"RSS Error: The data could not be converted to UTF-8" on new installations

  • This is a little bizarre.

    On two sites I just set up on Hostgator, I’m getting this RSS Error instead of the Other WordPress News data:

    RSS Error: The data could not be converted to UTF-8. You MUST have either the iconv or mbstring extension installed. Upgrading to PHP 5.x (which includes iconv) is highly recommended.

    Since one is a fresh site, and this popped up the first time I logged in, there were no plugins to deactivate, not even Akismet. The second new site only had Regenerate Thumbnails and Akismet active before I noticed the error. I even double-checked the .htaccess and it’s set up to use PHP 5.3 by their instructions.

    I have several other sites under this account, but those were imported from other servers, and the RSS for Other WordPress News still works on those, even though I had it hidden.

    So for me this isn’t a FeedWordPress issue, but something that seems to be unique to new installs and new databases on Hostgator… I’ve set up several other new WP 3.4.1 sites on a couple other webhosts, as well as upgraded a number of sites on different hosts, and never ran into this until today.

    Any ideas?

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
  • Thread Starter Summer

    (@fpmsummer)

    One correction: as I was preparing to upgrade a site of mine that was still running 3.2.1, I noticed that it had started displaying the RSS Error message.

    The difference is this site has been running without this error for a little over 2 years, and it is not on Hostgator, and it doesn’t display exactly same message as the others; it only displays the RSS Error: The data could not be converted to UTF-8 line, without the complaint about iconv.

    So I went through another half dozen sites that I manage on several different services, and they are all displaying this error message now. Most are running 3.4.1, with a couple of 3.3.2 and 3.2.1 sites in there, but they are spread out across 3 different hosting providers.

    One other observation: the one site I have left that is still displaying Other WordPress News hasn’t updated any headlines since Friday.

    Also, https://planet.www.ads-software.com seems to be suffering from the White Screen of Death right now… or something similar to it, even though https://planet.www.ads-software.com/feed/ has content in it.

    Im seeing this message now in WP news too. I’ve seen this “notice” all along with podcast generator in the feed validator. Since nothing breaks I’ve shrugged. Hopefully its not going to rear its ugly head suddenly. I have six WP websites with web.com, another client site which is cpanel (hosting company? cant tell) and I havent really messed with feeds for it. I will eye ball some host gator accounts I’ve worked on, but I betcha I’ll see it. Makes me nervous, my business is wp/audio feed intensive. This is my main website, just so you know. It seems to be happy. https://sanitycruz.com

    We’re getting the same error.

    When I left on Friday everything was fine. I did upgrade PHP from 5.3 to 5.4 this morning but the error was there prior to the message on the dashboard.

    I also confirmed that php_mbstring.dll is installed and enabled.

    IIS 7.5
    Windows Server 2008 R2
    PHP 5.4.5
    Wordpress 3.4.1

    I noticed that error appearing on my dashboard as well, and I do have both of iconv / mbstring installed along with PHP 5.3.3

    I changed the html to “feed://https://” and all sites’ dashboards are fine now.
    Not sure what the deal was. It used to be fine, almost sound like a conflicting theme, but as I said, nothing’s changed between now and friday, so it might be on planet.wordpress’ end.

    I’ve got this on my dashboard. I’m sure it was fine last week, nothing been updated recently I don’t think

    https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/rss-feed-error-other-wordpress-news?replies=9

    Thread going on here about the same – no further info there yet

    Ciprian

    (@butterflymedia)

    I do have the same problem. With all my WordPress sites, some of them hosted on HostGator, however I think the problem lies not with the host.

    I also started getting the error message below (from the FeedWordPress plugin) in the last few days:

    The data could not be converted to UTF-8. You MUST have either the iconv or mbstring extension installed.

    My web host increased the PHP memory limit from 32MB to 96MB and that seems to have fixed the problem.

    I don’t know if this will help (Yahoo is my host) but after months of this error, I discovered my RSS feed wouldn’t work because my PHP/Perl Mail was being sent to an alias (webmaster) that I had not set up. Thus I was getting RSS feed error and mailErrorlog in File Manager tmp file. Once I set up “webmaster” as an alias for email, went back to my widget page and redid my rss feed widget for the blog column, it worked perfectly.

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
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