No RSS Items Found in MailChimp email

Hi AZFarmgirl,
I’m not sure if I can help you because you’re figuring a very specific probleme.
If the message shows Sorry, this feed is currently unavailable or does not exists anymore., it is because SimplePie can’t fetch the feed and return an Error.
Make sure you never use SSL certificate in your HTTP requests. Most of the time the requested feeds with an HTTPS address work also without it, so try to replace it with a simple HTTP.
Cheers

Hi Brice –

We’re not using an SSL certificate. The problem is in the timing. The 13 blog feeds are updating on the Home site within 1-3 hours of posts being published, with excerpts and images intact, so no problem here. The hang-up is between the feeds and MailChimp.

Editors publish once per week, Mon – Tues, and complete their edits by Tuesday nights, to allow time for the news feeds to be ready for MailChimp to fetch by 1:00P on Wednesday, when the email newsletter goes out. (We’re HQ’d in AZ, UTC -7, so there’s a 7-hour difference in the timestamps, e.g. a post published at 11:30P Tues is timestamped Wed 6:30A.) This schedule worked well for four years. But since installing Feedzy MailChimp has had trouble fetching the feeds.

MailChimp tech support has reviewed and re-confirmed the newsletter template, RSS syntax, and news feeds. But add the plugin’s 12-hour refresh rate, and the feeds aren’t available when MailChimp tries to fetch them.

It’s also a transient problem. It first surfaced in May – July, stopped for the last several months, then resurfaced the past few weeks. Is it possible a recent WordPress or plugin update caused the problem?

I appreciate your help, as I have to find a solution that preserves the current publication and newsletter schedules, or find a different plugin.

Thanks!

Hi again,

But add the plugin’s 12-hour refresh rate, and the feeds aren’t available when MailChimp tries to fetch them.

So if I understand, the problem is related to the feeds caching duration/refresh rate?

If so, you can edit the caching lifetime (which is sored in a transient as you mentioned it). Here the hook you can use:

function bweb_feedzy_cache_duration( $feedCacheDuration, $feedURL ) {
    if( 'https://b-website.com/feed' == $feedURL )
        return 60*5; //5 minutes

    return $feedCacheDuration;
}
add_filter( 'wp_feed_cache_transient_lifetime', 'bweb_feedzy_cache_duration', 10, 2 );

The hooks example page

Hope this helps.
Regards

Hi Brice –

Yes, I think the 12-hour refresh rate is a contributing factor, if not the cause.

I sent out a MailChimp test email this morning that illustrates the timing issue. The email shows the actual publication day/time of this week’s posts, but the Home site feeds, also powered by Feedzy, are 7 hours ahead.

This is a typical feed URL:

If screenshots would help, let me know. I’ll work on the hook.

Thanks –

Stephanie

Sorry, misfired on the feed URL:

https://hearinghealthmatters.org/hearingnewswatch/feed/atom/