Bah! Wordpress 2.5.1 RSS Bug!

Posted on 13. May, 2008 by Brian Wong in Blogging

I keep falling for it. Each time there is a Wordpress version update, I cannot resist upgrading. Mostly because I hate seeing the message that “there’s a new version of Wordpress, please update!” message. It makes me feel as though my version is old.

However, each time I upgrade I end up spending an hour trying to fix the bugs that make Wordpress work EXACTLY the way I wanted it to work BEFORE I upgraded! Hmmmm! Something is wrong with this equation! I upgrade so I can spend an hour making my blog look exactly the way it was before I upgrade.

Anyway, if you have upgraded to Wordpress 2.5.1 do check that your RSS feeds working properly! What I discovered was that my RSS feed was completely empty even though I have been publishing posts. This was very troubling because I use FeedSmith to redirect all my feeds to Feedburner. If you go to my original feed at www.brianwong.com/blog/rss2.php you will see that the feed reports ZERO posts on my blog despite all my posts!

The fix?

Well I discovered that my feed at www.brianwong.com/blog/feed still works. So this is what I had to do to get back online:

Disable the FeedSmith plugin
Edit my RSS source in Feedburner from www.brianwong.com/blog/rss2.php to www.brianwong.com/blog/feed

So the next time Wordpress comes up with the message ” “there’s a new version of Wordpress, please update!” will I upgrade??

Sigh! I guess I am a sucker for punishment, I think I would still do it.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tags: feedburner, rss, Wordpress

About the Author

Brian Wong is a serial entrepreneur, Internet marketer and social media marketing expert. Brian helps individuals to build and monetize their personal brand online.

16 Comments

Vidal Aponte

22. Oct, 2008

Hello Sir,

Thank you for the information you have helped me alot. I just wanted to ask 1 question. In my blog, where do I go to create a new page?

Thank you very much!

Vidal Aponte

Brian Wong

23. Oct, 2008

Go to your WordPress Dashboard and select “Write”, the choose to write a new page instead of a new post.

George

23. Oct, 2008

Hi,
I folloed all steps as you explained, But while testing the same I am getting 404 error page. what could be the probable causes?

Brian Wong

23. Oct, 2008

Hi George,

Make sure that step 4 and step 7 uses the same page. The most likely cause of your 404 error is that the permalink to your search results page is different from the one you specified in Step 4.

MARO

24. Oct, 2008

Hello Brian my name is maro. I commenting because I want to know if you could do a commentaries for us on iPod items that we have. Please write to me as soon as possible. Thank you!!!

MARO

24. Oct, 2008

Actually what I meant with the comment above was if you could do reviews. E-mail me…

gabor

04. Nov, 2008

Hi,

Thanks for your article. I just ran into the problem that I can’t override the searchbox width of 795.

i have tried to do it by hand, but no avail.

i normally use firefox, but i managed to slip through with 500 px width on one occasion only.

Strange – anyone else experience the same thing?

Anyone else find a work-around?

cheers – thanks again!

gabor

04. Nov, 2008

I think I just answered my own question….

After some mucking about, I found that 795px is the minimum if you want ads on Top AND Right.

I tried Top and Bottom and 500px worked just fine…

Brian Wong

04. Nov, 2008

Glad you worked it out and thanks for sharing the solution.

Shantanu Goel

07. Nov, 2008

Hey Brian
Nice tutorial. Actually I just wrote a post a cpl of days ago telling ppl about how to add adsense for search to 404 pages here:
http://tech.shantanugoel.com/2008/11/06/make-money-out-of-nothing-add-google-adsense-for-search-to-your-404-page.html

But your way of telling things is quite easy to follow. Will link to your post from mine.

Doug Smith

14. Jan, 2009

Great idea! After a hack attempt on my blog where the hacker entered a malformed sql query into the WP search box I looked for other search ideas. The bug that allowed these hacks was fixed long ago but I felt uneasy that people were still trying. This idea allowed me to remove the WP search widget and monetize at the same time.

Thanks again!

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