WordPress 2.5.1 RSS feed bug

Users of WordPress who have recently upgraded to version 2.5.1 should double check their RSS feeds! It's taken me nearly 6 weeks to spot that my Google Reader hadn't updated with the latest entries/comments from slickhouse.com!

Knowing that plenty of comments and a handful of posts had been made after May 1st, I started looking for the cause of the problem. Initially I thought it was due to the move from my shared Linux hosting to dedicated Windows hosting (at slickhouse). However, trawling through server logs showed that slickhouse had migrated long before then.

The next step was to work out what files (if any) had changed. Unfortunately 4 things occured at the start of May - upgrading to the version 8 theme; moving MySQL to another dedicated server; updating the permalinks within the database and upgrading to WordPress 2.5.1

A few Google searches later (after exhausting the first 3 things) found that many others had experienced problems with their RSS feeds after upgrading to version 2.5.1 - a bug that to this day still appears to be un-fixed.

However, there is a solution. You need to update all links to your RSS feed from /wp-rss2.php to /feed/. For the comments, /wp-commentsrss2.php becomes /comments/feed/ - much friendlier! If you're using Feedburner (highly recommended) then you'll also need to update the URL to your feeds within your account.

Within the WordPress PHP theme code, you can call these links using:

<? php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?> <? php bloginfo('comments_rss2_url'); ?>

This is a temporary solution until the WordPress development team come up with a fix to the bug, however many may switch to these URLs permanently for their RSS feeds, or at least until they break again. Let me know if you too have encountered empty feeds. And for those wanting to subscribe to the slickhouse.com feeds - links are in the top-right (hover your mouse over the RSS icon).

comments Posted: Saturday 14th June 2008, 10:50am
Categories: Slickhouse, Web
Tags: feed, feedburner, rss, wordpress-251

Plenty to write about, not much time...

You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you I had a huge list of things to write about, for slickhouse.

Well I do! My only problem is that there's so much interesting content out there, that I barely get round to writing some of my own - by which time, I'm probably falling asleep.

Over the past few weeks, I've been using Google Reader, which allows me to keep track of all my favourite sites via their RSS feeds. The following list is a taster of the feeds I follow:

As you are probably experiencing right now (if you've started browsing any of the above), with all of these feeds to keep track of (and a few others), I am left with a few minutes here and there. During these spare moments, I tend to add to my ever-growing list of articles to write - but at least this time, I sat down and typed something on here.

Over the next few weeks I've got several personal projects to accomplish. Firstly there's the Botswana site to complete - it's live, but missing a bit of content. Then I am going to be setting up a new blog/community which is still under wraps. Finally, there is a revolutionary site to finish planning and start developing - more on that later.

Let me know what feeds you like to keep track of. And do you use Google Reader to do so?

[note - I could have provided you with direct-links to each feed, but opted to link to the site so that you can get a 'feel' prior to subscribing]

comments Posted: Tuesday 13th November 2007, 10:50pm
Categories: Computers and Technology, Slickhouse, Web
Tags: google-reader, rss