RSS XML parsing error with Yoast SEO

  • Resolved dajanas

    (@dajanas)


    2 years, 10 months ago

    Hi,

    Since some update of Yoast SEO all my RSS feeds are not working anymore. I used the https://www.rssboard.org/rss-validator validator and it comes up as an error:

    line 11, column 29: XML parsing error: <unknown>:11:29: undefined entity.

    In this regard, I have already read here in some posts problems with Yoast and also in my case the problem is due to Yoast. I deactivated the Yoast plugin and the problem disappeared. I use the ? character as separator in the title and sometimes there is an & as “and” depending on the post.

    Without Yoast: No problem
    With Yoast: Parsing error

    What happened there?

    Using latest Yoast version.

    Website URL I do not want to name, private.

    Greetings

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
  • Thread Starter dajanas

    (@dajanas)

    PS: When changing the separator from ? to for example -, the problem disappears and the RSS feed is valid. But that doesn’t change the fact that there is a problem here on Yoast’s part. I would like to use the ? character as a separator (like all the years before).

    Thread Starter dajanas

    (@dajanas)

    Anyone? Hello?

    Plugin Support Maybellyne

    (@maybellyne)

    Hello Dajanas,

    I am sorry to learn that your RSS feeds are not working anymore. Often, we see problems occur in combination with another plugin or theme. The fastest way to rule out any conflict, is to deactivate all non-Yoast plugins and switch to a standard theme like Twenty Twenty.

    Please test this on your development or staging site, if you have one. If not, we recommend using the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin. This plugin has a troubleshooting mode, which does not affect normal visitors to your site.

    If you’re unfamiliar with checking for conflicts, we’d like to point you to a step-by-step guide that will walk you through the process: How to check for plugin conflicts

    If you do not feel comfortable to do this yourself or if this does not solve your issue, our Yoast SEO Premium plugin comes with one year of (technical) support.

    Thread Starter dajanas

    (@dajanas)

    Good day, I have already tried all this. It is because of Yoast SEO. As soon as I disable Yoast, the error occurs as described. The ? separator is apparently “encoded” incorrectly in RSS feeds or something. If I change the separator to “-“, the error does not occur. Yoast has to do something about that. As I have read here in the forum, other users have also described this problem exactly the same way and associated it with Yoast. Please fix.

    Plugin Support Michael Ti?a

    (@mikes41720)

    Hi @dajanas

    We understand this issue only occurs when you set the title separator to “?”. We tried to replicate this and validate the feed here with a default WP theme and only Yoast SEO 19.0, but were unable to reproduce it.

    Could you please provide us with a sample URL of your RSS feed so we can try and check on the output itself and verify this error? If you could also provide the forum threads where this has been reported before, it would be helpful so we can try and gather more information as well.

    Thread Starter dajanas

    (@dajanas)

    Hi,

    a search here in the forum for “RSS” automatically returns the corresponding posts. Two examples:

    https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/rss-feed-parsing-error-4/page/2/
    https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/yoast-xml-parsing-error-of-rss-feed/

    But these posts are not the point, I only give them here because you wanted to read examples. It’s about my described problem: As long as Yoast remains activated and using for example ? as separator, there are errors with the RSS feed, as described in the first post of mine here. If I deactivate Yoast, the error does not occur. I don’t want to give the website here for privacy reasons. Is it possible to contact you directly by mail? So them directly without me having to explain the whole issue again in the mail?

    Regards

    Thread Starter dajanas

    (@dajanas)

    Update: Perhaps as a help here the representation by a RSS validator:

    line 11, column 38: XML parsing error: <unknown>:11:38: undefined entity [help]
<title>Example-Title &raquo; EXAMPLE-WEBSITE</title>

    This problem disappears once Yoast SEO is disabled. The problem didn’t occur before – I can’t say from which update it appeared, I discovered it by accident when I checked my RSS feeds.

    But the bug definitely needs to be fixed soon. You can see in the other forums that Yoast support has already been told many times.

    • This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by dajanas.
    • This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by dajanas.
    Thread Starter dajanas

    (@dajanas)

    @mikes41720 Is there any news?

    Plugin Support Maybellyne

    (@maybellyne)

    Based on the information you provided, we expect this to be a bug. We’re actively using the bug tracking on our GitHub repository so your best next step would be to create a new issue for our developers at https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo/issues/new. You will need an account to create a new issue. If this is your first bug report, please check out: https://kb.yoast.com/kb/how-to-write-a-good-bug-report/.

    Thread Starter dajanas

    (@dajanas)

    I am not using Github and i don’t plan to use github either. This problem has been reported many times (as described above), so Yoast should be able to track it after all.

    Thread Starter dajanas

    (@dajanas)

    So, no further help, hm?

    Thread Starter dajanas

    (@dajanas)

    Wow. No help at all.

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
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