FeedWordPress 0.981: bugfix and compatibility release allowing use with WordPress 2.1

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Update 2007-11-21: FeedWordPress 0.981 is now out of date. You can download the latest release — 0.991 at the time of this writing — from the project homepage.

There’s a lot to say about some long-awaited and frustratingly long-delayed improvements to FeedWordPress, but I don’t have much time tonight, so I’ll be brief.

**FeedWordPress is now compatible with WordPress 2.1.** 0.981 is now available for download[1] (also available in format[2]); the major feature behind this release is code to accommodate the changes to the structure of WordPress’s database between version 2.0.x and 2.1, which until now caused a number of SQL errors and prevented WordPress from syndicating new posts when installed with the latest version of WordPress.

**There is one important change that you should note about the installation procedure.** Due to what seems to me like a fairly pointless bit of wordsmithing on the part of the WordPress development team, you now need to install *two* files from the `OPTIONAL/wp-includes`
directory in order to successfully upgrade your version of MagpieRSS. (The upgrade is necessary for FeedWordPress to support enclosures, multiple categories, or Atom 1.0 feeds.) Be sure that you copy *both* `rss-functions.php` and `rss.php` to your `wp-includes` directory when upgrading MagpieRSS; if you copy only `rss-functions.php` you will *not* end up with a working MagpieRSS (or FeedWordPress) installation.

[3]: http://projects.radgeek.com/download/feedwordpress-0.981.tar.gz
format: http://projects.radgeek.com/download/feedwordpress-0.981.zip

In addition to the compatibility update, and the changes to the installation procedure, some changes have been made to the user interface code which should help FeedWordPress’s pages fit in better with the WordPress 2.x user interface. In particular, the “Categories” checkboxes for assigning categories to all posts syndicated from any source (under Options –> Syndication) or to all posts syndicated from a particular feed (under Blogroll –> Syndicated) should no longer cause an ugly spill all over the interface.

There are also some important fixes to some outstanding and irritating bugs. Here’s a quick summary of the other changes in this release:

* **DATE BUG AFFECTING SOME PHP INSTALLATIONS RESOLVED:** due to a subtle bug
in parse_w3cdtf(), some installations of PHP encountered problems with
FeedWordPress’s attempt to date posts, which would cause some new posts
on Atom feeds to be dated as if they had apppeared in 1969 or 1970
(thus, effectively, never appearing on front apge at all). This bug in
the date handling should now be fixed.

* **PHP `` SHORT FORM ELIMINATED:** some installations of PHP do not
allow the `` short form for printing PHP values, which was used
extensively in the FeedWordPress interface code. Since this could cause
fatal errors for users with the wrong installation of PHP, the short
form has been replaced with full PHP echo statements, and is no longer
used in FeedWordPress.

* **GLOBAL CATEGORIES BUG RESOLVED:** a bug that prevented some users from
setting one or more categories to apply to syndicated posts from all
feeds (using the checkbox interface under Options –> Syndication) has
been resolved.

Please note that 0.981 is preliminary work which I hope will be followed by ongoing work to better integrate FeedWordPress with the new features offered by recent releases of WordPress. If you encounter any problems with it, please be sure to in touch(http://radgeek.com/contact) with me and send as detailed a report of the bug you are encountering as possible. In the next few weeks I hope to be working on a number of other improvements that will bring much more substantial changes to both the user experience and the technical underpinnings for FeedWordPress. As we move towards a 1.0 release, I have high hopes that your experience as a user will get substantially simpler, while the back-end will become substantially more sophisticated.

In any case, **watch this space:** it’s been slow for the pas several months, but there are some big things coming soon.

Enjoy!

38 thoughts on “FeedWordPress 0.981: bugfix and compatibility release allowing use with WordPress 2.1”

  3. I got the same error as Paul. (I have WordPress 2.1.1) I get it when trying to add a new feed under Blogroll–>Syndication.

    I can enter the feed and enter “syndicate”, which takes me to the “Feed Finder: New Syndicated Feed” page, but then when I hit “Use this feed” it gives the error:

    Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/usern/public_html/wp-admin/admin-header.php:16) in /home/usern/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 1219

    Any ideas?

  4. Just wanted to also note that I tried overwriting rss.php and rss-functions.php with the included versions, but that didn’t resolve it.

  5. I was wondering if you had noticed that there’s a problem when importing feeds from Blogger. I’ve run across several people who report that they have blank posts when they import feeds from Blogger. The titles and dates come through fine, but the posts are blank… any ideas?

    WordPress Forum here

  6. Is there soome problem with sudomains?
    I’m trying to aggregate the feed from sub1.domain.com/feed/ to a second wp blog on sub2.domain.com.

    But it keeps saying ‘no feed found’

    Works flawless with external feeds, tho.

  7. Hi, the plugin works finde for me (thank you!!) but it converts the Tags from Ultimate Tag Warroir to categories when importing – and I don’t want to have posts with like 20 categories.. is there a way around this?

    Tank you!

  8. Rad

    some things I could use for a next release

    1. cronless support for WP

    2. It seems when using many feeds there is a time-out, restart the update-feeds.php again the update starts where it left (some kind of time-out)

    3. Auto update without hitting the update button, through http access

    some things I like to see in the near-by-future update(s)

  9. The provided rss.php has a bug in it which will timestamp some feeds back to the 1970’s 🙂

    The regexp capture on seconds is incorrect, and includes the ‘:’ in front. To fix this simply change the following:

    @@ -1546,7 +1546,7 @@

     if ( preg_match( $pat, $date_str, $match ) ) {
     list( $year, $month, $day, $hours, $minutes, $seconds) =

    - array( $match[1], $match[3], $match[5], $match[7], $match[8], $match[9]);
    + array( $match[1], $match[3], $match[5], $match[7], $match[8], $match[10].$match[11]);

         # W3C dates can omit the time, the day of the month, or even the month.
    # Fill in any blanks using information from the present moment. --CWJ

    @@ -1632,4 +1632,4 @@
    return false;
    }
    }

  10. Ok, the code above is a bit badly formated (the ‘- array’ and ‘+ array’ are supposed to be on separate lines), but you get the drift.
    The ‘$match[9]’ needs to change to ‘$match[10].$match[11]’, then it works again.

    Good luck!

  11. Hello,

    I also have this error:

    WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘)’ at line 2] INSERT INTO wplink2cat (linkid, category_id) VALUES (9, )

    When i select the feed.

    When I update it does’t filter the categories but grab it all.

    The link under blog roll is not displayed in the Comtributors category.

    So wp_link2cat is not actualy writing its stuff in the DB.

    Thanks for the good job.

    ps: it worked on one wordpress website on three.

  12. The plugin works splendidly, just wondering if I need to rtfm or its not there, I can’t seem to get podcast enclosures from the feeds, and is there a way to integrate utw? Thanks

  13. Just want to echo the problem mike is having. I can’t seem to get podcast enclosures either from feeds. I am taking a closer look at the code tonight – if I notice a fix I’ll update here.

  14. also – in version .98 a syndicated post with multiple categories would be added to the database and filed in the categories of the original post along with what I selected in the edit syndicate link page. However, with version .981 the posts are only going into the category I’ve selected on the edit syndicate link page.

  16. FYI, I’m getting the same date bug on Atom feeds with FWP 0.9.8.1, WP 2.0.5. Is there a workaround for somebody who could hack the code themselves?

  18. Hey y’all,

    Those who are experiencing the 1970 date bug should re-download FeedWordPress 0.981. I checked and found that I’d accidentally reverted the bundled rss.php to an earlier version that did not include this bug fix. The archive now includes the correct version of rss.php, which should solve the problem.

    I’m looking into the database error that some people are experiencing with categories. Hopefully this should be fixed in FWP 0.99 within a week or so. Those of you who are experiencing this: what versions of WordPress and PHP are you using?

  20. wp2.1.2 total not working for all hosting!
    It look like working on some hosting but not.
    All the feed links got cut or wrong links(it was ok when preview).
    Back to wp2.0.5 and fwp0.98 everything fine.

  22. Hi Chris,
    I’m having this error with v0.981 of your FeedWordpress plugin:

    Error: I don’t syndicate tag:radgeek.com/projects/feedwordpress/xxx

    where xxx is the password I set

    I’m using wp 2.12.

    Could you give me a hand, man? Thanks!

    Diego
    [ProfesorBlog] http://www.profesorblog.com

  23. Hi!
    I have problem with encoding (charset?).
    I use WP2.1.3 and when i update feeds it’s comes in strange encoding. I’m from Russia and i recieve feeds from russian, chinese sites. But it’s all going to chaos.
    Please help me!
    And sorry for my english!

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