Running into an RSS feed error on your WordPress site? Recently, one of our readers asked us how to fix WordPress RSS feed errors. There are several types of RSS feed errors and they can be caused by changes to plugins and themes. In this article, we will show you how to find and fix WordPress RSS feed errors.
The most common WordPress RSS feed errors are due to poor formatting. WordPress generates RSS feeds in XML, which is a strict markup language. A missing line break or extra tab can break your RSS feed.
The RSS error message will look like this:
Depending on the browser you are using, the RSS feed error message may vary.
You may also see this error message when visiting your feed in a browser.
If you're using FeedBurner, your errors may look different.
With that said, let's take a look at what causes these RSS feed errors and how to fix them.
The most likely reason for your RSS feeds to display an error is poor formatting. This poor formatting can be caused by whitespace after closing the php tag in a plugin or in your theme's functions.php file.
If you recently added a code snippet to your theme or to your child theme's functions.php file. Then you need to edit your functions file.
If there is a closing php tag at the end of your functions file, make sure there is no extra space or line breaks after it.
Ideally, the closing PHP tag is not required at the end of the file. This is why it would be better if you remove the closing php tag entirely.
This should fix the problem in most cases. However, if it doesn't fix the RSS feed error, continue reading.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the My RSS Fix RSS plugin. Upon activation, simply go to Tools »RSS Feed Fix page.
Click the Fix feed button and that's it.
You can now visit your feed in a browser window or test it with a feed validation tool.
We hope this article helped you fix WordPress RSS feed errors on your site. You may also want to take a look at our guide on how to make separate RSS feeds for each category in WordPress.
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