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Released today: KB Advanced RSS 2.1

The newest version of the my RSS widget for WordPress integrates several suggestions made by commenters on this post. Among the changes:

  • A checkbox to reverse the order of the feed’s contents
  • An option to hide that annoying “the feed is down” error message when the feed is empty
  • Options to bypass the script stripping, so you can allow javascript in feeds you trust.

Download now

132 Comments

  1. Sam (Unregistered)
    Posted August 16, 2008 at 9:12 pm | Permalink

    Hi – awesome plugin – works great in the sidebar. I noticed that there’s code in the php file on lines 472 and 498 (I only know enough to be dangerous) about displaying the feed in a template rather than a sidebar. But I can’t figure out what to put in the template. Any guidance, even a basic example, would be appreciated!

  2. gadget (Unregistered)
    Posted August 20, 2008 at 5:51 am | Permalink

    Is it possible to incorporate my Affiliate ID within the RSS feed?

  3. Posted August 26, 2008 at 9:05 am | Permalink

    I would like the feed to display images in the sidebar. (last section of the sidebar) Here is my blog. [link]

    Here is the feed.

    [link]

    Here is the html part of the feed.

    $field_value = “$data[product] – ” . $config['General']['currency_symbol'] . $data['price'] . “$data[product_url]$data[main_category]” . strftime(‘%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S GMT’, $data['adddate']) . “<![CDATA[ " . $data['product'] . ” ]]>” . $data['productid'] . ‘:’ . $data['adddate'] . “” . chr(10);

    What changes do I do to make it work?

  4. ovidiu (Unregistered)
    Posted August 30, 2008 at 4:35 am | Permalink

    unfortunately your latest addition makes it unusable for wpmu:

    Options to bypass the script stripping, so you can allow javascript in feeds you trust.

    on wpmu you can’t afford to let users insert any php or JS files/stuff so I will be sticking to 2.1 but maybe you could insert a check to see if wpmu or wp is running?

  5. Stuart (Unregistered)
    Posted September 18, 2008 at 9:21 am | Permalink

    Was there any update to the “Fatal error: Cannot use string offset as an array in /www/vhosts/…/wp-content/plugins/kb-advanced-rss-widget/kb_advanced_rss.php on line 159″ from post 47 here?

    Is there a way to fix this?

  6. Monika (Unregistered)
    Posted September 24, 2008 at 10:36 am | Permalink

    I’m using KB Advanced RSS Widget with WordPress 2.6.2. I’m trying to get the Yahoo! Weather RSS feed ([link]). The feed works fine, but I can’t get the weather images to display. Any ideas? I also tried another weather related feed ([link]) and got the same results, no weather icons.

    Any help would be greatly appreciated!

    Thanks.

  7. Posted September 25, 2008 at 11:42 am | Permalink

    Alright, I have went through the documentation and used the rss troubleshooter. I want it to show the thumbnail image that is in my feed as well. For some reason even though I think I have done everything right, it still strips it out!

  8. Posted September 30, 2008 at 9:13 am | Permalink

    Hey, just stumbled across your plugin on the WP Directory. I have created a completely different and somewhat less ‘noob’ friendly take on an rss aggregation widget. Thought you might be interested, or not, please yourself. =D [link]

  9. Posted October 19, 2008 at 7:31 pm | Permalink

    Dear Adam,

    Great job on the widget, it works very well. I have a feature request – if you want to discuss offline, please do.

    We want to display a different feed per category. Likely the best way to do this with your plugin is to have an omit feed if category exists or vice versa… What are your thoughts on this?

    Thanks!

    Raj

  10. Posted October 21, 2008 at 1:53 pm | Permalink

    Hi, great widget. I am trying to keep the hyperlinks in the feeds when the widget shows them. I mean, I don’t want the feed to be linked to the original post: instead I’d like to have it linked to the page the original post pointed to. Is it possible? Thank you very much. Luca.

  11. Peter (Unregistered)
    Posted October 31, 2008 at 8:34 am | Permalink

    Awesome widget!

    You’ve got reverse order, but what about alphabetical on title?

    Pulling in RSS Feed of my Delicious bookmarks and I keep them Alphabetical there.

  12. Posted November 17, 2008 at 2:18 pm | Permalink

    Found a way to tackle the Google Reader feed problem. You can clean up the feed with Feedburner before shipping it over to WordPress. Details at: [link]

  13. Posted November 21, 2008 at 12:00 pm | Permalink

    ‘^pubdate[opts:date=M jS]$’ <–that doesn’t get the dates to show up. What am I doing wrong?

  14. Posted November 25, 2008 at 3:01 pm | Permalink

    I thought this would be a simple question with a simple answer :( Guess not…

  15. Posted December 21, 2008 at 12:17 am | Permalink

    Greetings,

    It’s possible upgrading to WP2.7 breaks KB RSS 2.1.

    Hani

  16. Posted January 2, 2009 at 6:23 am | Permalink

    I am using your excellent KB Advanced RSS plugin at my blog for some time. Recently I had added second instance to display favorites from my StumbleUpon feed.

    [link]

    Feed has URLs to image thumbnails in enclosure tag but for some reason plugin doesn’t see those enclosures at all. They don’t show up in troubleshooter. I found something similar about modifying feed before displaying in docs but don’t understand what am I supposed to add to plugin code (don’t know PHP).

    Is it plugin issue or WordPress feed parsing issue? Any way to get to those URLs? Thanks in advance.

  17. legrosszabb (Unregistered)
    Posted January 5, 2009 at 1:59 am | Permalink

    Hi! Why dont I use the ^creator$ tag?

    I would like to use the tag so:

    ^pubdate[opts:date=H:i]$ ^title$ (^creator$)

    But the last tag isnt working.

  18. Guest (Unregistered)
    Posted January 8, 2009 at 5:10 am | Permalink

    Please, use:
    “^dc=>creator$”

  19. Niko (Unregistered)
    Posted January 15, 2009 at 4:11 pm | Permalink

    How can i cut the titel of a feed to a special character (like “-”) ?
    Concretly i’d like to cut of the description of the macupdate-RSS-feed from the titel (in this case the description is in the feed-titel included and the seperator is “-”).
    Does anybody have an idea? THX!

  20. Posted January 24, 2009 at 2:47 am | Permalink

    Exactly what I am looking for. I just installed it. I’m using wordpress 2.6 with Cutline 3 column theme.

    I just installed KB Advanced RSS, and it wiped out the whole sidebar of widgets and info.

    I can’t figure out why that happened, it may be due to the way I coded that side bar. I just added HTML and some widgets but not through the widget tool on WordPress.

    Also how can I position the KB Advanced RSS widget on my site. I would like to place it between two widgets on the right hand side.

    Any info you can provide is much appreciated.

  21. Posted January 24, 2009 at 8:49 am | Permalink

    Viniciu–it’s a widget, so it’s best used through the wordpress widget menu. Use that, and it won’t wipe out your sidebar–and it will be easy to position.

    Niko–you need to modify the code with a regular expression or something similar.

    Rarst, Jeff, Monika–anything that doesn’t show up in the troubleshooter is a parsing issue, not an issue with this plugin.

    Hani–what exactly broke?

    Peter–you could insert a sort() somethere in the code to accomplish that. Customizations like that are up to you, though.

    Abi–it’s possible, but unfortunately I don’t have time to do customizations for folks.

  22. Posted January 25, 2009 at 6:56 am | Permalink

    @Adam

    I have solved my issue, had to patch MagpieRSS. Version included in WordPress doesn’t support enclosures.

  23. Posted January 26, 2009 at 5:03 am | Permalink

    Hi – the rss-feed doesn’t show danish ‘æ’, ‘ø’ and ‘Ã¥’. Or rather it shows only 50 pct. of the time. I’ve tried to insert da_DK in the css but apparently I haven’t found the right place. I’m using WordPress 2.7 in the Danish translation.

    Thanks, Lars

  24. poisonborz (Unregistered)
    Posted February 8, 2009 at 4:30 pm | Permalink

    Hola,
    I have a serious bug to report, the worst thing is that this widget is quite important for a site I’m working on, and since there are no real alternatives, I can’t finish it :(

    I’ve set up the widget with these options:
    [link]

    the Before the widget line that can’t be seen is:
    <ul id=”rsswidget”

    Everything works fine in localhost, however, when I uploaded it to the server, the widget simply stopped loading. Wherever the plugin is present, the site breaks from loading on (both in the widgets page, and on the site) – so I can’t even change the options to see what’s wrong. My only option is to delete the widget, when I reactivate it, the bug reappears (where are the widget settings stored?)

  25. Posted February 10, 2009 at 6:28 pm | Permalink

    I updated worpress to version 2.7.1 and now I have problems, KB Adv. RSS is not generating start of list. only tags … when i put in pretext and to posttext nothings happend….

  26. Posted February 11, 2009 at 11:31 am | Permalink

    Hi- I would like to request a slight code change. The RSS icon graphic has an ugly white or purple border around it by default. I have been able to remove it like this: in line 237 (post 2.7 version) or 198 (pre) in the icon’s “style” tag, add border:none; to the existing code. Looks much cleaner that way. Thanks!

  27. Posted February 12, 2009 at 1:23 am | Permalink

    I updated to wordpress 2.7.1 and now this widget can’t seem to remember and of the information typed into the fields except for the url of the RSS feed. It keeps resetting to the default.

  28. Sandi (Unregistered)
    Posted February 15, 2009 at 3:18 pm | Permalink

    I am having the same problem as Tracey. The widgets don’t hold the info.

  29. Sandi (Unregistered)
    Posted February 15, 2009 at 3:49 pm | Permalink

    Going back to 2.7 fixes the issue, so it must be a change in the upgraded files.

  30. Posted February 16, 2009 at 10:32 am | Permalink

    Help! All of my integrated RSS content is a mess. Same prob as others are having with KB Advanced RSS 2.1 not holding content in WordPress 2.7.1. We know you’re busy, but this is a nightmare! Please??? How can we tempt you to make the fix?

  31. Miguel (Unregistered)
    Posted February 16, 2009 at 4:47 pm | Permalink

    hello… so i want to use the “^image[opts:extractUrl=1]$” on my feed but…. u said after i do that i should open the plugin file and search for function item_cleanup. Insert the code in there. Something like this:

    if (1==$extractURL){

    }

    what should the dots be?

  32. Posted February 16, 2009 at 4:51 pm | Permalink

    To the 2.7.1 people: Sorry, don’t know the problem, and won’t have time to fix it. I would love to turn this particular plugin over to somebody else for continued development. It is not a priority for me; it’s been some time since I used it on one of my own blogs.

    I’m a bit puzzled by the problem, though, since I tested it on the 2.8 development version a few weeks ago. Weird.

    Miguel: Like most plugin authors, I don’t do customizations. Sorry. If you want to customize the plugin, you’ll need to code the customization yourself.

  33. babel (Unregistered)
    Posted February 17, 2009 at 5:47 am | Permalink

    Great plugin! You saved me! By the way, I am using 2.7 and it works perfect.

    For those who want to put just the RSS content and title, it’s easy. Put ^description$ ^title$ in the feed items of the widget. It took me a while to figure out, because I have no clue about coding. But it works perfect now.

  34. Miguel (Unregistered)
    Posted February 17, 2009 at 8:53 pm | Permalink

    o, i understand =]
    it wasnt that important…
    thanks… great plugin!!
    this plugin gave me a great deal on my blog ;)

  35. Posted February 22, 2009 at 7:50 am | Permalink

    I am having a problem with the widgets not saving the formatting options. Title, etc are saved, but the rest is reset to default when I click save.

    Using WP 2.7.1

  36. Posted February 25, 2009 at 12:20 pm | Permalink

    Small suggestion for the kb_advanced_rss.php version selector. Instead of exploding the version variable, do a function_exists check on a WP 2.7 and later function like have_comments(). A single if/else to require the appropriate file.

  37. Posted March 1, 2009 at 6:40 am | Permalink

    Having same problem with saving settings after upgrading to 2.7.1 :( Was using widget extensively at my blog.

    It was pleasure using your plugin, thank you! Off to search for alternative.

  38. Posted March 2, 2009 at 9:45 am | Permalink

    I just found out what causes this error.

    It’s nothing to do with the plugin itself, it’s a bug in WordPress 2.7.1.

    To fix it, open wp-includes/compat.php and go to the bottom of the page until you come across function htmlspecialchars_decode().. You’ll notice it’s first argument is $str, but inside the function you’ll see references to $string.

    Change $string to $str in that function and the plugin will function properly again.

    This is a bug that will only surface if you have PHP4 btw.

  39. Linda Peppin (Unregistered)
    Posted March 17, 2009 at 4:05 am | Permalink

    Hi, I have just installed your plug in and it works great. However, is it possible to be able to open the blog links in a new page so as not to lose the visitor? Linda

  40. Jesse (Unregistered)
    Posted April 7, 2009 at 10:29 pm | Permalink

    Hey Adam. No probs if you don’t respond.
    I’d like to add the author of the post in, the same way that the default RSS widget does, but want the options your widget has. I can’t figure it all out, not for lack of trying (googled, checked ‘Other Notes’, etc.).

  41. Posted April 22, 2009 at 12:46 pm | Permalink

    I like KB Advanced RSS. I’m sharing my experience with it in my post WordPress: External RSS Feeds Optimization with KB Advanced RSS, including details of customization with an additional “rtrim” string manipulation option.

    I hope this is useful and, maybe, included in a future version.

  42. Posted April 24, 2009 at 2:38 pm | Permalink

    Apostrophe’s in titles show up as ? in the plugin. Also the plugin does not pickup my css for sidebar.

  43. Awnist (Unregistered)
    Posted April 25, 2009 at 10:28 pm | Permalink

    it would be a nice improvement if there was a method to avoid tag stripping from content, which seems mandatory? perhaps different tags. ^description$ for regular stripped content, ^^description$$ for raw?

  44. Posted April 28, 2009 at 4:45 am | Permalink

    Hi. Thanks for this great pluin.

    I want to use it for a podcast, but i suppose, it isn’t possible to get attribute values of tags – e.g. get the attribute value of url in this enclosure tag:
    Am I right?

  45. Posted May 6, 2009 at 6:54 pm | Permalink

    Do you know the correct tags or elements to use in order to display calendar events from a Google Calendar feed? I have the events showing – but I cannot get the date and time to display.

  46. Posted June 3, 2009 at 10:55 am | Permalink

    I think I’ve found a bug. It’s pretty serious. The fields that ask for preceding and following html tags (default ul and /ul ) goes blank every time I try and save it. I’ll enter, hit Done, and hit save changes, and once it reloads, those fields are blank. It always erase anything in the feed item format field, and sets it back to the default.

  47. Matt (Unregistered)
    Posted June 4, 2009 at 8:09 am | Permalink

    I love your plugin, it is just about what I was looking for, but i’m having trouble with one thing. I am trying to add a custom image, but one that will display abit larger than your average rss feed..in fact 160×71 are the dimensions. It posts fine, but for some reason, goes to the right instead of centered or left. Do you know why that would be going on, or a way to fix it? If you want to see what I am talking about, I have it setup at [link] Any help you can give me is REALLY appreciated too.

  48. Posted June 7, 2009 at 5:27 pm | Permalink

    I am using your plugin/widget on my blog and it has been working fine, until today.. all day and night, it has not been appearing on my site.

    When I uncheck the option to hide it if the feed is down, it shows up with a message saying “An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.”

    My feed is not down!

    Any help would be much appreciated.

    Thanks
    Richard

  49. Posted June 10, 2009 at 11:58 am | Permalink

    @Tony Bullard: I am having the same problem (using v 2.1.3). I cannot replace the default formatting code, and the default preceding and following html tags are blank; it will accept changes but won’t save them.

    Consequently the RSS feed is showing, but not the way I want it to, which kind of defeats the purpose.

  50. Posted June 10, 2009 at 12:29 pm | Permalink

    Ok, I just realized that the solution to this problem was presented in Wesley’s comment above.

    I changed the compat.php file in the wp-includes directory and was able to save my changes to the KB RSS widget.

  51. Posted June 17, 2009 at 6:20 am | Permalink

    Hi mate. I would like to report a compatability issue with wordpress version 2.8.

    Due to changed made in the way the widgets page works users are no longer able to have multiple kb advanced rss widgets.

    When i use the drop down and select say 3 widgets, nothing happens. Limited to one kb advanced rss widget untill a fix is found.

    A warning to those who are using this widget. Do not under any surcomstances upgrade to wordpress 2.8 i you are using more than one kb advanced rss widget on page untill this issue is resolved.

    Thanks.

  52. Daan Koppelmans (Unregistered)
    Posted June 23, 2009 at 11:30 pm | Permalink

    Hi Adam,

    I have the same compatability issue with the KB advanced RSS widget and WP2.8 as Frank MacDonald remarks. I can’t get the KB advanced RSS widget to display more than one RSS reader in the widget sidebar. When you’ve already configured 3 widgets and uppgrade to WP2.8 after, it does show the three widgets, but when you new install WP2.8 and KB Advanced RSS Widget, then select say 4 widgets from the dropdown menu, nothing happens.

    Could somebody please post a fix for this problem?

    Kind reagrds,

    Daan Koppelmans, the Netherlands

  53. Posted June 26, 2009 at 8:16 am | Permalink

    I got the same Problem and could not fix it. wordpress nightly also didnt help.
    Anybody got an idea?

  54. Sebastian (Unregistered)
    Posted July 2, 2009 at 4:43 am | Permalink

    A fix for the WP 2.8 issue with showing more than one KB RSS widget would be highly appreciated.

    Best,
    Sebastian

  55. Posted July 25, 2009 at 3:25 pm | Permalink

    I know that you’re searching for a developer for your wordpress plugin but can you please tell us how we could fix the issue that you can only add one widget in WP 2.8? Would be really cool :)

  56. Posted July 25, 2009 at 7:51 pm | Permalink

    @Markus, etc.:

    It requires a complete rewrite of the plugin using the new widgets API. That’s a couple full days of work right there–not possible if you’ve got a full time job.

    Every version or two of WP, the WP developers completely revamp the code that plugin developers need to use to interact with the widgets interface. It’s changes like these that made it so I could not continue to support the plugin.

    I suggest you let the WP developers know about the adverse effect their constant “improvements” to the widgets API are having on plugin developers.

    In fact, that’s the cause of many of the problems raised in the preceding comments–such as changes not saving.

  57. Posted August 4, 2009 at 11:04 am | Permalink

    The new version of the plugin should fix many of the problems identified above.

    Closing this thread, as it is now outdated.