Can't show full content in the RSS feed

The idea of RSS is to only show snippets, and link back to the original content.

The fact that WordPress gives the option to show either excerpts or full content means it should work.

You’re not being very helpful. ??

Ah yes, the smiley face, that does nothing to offset the rudeness of that comment. I am volunteering my time trying to help you, in fact I give up quite a lot of time trying to help people, I ask for nothing in return but not being deemed unhelpful for my efforts. As WordPress gives the option, I’m not sure your interpretation of the option matches what it’s doing in the background.

However, being the helpful person I am, on looking more closely at your problem, you have indeed specified Full Content in the Feed. The RSS Feed and Feed are not necessarily the same thing. WordPress generates at least 4 URLs for its feeds (see link at very bottom for an explanation of what these do).

https://devinchughes.com/feed/ – shows your description + content

https://devinchughes.com/feed/rss/ – shows just your description

Other than that you could possibly modify the core files are generating the feeds.

Here’s a few helpful links:
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/WordPress_Feeds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS#Example

Let me get this straight.

Are you saying my RSS is functioning as it should?

Martyn – More than likely, there is something in your theme that is overriding your RSS settings.

Yes, full content in RSS feeds is perfectly acceptable and fully supported in WordPress. It should work; and if it isn’t, that means something is stopping it from working.

Can you try switching to the Twenty Eleven default theme to see if that fixes the issue? If it doesn’t, then try disabling all of your plugins to see if that fixes the issue.

Thanks for the tip, Curtiss.

I actually switched to the Twenty Eleven default theme for a while (yesterday evening till this morning) without success, but I just now reverted to Twenty Eleven and deactivated all the plugins.

How long should it take for the changes to apply to the RSS?

I think the RSS is generated on the fly. But generally themes don’t affect their output.

I believe that the RSS is being generated correctly. If you use the normal feed, Feedburner can incorporate the full content. That should work for you.

On the WordPress Feeds link I posted above, there is a link about WordPress and Feeburner.

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Using_FeedBurner
https://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?answer=78483
https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/step-by-step-guide-to-setup-feedburner-for-wordpress/

Hope it works out for you.

Thanks for the links.

When you say, “I believe that the RSS is being generated correctly,” I’m a bit perplexed. If you subscribe to devinchughes.com in a reader, it only shows an excerpt. I don’t think it’s a Feedburner issue at all. I think it’s closer to home than that. I’ve specified for WordPress to show the full feed, but it’s not doing it.

For example, over at https://www.medicalmarcom.com/feed/, you can see the full content. You can’t see it at https://devinchughes.com/feed/.

What’s going on?

Do you have any feed related plugins?

I have a vanilla installation of WordPress, albeit 3.1 and I updated my feed settings in the admin and it seemed to work fine.

Are you using 3.2.1?

The two feeds were different.

Yes, I’m using 3.2.1. What are the implications?

I upgraded to 3.2.1.

In /wp-includes/feed-rss.php, this file generates your RSS feed.

You’ll see the loop uses the_excerpt_rss(). So the Full Content setting it would appear will have no bearing on the RSS feed output. This should be made clearer, as I’ve never really delved deeper into what the code does before.

I’m sure there are plugins that change this default functionality, which I’m thinking that sample link you previously passed on might be using, or perhaps they’ve modified the below code to output the content instead.

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
	<item>
		<title><?php the_title_rss() ?></title>
		<description><![CDATA[<?php the_excerpt_rss() ?>]]></description>
		<link><?php the_permalink_rss() ?></link>
		<?php do_action('rss_item'); ?>
	</item>
<?php endwhile; ?>

In the above code I changed:

the_excerpt_rss()

to:

the_content_rss()

A bit of refreshing later, it finally did show the changes. Check this link regarding the_content_rss function, as it warns the function has be deprecated, so in future upgrades if you rely on this it may be removed.

Hope this finally fixes your problem *fingers crossed*

Actually, I’m in charge of the medicalmarcom.com site as well. I can testify personally that we’ve not edited the WordPress feeds or used any plugins to show a full feed.

I changed my feed-rss.php to “the_content_rss()” and it’s still not working. ;(

I suppose the point I tried to make before is, that the following two links are different. Therefore the WordPress setting you’re expecting to have take effect isn’t in fact actually working on your other site.

1. https://www.medicalmarcom.com/feed/rss/
2. https://www.medicalmarcom.com/feed/

Even on Medical Marcom the RSS (#1) only shows snippets, which is correct. #2 however shows what you’d like to achieve.

I can’t get a look at your raw XML as it keeps redirecting me to Feedburner to see if there are any discrepancies. If you could switch off the Feedburner redirect to see if I can see the difference? As Feedburner may actually just be truncating the output for it’s display. The XML might actually be the way you want it.

Let me know if you can disable it temporarily. Because it may just be taking the RSS feed, and not your WordPress Raw Feed, which is what you’d ideally want.

Never mind dude! I got it working.

My best guess is that our WordPress files were somehow corrupted. I did a clean re-upload of WordPress 3.2.1 and everything’s working now. The feed’s showing the full content. https://feeds.feedburner.com/devinchughes

Thanks for your help – truly appreciate it!

Could you at least mark this as resolved in the subject line.