RSS Feeds Not Validating

I don’t know if this solved it for good or not as I’ve already thought I’ve solved it many times, only to be depressed later at seeing it break again.

It appears to be working now however after editing wp-includes/feed-rss2.php and feep-rss2-comments.php

With this:

ob_clean();
header('Content-Type: text/xml; charset=' . get_option('blog_charset'), true);

Immediately after the commented out words. If anyone knows a real or better fix, please help me out. I’m not positive this is proper or a foolproof fix either.

Turn ‘XML-RPC‘ on:

Login as Admin>Settings>Writing>XML-RPC>check box>‘Enable the WordPress, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols’

Then, add some services in the box below.

Also, the validator you are using is for HTML not XML. Try this.

I’m grateful for the reply, but an honest question – the validator I’m using, I’m pretty sure it is specifically for RSS?

Another question, isn’t the “XML-RPC publishing protocols” only for 3rd party post publishing tools, not RSS?

Hi folks,

I am a wordpress moron (TM).

I just noticed that after years of working fine, my RSS feed is now straight text. I tried the fix above as posted by SwansonPhotos, but that was already enabled.

Can anyone help? Thank you ??

https://www.colorbakery.com/blog

@peapodgrrl, Your feed appears to be fine for me, you only see text as you’re not viewing it in something that can read RSS feeds or style XML, try Firefox.

Now I hope someone more knowledgeable than both of us can help me out – or both of us rather, I could be incorrect here.

Please review the links.

Thank you for the links, although I already reviewed them and they are not related to my issue unfortunately.

Did you see the part about a host having to support the protocols?

Deraxia, you are wonderful ?? You are right! I was viewing it in Google Chrome!

Thank you so much ?? Now I have to figure out if Chrome has some kind of extension that can read XML. I’ve gotten kinda hooked on Chrome. ??

Thanks again!!

That extra space at the beginning of your feed seems to be the only problem. Was that the same problem you were having before you edited those two core files? I doubt the problem is directly related to any core code. It’s most likely a plugin or your theme doing something silly.

My suggestion would be to first replace those two files you edited with fresh copies. Then disable all your plugins and switch to the default theme (Twenty Eleven) and see if the problem clears. It might also be good to temporarily disable the redirect to FeedBurner so we can see the actual feed.

W3C has a help page that relates to this exact thing:

https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/error/WPBlankLine.html

@swansonphotos:

XML-RPC doesn’t really have anything to do with this. The validator being used is for RSS feeds (not HTML) which is appropriate.

@peapodgrrl:

This may be useful:

https://maketecheasier.com/12-google-chrome-extensions-for-the-rss-addicted/2010/02/03

A two year old fix to a brand new browser??

When I visited the link provided at the top, it said not XML… use this…still does….can you explain how a 2 year old link can fix a modern browser?

@swansonphotos:

What? I don’t know what you’re saying.

The OP’s problem is that something is adding an extra bit of whitespace to the top of the RSS which causes validation failure. The OP is using the W3C feed validator which is the appropriate validator when checking an RSS feed. The errors shown just say that there is a blank space above the opening <?xml... declaration (the main issue) and that the media type was incorrectly set to text/html (a secondary issue that wouldn’t cause validation failure).

If you’re referring to my second link, that was for peapodgrrl (as I indicated) who was looking for a way to show RSS feeds in Chrome. The link contains a list of several Chrome extensions that do just that.

@big Bagel, Many thanks for the reply.

I had the issue before editing anything, and I attempting disabling my Feedburner redirects, as well as disabling plugins, but to no avail.

Before editing the core files, in addition to the “Feeds should not be served with the “text/html” media type” message I would receive, I would also get an XML error stating the feed plainly do no work.

And as you’ve said, I believe it to be from white space – however unfortunately I’ve not a clue where this white space would be.

While this may not be the best solution, as mentioned earlier by myself, I’ve added this line

ob_clean();

as per:

https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/12089

And it seems to have been working fine so far, although I’m positive that is not the best solution and am hoping it doesn’t fail on me (besides from a WordPress update or something).

Okay, they seem to work but occasionally stop working – I cannot recognize the reason for this.

https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/fix-rss-feed/

I used to have an install where the RSS feed would bug out, a lot. Either losing it’s language attribute, or finding random whitespace.

The plugin above worked on the whitespace issue for me every time. I haven’t had to use it in some time, but it worked well, YMMV