for this page.
That said, I’ll continue to keep an eye on my own Thunderbird application to see if I’m able to come across the same problem in the future, since this doesn’t seem to happen immediately, based on what you’ve told me.
Yes. That’s the tricky part. It’s just so seemingly random and sporadic.
Windows XP (SP3)
Firefox 6.0.2
Thunderbird 9.0.1Do all WordPress.com feeds cut out at the same time for you or only some?
As I said above.
And now, inexplicably (as always), as I fiddled endlessly for a long time trying to beat on Thunderbird, now my own blog appears, but Thunderbird managed to set up a new subscription (via clicking on the RSS link on the page and kicking the Firefox/Thunderbird interplay into action), but setting it up as NEW feed (with a different feed title, as an extra twist), as the old feed subscription was dead.
It’s all such a complex mess I can’t even begin to recount all I went through, and what I had happening at various times.
It seems obvious (especially after doing some web sniffing for clues of T-bird RSS feed problems) to attribute the whole mess to Thunderbird having SERIOUS PROBLEMS with RSS feeds, but, again, the big hairy and inexplicably changing problems all seem to revolve around WordPress feeds, whether WordPress.com or another domain name using WordPress.
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I’m not seeing the problem myself in Thunderbird either. It might just be an inherent issue, as Thunderbird is an email client first and foremost, and a feed reader as secondary.
Have you considered a dedicated feed reader, like RSSOwl?
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