RSS feeds are botched in WordPress 4.3

Unless you have a backup that you can restore from, downgrading is a dangerous process, which is why backing up before upgrading is strongly recommended both in the upgrade instructions and automatic upgrade interface.

It would be better to solve your current problem. What’s the URL of your feed?

I have already downgraded back to 4.2.4, this video tutorial was pretty helpful.

After this downgrade, everything is back to normal and feeds work flawlessly. I guess it was the same issue with WP 4.3 like this one.

My site uses the W3 Total Cache plugin and Cloudflare but flushing all caches in W3TC and Cloudflare didn’t help at all. I’m going to wait a couple of days to see if more people will report this issue here on forums.

Ok, hopefully nothing else breaks with the files downgraded to 4.2 on top of a 4.3 database. Fingers crossed.

Same problem here, I use a PHP script with SimplePie to pull my RSS feeds in from my network of sites. All posts made after I updated to WordPress 4.3 are unavailable.

I guess I have found a temporary solution. The issue (in my case) is caused by the W3 Total Cache plugin which is no longer compatible with WordPress 4.3 because all RSS feeds are rendered by this cache plugin in a wrong (malformed) way so external scripts can’t fetch them.

The solution to this issue is pretty simple: Disable the RSS feed caching in W3TC (W3TC -> Page Cache settings page) and purge all caches in W3TC. If you use Cloudflare together with W3TC, don’t forget to purge the Cloudflare cache manually on the Cloudflare admin page because the internal Cloudflare plugin in W3TC has no effect on purging the Cloudflare content.

I’m not sure if this solution is ultimate, it seems all PHP fetching scripts work flawlessly now but the W3TC devs should definitely address this issue asap.

Thanks Nephalem. I have unchecked the RSS feed caching in W3TC, but I am still experiencing issues with RSS. My PHP script (using Simplepie) will not find any posts made after WP 4.3

Here’s hoping more solutions come out of the woodwork.

I had the same issue. For some reason, you have to deactivate the W3TC plugin in WordPress first. Then, reactivate it again and disable the RSS feed caching in W3TC. This way it should work (at least it works for me).

Thanks Nephalem. Unfortunately, it seems that I can’t have W3TC activated. Unchecking RSS Feeds from Page Cache didn’t do anything for me.

On the plus side, when I disable W3TC, my RSS feeds work again! I am eagerly awaiting a patch from W3TC’s developer.

Nephalem, thanks for sharing your solution!

I disabled W3TC and still the rss feed fails to load.

Thanks Nephalem. It worked!

Follow these steps IF my previous solution doesn’t work for you straight from the box:

1) Disable caching the feeds in W3TC
2) Purge all caches in W3TC
3) Deactivate the W3TC plugin
4) Delete manually (via FTP) all files and folders located in:

/wp-content/cache/page-enhanced/< your_site_name >/

…in order to force the external RSS fetchers to grab only the real (non-cached) RSS content from your site.
5) Reactivate the W3TC plugin

Good luck.

karben808, if those don’t work for you, please open your own thread: https://www.ads-software.com/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting#postform