feedList FAQ

If you are having a problem with feedList or you want a new feature – please read the following FAQ before asking about it – odds are your question might be answered.


Problems

I keep getting “Requested List Not Available” what gives?

This message will show up if Magpie, the built in RSS functionality with wordpress, fails to get a valid feed back from the source. reddit.com is one source where this always happens. I’m trying to figure out why reddit won’t return the feed to wordpress blogs asking for the feed. I think it might have to do with the identified user agent of ‘WordPress/versionNum’ where versionNum is the version of wordpress your running. If anyone has a suggestion on how to resolve this please feel free to share your ideas.

Instead of my feed I see “Empty List” but I know the feed contains items, where are they?

Magpie, the RSS functionality in wordpress, caches your requested feed. Sometimes if you get a “Requested List Not Available” error one time it will return an empty list of feed items to display to feedList from the cache. When this happens I show the empty list message instead. The cause of this could be the same as the “Requested List Not Avaailable” error. To confirm try to visit the feed URL manually in your browser and see if any items are returned in the feed. If the feed has items in it you can force feedList to bypass the cache by changing the feedList parameter of ignore_cache to true – then refresh the page. Once you refresh make sure you set ignore_cache back to false so that your site doesn’t ask for the feed to often.

I cleared the cache, the feed works in my browser, but still doesn’t show up on my site – your plugin is broke isn’t it?

The plugin isn’t broken. However, there are some sites where it currently can not get the feed. Reddit.com and Mag.nolia are both examples. The reason for this is that feedList uses wordpress which uses magpie (to parse the rss/atom feeds). magpie uses snoopy (a PHP based HTTP client) and snoopy uses curl to get the feed from the URL specified. cURL is the culprit. It can’t handle the way some servers are configured and thus it fails. Mag.nolia for example sends back a 301 message (permanantly moved) and cURL doesn’t handle that message so you just get the 301 instead of the contents at the new location.

feedList used to use lastRSS to parse the RSS feeds – and lastRSS uses fopen to get the feed from the url. It worked great at reddit and mag.nolia but alot of webhosts don’t let you use fopen due to security concerns. Plus, lastRSS doesn’t support atom feeds.

So basically, what I’m saying, is that currently if you need to show a feed from a site that feedList won’t load your probably out of luck. If your host supports fopen – then you should use the old rssLinkList plugin (it used lastRSS) but you won’t be able to use feedList (since feedList has some functions with the same name for backwards compatability). If you need a mag.nolia feed and an atom feed – well you may want to use more specific plugins. There is a mag.nolia plugin that uses lastRSS and then you can use feedList for your other feeds (that arent’ configured in a way that breaks cURL).

You could also try to talk to the publisher of the feed and see if they will change something on their end so that cURL can actually get their feed (I doubt this will happen).

I installed the feedList plugin but then my entire site went white what should I do?

First, make sure you don’t have both feedList and rssLinkList installed at the same time. feedList has all the functionality of rssLinkList (including the legacy function names of rssLinkList() within it. PHP hates to see two functions with the same name and it stops working when it finds that duplication. To fix this while your site is all white, delete the rssLinkList.php file from your sites wp-content/plugins directory.

I can’t get the plugin to work at all – can you help me?

First, make sure you read the readme.txt file becuase it tells you most of what I am going to be able to tell you. If, after reading that file and trying again you are still having problems feel free to email me or leave a comment on the feedList page. I will end up asking you for the URL you want to display and then I will send you back the code you should paste into your wordpress theme to get it to work.

Can you add a new special feature for me?

Maybe. If the feature seems like one that many people will use, and I can do it in a way that won’t break the existing functionality, then I will probably add it.

My flickr images aren’t showing up; just the description is.

I’m working on this one and it should be fixed soon

What is the feed manager for within wp-admin?

It is a feature I someday hope to build that will let you manage the feeds displayed on your pages more easilly. Then the amout of PHP code you actually have to put in your templates will be greatly reduced (you won’t have to pass big lists of parameters). However, it is near the bottom of my free time todo list so I can’t guarantee it will be completed anytime soon


Features

How can I have items from a bunch of feeds show up in the same list?

Put in your opening list tag (ul or ol), then call feedList one time for each sites feed you want to include in the list, then put in your closing list tag.

Can I show more than one feed in my side bar?

Sure, just call the feedList function once for each feed you want to display. The feeds will appear in the template as list items by default (li)

Can I provide a bunch of feed locations then have feedList randomly pick some items from each and build one random list?

Yep, you need to use the randomFeeList function and provide a feeds.txt file. Check out the readme.txt file and the sample feeds.txt file for more information.

I have worked hard to make feedList do something great – will you include it with the main feedList download?

Maybe. I’m glad you were able to add a feature. However, I need to be careful about what I include in the plugin to make sure it doesn’t have an adverse effect on the existing functionality. However, if the feature seems like something others would use and it doesn’t break the other code then I’ll probably add your suggestion and put credit you with the change. Thanks for sharing.

Wow, feedList is perfect for me – can I donate some $$?

You can, but please don’t feel like you have to. However, if you want you can send me money via paypal OR you can send me something from my wishlist (or an amazon gift certificate). My email username is bill and the domain is doxie.org for (combine the username with the domain by putting an @ in the middle). A few others have shown similiar generosity and I’ve been able to get some great things thanks to them. After reading this, if you don’t want to send me anything – that’s ok. I needed feedList myself so the fact that others get a benefit from it is cool. If you want you can just post a blog article on your site about the plugin and that is more than thanks enough.