Disable FEEDS – Who needs that?

or to make noobie wordpress users happy, disable FEEDS by default and give option for turning it on

This is not the opinion of the noobie WordPress users, as I’m speaking for one of them. Trying to use this to add weighting to your point is a little cheeky.

I do not agree that your listed disadvantages outweigh the benefits of having feeds, but if you do want to turn them off, There’s a plugin for that: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/disable-feeds/

Its not bad to have an option for enabling/disabling it but i think the benefits of having feeds is more than not having them. I think most wordpress and all other CMS users, like to have feeds.

Ok, maybe i was not clear enough.

Having feed is a SECURITY RISK.
My server was bombed trough feed: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/weird-apache-log-from-wordpress-sites?replies=2
I investigated and this were scrapers, they loaded my server and my websites were using 100% of the CPU and this attack lasted for 1-3h. And then my MYSQL database drop. And i m on VPS with 2 Cores and 2GB Ram. Now imagen what this means for noobie WP users who are on shared hosting, they are toasted and they business is destroyed.

Now please give me 1 advantage that can match that.

P.S. You as a website owner, your advantage for using FEED is slim. It can be your worst nightmare. But as a user, yes it would be better to read your content on google instead on your slow/ugly/messy/ websites.

In this topic i just predicted that FEEDS will R.I.P. in couple of years. Google agrees with me: https://www.google.com/reader/about/

P.S.S. To disable feeds and prevent your websites eating too much CPU without reason, just create a folder /feed/
That how i saved my server.

Feed, per se, are NOT security risks. The fact that your server was bombed via RSS suggests that you need to look at the server’s configuration.

I used word bombed, but they didnt really have intention to bomb me. They just use FEED to scrape my content (steal) They have use several IPs (lots of them because cloudflare would disable them, same as my firewall on server will most probably ban them from server for too fast browsing). But like i said there are zillions of programs made to scrape wordpress FEED.

I know many of users that don’t have content that is very good to scrape (jokes, videos, pictures, this are very good content to scrape and reuse since nobody have real rights on them, ok maybe on pics you have rights, but Youtube videos and jokes, lyrics and stuff like that is scrapable) will not have this problems. in fact i think that 80% of people that use wordpress dont have this problems since they have content that is not really of use to the scrapers.

But it can be true that they were scraping me just to overload my server but i m not sure about that.

EDIT:
I think it is not server problem, because i was on Godaddy i had memory issues, then i moved to Hostgator, same thing and this CPU spikes happen in same time and then i moved to SITE5, all had problems and didnt know how to fix them. Then i decided to move to VPS and fix it my self. And i realize this problem.

Having feed is a SECURITY RISK.

See Esmi’s reply above. ?? RSS is as insecure as HTML. It’s the same data (your post and comments) just presented differently.

Now please give me 1 advantage that can match that.

A little off topic: like many I use RSS to get the digest of all the sites I regularly visit. If the site does not have a feed then odds are good that I won’t revisit that site. I like getting my feeds in one place.

i think that 80% of people that use wordpress dont have this problems since they have content that is not really of use to the scrapers.

On what do you base that assumption?

If you don’t want RSS feeds, use the plugin mentioned above. The vast majority (eg about 99%) of WordPress users do. Sorry but citing “security issues” is something of a straw man argument.

Jan, if it is same as HTML, then problem having FEED is maybe deeper. How is it possible that i get log on my site showing me:
“GET /feed/? HTTP/1.1” 301 475 “-” “-“

And this requests are like 10 of them in 1 SECOND. And this lasts for 1-3 hours. In 1 minute that is 600 requests and in1 hour 36 000. This is insane. And fix for that was disabling FEED by creating folder /feed/.

I know i could probably limit connections, but i would still get high load since they use different IPs and 10 requests in 1 second is too high anyway.

Esmi my assumptions are based on my own thinking. I just throw number out. But it really appears i m the first one that got this problem.

Or maybe other people, since they are mostly on shared hosting dont even know that they could be victim of /feed/ scrapers. And this can be solution if wordpress sites on shared hosting get warned for eating too much resources. I know i got warned and we went tough all possible solutions to reduce usage and nothing helped.

Thing got fixed when i move to VPS and got access to logs. Then i realize this Feed thing and investigate and disabled feed and now i m no more victim.

So i just suggested in this topic to give us button disable/enable.

I understand you wont implement this because i m posting in this topic appearing i m the only one having this problem. But next time a user opens topic with optimization help for reducing CPU usage or Memory usage because his host suspended him, ask him to give you his Apache access log. If you see “GET /feed/? HTTP/1.1” 301 475 “-” “-” spammed inside that log you can count this user to this same problem described in this topic.

P.S. Maybe this anomaly is only at my place, but i had 2 websites with this problem, i have 38 others that dont have this problem. I just ask to have someone watch over this and maybe others will reprt same problems if they look at apache access log.

my assumptions are based on my own thinking. I just throw number out.

Well, it’s hardly a valid assumption and does appear to imply that your site has more valuable content than 80% of other WP sites. I think a large number of site owner would disagree quite violently about that. ??

The figures and assumptions that we’re quoting here are based on experience – mainly in helping people out who are panicking because their feed has an error in it. Most users not only want their feeds but are very keen to promote them.

I understand you wont implement this because i m posting in this topic appearing i m the only one having this problem.

We don’t get to say. It’s more of a community decision. But I agree that this has a low chance of being implemented – partly because you’re the only person asking for it but also because there’s a plugin available that will do the job for you.

The tip about scrapers causing high cpu usage is worth bearing in mind, thanks.

Hehe, no, that wa not my intention to say that i have best content. Far from that. I wanted to say that i have content that can be shared free so there is no penalty for sharing it. That why i m attracted to scrapers.

And i apologize for not searching hard. I was searching wrong keyword and got FD Freeburner plugin which is not working properly i think.

But now i found this plugin: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/disable-feeds/

And since there is a plugin for this we really don’t need option for enable/disable.

But leave this topic visible because i m sure there will be someone with same issue so they can read and implement this plugin to help them self.

Thanks for your time and help

No problem. And we never delete topics unless they breach forum etiquette or might be detrimental to the wider WordPress community. A spot of healthy discussion on what should, or shouldn’t be switch-able in core is positively healthy. ??

About Disable feeds :
After a lot of search and trys, my few skills in coding don’t allow me to manage to do this.
Then i come here to make a new topic and a request. Fortunatly, a topic is on about this point – amazing -, I can’t be the only one to need this !

My pov :
I have 3 feeds :
1 feed of comments,
1 feed of posts,
1 feed of comments for the home page,
(i hope i’m right)
In my case, i only need the posts feed, and i don’t manage to keep only this one (and i tryed plenty of plugins, and codes).

My request is : add a feature to enable/disable (enabled by default) 1, 2 or 3 feeds and choose the feeed we want to keep.

I agree with what have been said here by dadaas
As a wordpress newbie, i’d like to have this feature ! sorry Andrew Nevins.

I think i don’t have to argue many more than i just want to be able to do what i want to have in/for my website.
Is it understandable ?
The main issue for me is : remains feeds that i don’t want that the visitor of my website read. it’s simple.

Hope i will have the ability to do this in the next release.

So the “Disable Feeds” plugin didn’t help?