[Forum] RSS just not working as it should - fetch error(?). I am losing so much traffic.

[orangeade]

Since upgrading to vBulletin I've lost out on a ton of traffic because there's just something wrong with the RSS feeds.

Sometimes they work for a bit, then a few posts get through, then they just stop completely.

I publish RSS feeds to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn & Blogger.

The status is as follows:

1) Twitter (via Twitterfeed) - Posts rarely. Maybe once/twice a day if I'm lucky
2) Facebook (via RSS Grafitti) - Worked reasonably well for a while, then stopped working a few days ago.
3) LinkedIn - Didn't work for 10 days, then worked a bit for a day or two. Stopped completely a few days ago.
4) Blogger - Worked reasonably well on and off. Stopped working 2 days ago.

I'm so disappointed that I've lost so much traffic because of this stupid problem. Please note this was not a problem at all with the feeds on phpBB.

So how do I fix this?

[Wayne Luke]

What is the URL that you're using for your RSS Feeds?

[orangeade]

http://www.mechanicaldesignforum.com...hp?&lastpost=1

[orangeade]

Anyone?

[Wayne Luke]

I can't see any error in your feed. Might be the lastpost=1 confusing them. Might drop it.

You should reset them on the services you use to see if it fixes. Otherwise, ask the services what the problem is and open issues to get the formatting changed.

[orangeade]

There must be something up with the feeds. I have checked the basic one: http://www.mechanicaldesignforum.com/external.php with http://validator.w3.org

Check out the results:
http://validator.w3.org/feed/check.c...2Fexternal.php

Yes - it's a "valid" feed but the above link shows bad characters and allsorts of issues. Any ideas how I can correct this?

[Wayne Luke]

Only issue I see is the inclusion of the iFrame from your Youtube videos being embedded. Are you using the Video Embed tool or HTML to add those to your content?

[orangeade]

Only issue I see is the inclusion of the iFrame from your Youtube videos being embedded. Are you using the Video Embed tool or HTML to add those to your content?

There are plenty of posts without YouTube videos that are not being picked up. Therefore the problem can't possibly be this.

[orangeade]

As an experiment I have created a LinkedIn group with 3 RSS feeds:

My one: Doesn't work

http://www.mechanicaldesignforum.com/external.php 

YOUR one: Doesn't work

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/external.php 

One that worked on another group. Works perfectly in my test group.

http://www.engineerlive.com/rss 

Any ideas?

[Wayne Luke]

Nope. What are the errors that you are getting from LinkedIN? The RSS 2.0 standard hasn't changed in years and that is what we're using.

[orangeade]

Nope. What are the errors that you are getting from LinkedIN? The RSS 2.0 standard hasn't changed in years and that is what we're using.

I'm not getting any error message - it just doesn't pick anything up.

[orangeade]

More info:

This is the error on Twitterfeed:

[feed status: Feed checked OK, no new entries found (27 Nov 20:05) and Marked this service as inactive due to authorisation failure, edit your feed service settings and activate again (23 Oct 22:04)]

[Wayne Luke]

Not sure what it means by authorization failure. However the last forum feed was for the 25th so if you imported it before then, there would be no new entries. Forum and CMS RSS is separate.