Resolving issues in an Open RSS feed
The content in Open RSS feeds rely on all different types of sites across the web. Because these websites are very unpredictable, issues can happen with feeds at any time. As a result, you may encounter the "Feed error" page when attempting to navigate to a feed in your web browser.
If you see this error page, we're likely already aware of the issue and and already escalated to fix as soon as possible. So we ask for your patience as we work to get it resolved. If you're already subscribed to the feed in your RSS reader, it will begin populating again once the issue is resolved.
Common Issues
Open RSS feeds rely on a number of different websites all over the internet for their content and these websites can be very unpredictable. So there could be a number of reasons why a feed may fail. Below are some common issues you may see in an Open RSS feed.
Feed is no longer updating
| Reason | Description | Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Rate limited | The feed has exceeded the number of requests allowed by the site from which it gets its content and it must pause for a short time before making any additional requests. | Give the feed a little more time to populate and the issue will resolve itself automatically. If you find that it's not updated after waiting, you can email us and we'll check whether there is some other issue. |
| Website has changed | The structure of the website from which the feed gets its content has been changed in a significant way that prevents the feed from obtaining new content. | The error is marked high priority and we work quickly to update the feed to use the website's new structure. |
| Website is down | The website the feed relies on is unresponsive or offline. | The feed will began working again once the site is back up. |
| Blocked access | The website has implemented some security measure that has blocked our access to the feed content. |
The resolution depends on the reason we're blocked, which isn't always clear. Resolving will take time and requires some level of experimentation. If a resolution can't be found, we may reach out to the site owner for help, which usually resolves the issue quickly. If they refuse to help, we'll likely open an issue to communicate the problem and try finding some alternative way to populate the feed. |
Missing feed items
| Reason | Explanation | Solution |
|---|---|---|
| The feed's content isn't being requested often enough | Open RSS feeds don't update on their own. They need to be used in an RSS reader that is requesting its content at consistent intervals. | Make sure the feed is being used in an RSS reader that is making requests to the feed on a consistent basis and at least as often as new items are published. |
| Enough time hasn't passed for the updated content to appear | To avoid overloading the websites they depend on with too many unnecessary requests, Open RSS feeds don't always update immediately. The frequency of content is checked based on the feed's history. | Allow the feed some extra time to populate and it should resolve on its own. |
| Log in or paid subscription required | The missing content requires either being logged in or a paid subscription. | Because Open RSS doesn't support login-required or paywalled content. The content will need to be publicly available in order to appear in an Open RSS feed. |
I've been blocked
Sometimes accessing Open RSS feeds can be done in a way that can hog resources, make feeds significantly slower, and destroy the experience for other users. We understand that, for many users, this may not be intentional. But you may be blocked in order to preserve a great experience for other users. If this is the case, you can try diagnosing and resolving the issue with our recommendations below.
| What you were doing | Why you've been blocked | Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Using an RSS reader |
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| Using a self-hosted RSS reader |
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| Using a web browser | The web browser or perhaps a browser extension is accessing pages on openrss.org at a superhuman rate so fast that it's being detected as a malicious bot. |
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Items taking too long to appear in a feed
There may be a delay in seeing new content in an Open RSS feed for a few reasons.
New content for the feed has already just been previously requested and there was none available, and the next request hasn't happened yet.
There's a temporary pause on updating a feed's content until requests for other feeds for the same website have completed. This is to avoid inadvertently overloading the source's servers and decrease the chances of the service being blocked.
Usually if an RSS feed's content is delayed, the new content will appear in the feed after a short time. If the feed doesn't show new items after having waited quite some time, feel free to contact us and we'll look into the issue further.
The feed is showing different information from its web page
| Reason | Explanation | Solution |
|---|---|---|
| The web page isn't the only source of the feed | Sometimes the content in an Open RSS feed can come from multiple different sources other than from the web page associated, which can cause slight differences. This ensures that content in a feed is still possible to get from one source if another fails. | If you're seeing content in a feed that is incorrect or drastically different from what's showing on it's associated web page, this is likely unintentional and you should contact us so we can resolve. |
| The feed's content is location-specific | The web page the feed relies on shows different content based on the IP geolocation and because our servers IPs are in the USA, the content in the feed is showing USA content instead of content in the country expected. | Until we are able to have servers in other countries, we're likely not able to support location-specific web content. But you can contact us as there may be an interim solution we have in mind. |
| Log in required | The feed is using non-logged in content, but the web page is showing different content to you because you're logged in. | Login-required content is unsupported in Open RSS feeds. |
Resolving issues
Monitoring and detection
Open RSS Feeds are actively monitored 24/7 and whenever an issue occurs with a feed, the error is immediately logged and we're notified. We are then able to see all information about the error to determine why it occurred. Our error logs include:
- The time of the error
- The amount of times the error occurred
- The feed attempted when the error occurred
- The user agent and IP address used
- The line in our code that raised the error
Prioritization
When our error monitoring detects an issue with a feed, the issue is immediately escalated to the top of our list of priorities. We immediately stop all non-essential work and work on resolving the issue. If multiple issues are occurring, we prioritize resolving them in the following order.
- Issues reported by monthly donors
- Issues that impact the most users
- Issues with the highest frequency
- Issues with active feeds from oldest to newest
- Issues with feeds that are no longer being used (in case they are used again)
Timing
When feeds have issues, they're typically short-lived. In fact, we resolve most of them before our users ever notice. We aim to resolve issues the same or next day they occur. But sometimes resolving an issue can take longer depending on its complexity or if there are other higher-priority issues we need to attend to. When the issue is resolved, we'll let everyone know in our Changelog, which has an RSS feed you can subscribe to.
Mitigation and future prevention
When we've resolved an error, we make sure to thoroughly test and take measures to prevent it or any similar issue in the future. But the ugly truth is that there's never a single way to prevent a particular issue from popping up again. Open RSS feeds rely on sources that are out of our control and those sources can change randomly, at any given time.
As a result, new issues are always emerging, and resolutions need to constantly be tweaked. Therefore, we remain vigilant and proactive in detecting errors in all Open RSS feeds on a constant basis to ensure they are free of issues to remain reliable for our users.
Report an issue
If there's an issue that's taking too long to resolve or one that we might not be aware of, you can report it by contacting us. But first, make sure the website that the feed relies on is actually functioning. You can do this with the following steps.
- Navigate to the problematic Open RSS feed in your web browser.
- Remove the
openrss.org/from the URL of the feed. - Navigate your browser to the updated URL.
- Verify that the web page is actually working.
If the web page isn't working, you'll have to reach out to its owner for a resolution. If the web page is working but the feed for it isn't, please do let us know so we can resolve the issue.
Last Updated: 2 months ago