RSS Feed Does Not Validate- Is This A Major Problem?

Also, when I go to view my feed I receive the error “This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.”

First of all, that’s actually normal. ??

A feed is a stream of XML data, meant to be interpreted by a feed reader, like https://www.rssowl.org/ and https://newsblur.com/ not a browser.

I have noticed that when I go to a feed validator, my feed doesn’t validate.

Is this in regards to https://maybemeghan.com/ ? If so, your feed is being redirected to Feedburner, which is making it impossible to investigate the actual feed that WordPress is producing.

First of all, how big of a problem is it that my feed doesn’t validate?

It’s not too much of a problem. Most modern feed readers compensate for a variety of errors, but if you do notice that your feed is broken is some feed readers, validation may help you find where the problem is.

Secondly, can someone please explain to me how to fix it?

We’d need to see the URL of the feed (without it redirecting to Feedburner) first. ??

When you say it’s not validating do you mean when you use a tool such as https://feedvalidator.org/ it’s coming up with an error if so what is the error they are showing?

If you go to your feed directly in a browser, then the browser may give the notice This XML… it’s not an error but simply browser saying it doesn’t know how to display the content of the RSS feed. This is ok because your browser is not an RSS reader.

So if that’s the only error/notice you are probably fine.

James, thank you for your detailed response! That makes me feel better that the response I got is normal. Yes, it is for maybemeghan.com, but unfortunately I have no idea how to make my blog not re-direct to feedburner. My knowledge on all of this stuff is not that sophisticated yet. I use feedburner for e-mail subscriptions, that is all. Is there a way to prevent the site from re-directing to feedburner without messing up the e-mail subscriptions?

Tim, thank you for responding as well! Yes, it’s that specific feed validator website that is telling me I have errors. I’ve been doing lots of research on how this all works since I own a blog now, and I’ve noticed that a lot of people are having problems based on their feed being invalid or showing errors. That is the reason that I wanted to make sure my feed was valid, so that if there was an error I would find out now instead of later on down the road.

I have no idea how to make my blog not re-direct to feedburner.

Feedburner is not built into WordPress, so you had to do something to make it redirect: installed a plugin, changed .htaccess, something specific. Whatever you did, just undo it temporarily to run the validation test.

Is there a way to prevent the site from re-directing to feedburner without messing up the e-mail subscriptions?

It would just be temporary change so that you can run https://maybemeghan.com/feed/ through https://validator.w3.org/feed/ to see if it produces the same result as https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2FMaybeMeghan

Basically, you have to find out if that validation errors are on your end or Feedburner’s end. If the issues are on your end, they can likely be fixed. If they are on Feedburner’s end, you’ll need to get in touch with Feedburner support.

Your email subscribers will not receive any emailed posts made while the redirect is not in place, but again that should only be for a few minutes.

Ohhh, you’re right James! I had to install a Feedburner plugin or something when I downloaded my new theme.

Thank you again, for all of your help! I will uninstall it temporarily and if I am getting the same result I will contact Feedburner support ??

You’re welcome!