For some time I’ve had people asking me why they get that “an error has occurred” message so frequently with KB Advanced RSS. I have figured out that it is definitely not an issue with my widget, since people get the same error when I tell them to try the default RSS widget. But while browsing the WordPress support forums recently, I came across a thread that may explain why so many people get this error: Their hosts are restricting the site from requesting the feed.
I’ve updated the FAQ 
to reflect this new information. Here’s an excerpt:
“An error has occured; the feed is probably down.”
This widget relies on Wordpress’s feed parsing abilities (look in
wordpress/includes/rss.php). Wordpress grabs the requested feed then passes it to this widget for formatting. If you are seeing this error, it means one of three things:
- The feed really is down. Wait a while and try again.
- Your host is blocking Wordpress from fetching the feed (very likely). Read more here
- Wordpress’s feed parser isn’t working. Try updating to the most recent version of Wordpress. If that doesn’t work, file a Wordpress bug report in Trac.
In any case, you may want to first try using Wordpress’s built-in RSS widget. If neither it nor my widget can display the feed, then you know for certain that it’s one of those three reasons causing the failure. (You’ll probably get the same error there, since the KB Advanced RSS widget uses the exact same error-checking method.)
Update: See also the suggestions in the comments below. (The first comment below is particularly useful.)
27 comments »
I found a way to fix this error for me.. it seems the magpierss file they are using(rss.php) is rather dated(.51). If you download the magpierss version .71 and rename rss_fetch.inc to rss.php and upload it into your wp-includes directory (with all the other files in the package and the extlib directory) it seems to work for all rss feeds. I have not tested extensively and I am not responsible if this blows something up for you.. but it worked for me.
Edited by Adam: When implementing Kyle’s suggestion, see also comment #23 (below, by Lindsay).
Thanks for figuring that out. I had wondered if something like this might be the case, since I’ve used magpie in other applications without any difficulties.
I’m not getting that particular error, but my feeds are not updating. I double checked the feed (which is a Feedburner feed) and that it is active and updating elsewhere. Is there a setting that I should change to make it work? Do I need to update the plugin?
I have the 1.6.1 version of the plugin installed on WordPress version 2.2.2
Thanks for the help!
Carolyn
Hi Carolyn,
The feeds are cached for one hour. If they still don’t update after more than an hour, check the FAQ.
I went to edit the file and I didn’t see the
define('KBRSS_FORCECACHE', false);in there at all.Would I add it to the below section of code at the top of the file?
// SETTINGSdefine('KBRSS_HOWMANY', 20);
define('KBRSS_MAXITEMS', 10);
…and change the “false” to “true” to fix the caching problem?
Thanks in advance.
Sorry, I didn’t notice what version you said you were using. You’ll need to upgrade to the latest version of the plugin first. Adding that line without upgrading wouldn’t do anything.
Ok…great! Thanks again.
Thanx Kyle, it works :)
Comments in your main widget thread didn’t seem to be working.
I am trying to include images in feed of your super cool KB Advanced RSS widget. From your yahoo feed example, I’m using this
edited b/c it came out funky
should this be working?
sigh - i’m using the img src=’^media:content=>url$’ in the format feed section… is there a different syntax that will work?
cfur:
It’s hard to say. In a few recent versions of WordPress, they’ve made some changes to how WP processes feeds, which would affect what you need to tell the widget. Some versions of WP will separate out any images in each feed item and put it in media:content=>url. Others will not.
The way to figure out what you need to enter is to use the ?kbrss= thing to look at how WP is processing the feed as explained in the FAQ.
Hey Adam - I’m having a little trouble with the plugin today. Everything was working great while I was pointing the plugin to the main rss feed of my wordpress site. But today I switched the feed to point at a particular category, eg., [link]
Now I am getting the “error has occured” message :-(
What could the problem be? I have tried different formats (eg., /category/mycategory/feed or /rss or /rss2 or whatever, but nothing works!!
Any thoughts?
THanks for your help.
Mike
It would appear I forgot to reply to this post…
On the offchance you come by looking for a reply, here it is: No, I really don’t know. Like I said, this widget does not grab or parse the feed–it just controls how WP displays the feed that it has parsed on its own. If the suggestions in the post (and comments) above don’t help, then I don’t know what to say.
had the same problem on my wpmu install but downloading and replacing with the newest version helped me too :-)
I think you’re referring to Kyle’s suggestion of getting the newest version of magpie, right? Thanks for the feedback. I wish the WP folks would keep WP’s version of magpie current…
my host says they are not blocking topix.net. I am using WP231 at halfwaytoconcord.com and trying to suck down feed for feed://www.topix.net/rss/county/contra-costa-ca
I am using [moderated for length]. Is there some newer version or do I have to do that magpie thingy
[moderated for length].
My plugin does not grab the feed; WP’s built-in feed parser does that. Mine just displays the feed after WP parses it. So if your host is allowing the connection, then you may want to try the Magpie thing, yes.
But first, try replacing the “feed://” with “http://”. “feed://” is non-standard, and that might be the only problem. My version of WP can only process the feed you give if I make that change.
feed to http did it… d’oh thanks
Wohoo… sort of…
The Magpie thing fixed my problem loading this feed:
[link]
BUT… special danish characters (æøå ÆØÅ) are not showing correctly :-( See [link]
Using the .51 version of Magpie works just fine - with every other feed than the one described above. Can anyone help me out here?
Claus
@myself: stupid me - set the UTF-8 in the Widget settings and everything is dandy - delete these comments at will ;-)
Claus
I’ll leave them for future visitors to find. Glad you got it working.
Your magie fix worked. Thanks Kyle!!!
Great suggestion by Kyle. I tried that, and it fixed the feed! But then it broke my dashboard. Turns out the latest version of magpierss (0.72) points to exlib/Snoopy.class.inc - and that conflicts with WP 2.5 (RC2), which has the same thing, but it’s in a different location and called class-snoopy.php instead.
So to make Kyle’s fix compatible with the latest version of WP, i had to edit the (upgraded) rss.php to point to the correct name/location of Snoopy.
This is actually a huge problem with a number of RSS Feeds. Maybe folks can put together a more detailed walk through for Kyle’s solution and Lindsay’s amendment?
Ok, got it. It’s pretty easy. Just to reiterate, for Wordpress 2.5:
0. Download the latest magpieRSS package from here: [link]
There’s a lot of files in this tarred and gzipped archive. You only need the four .inc files in the root directory.
1. Dump rss_utils.inc, rss_parse.inc, and rss_cache.inc into the wp-includes directory.
2. Near the beginning of rss_fetch.inc, change the call to Snoopy.class.inc to this:
This will work as class-snoopy.php is in the wp-includes directory.
3. Rename rss_fetch.inc to rss.php and overwrite existing rss.php file in wp-includes.
That’s it. My misbehaving feed came up at long last.
Thanks, ceti.
The problem is I can see the feeds being fetched, but can’t edit the kbrss widget like I used to. After I edited and formated with some bullets and character limitation, there is no long an edit link at the widget anymore.
Here is the screenshot: [link]
Any suggestion of the fix is needed to my email.
Thanks in advance.
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