http://mydomain.com/?tempskin=_atom ;)

¥

I already sent him this but I thought he wanted a .xml file.
http://mydomain.com/?tempskin=_rss2

I'm new at this, what can I say? :-/

I got a reply after sending the tempskin= atom link:

"That RSS still didn’t work unfortunately.

To make sure my parser is working, I tried linking to a random RSS feed I just found on the internet.

http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss

That link gets parsed by my program at www.afan.tv/rss.cfm and shows articles.

Your RSS feed shows a blank page when I run it thru my program for some reason.

Have you tried signing up with www.feedburner.com? It’s a free service by google that hosts your RSS feed (and spreads your news all around the internet or can anyway, if people pick it up) but they tell you what’s wrong with your RSS feed."

I don't know what to do!

I validated the feeds at http://feedvalidator.org so I am perplexed. They worked in my yahoo! mailbox too. Hmmmmmmm.

So I gather that there is no .xml or .rss file to provide?

Yes there is, but the link ¥åßßå showed is an example - not a real feed. Your feeds will end in either ?tempskin=_rss2 or ?tempskin=_atom, but the exact link depends on your blog.

Got link to your blog? If so we can show you your feed link.

EdB wrote:

Yes there is, but the link ¥åßßå showed is an example - not a real feed. Your feeds will end in either ?tempskin=_rss2 or ?tempskin=_atom, but the exact link depends on your blog.

Got link to your blog? If so we can show you your feed link.

http://www.championshipsubdivisionnews.com/

These are the ones I sent to them but they don't work for them:
http://www.championshipsubdivisionnews.com/?tempskin=_rss2
http://www.championshipsubdivisionnews.com/?tempskin=_atom

Okay I think I'm catching up now. These fine folks at afan.tv expect a specific format OTHER than the globally recognized RSS2 and ATOM. Can you show a link to their page that says what they are looking for?

BTW there are two other "skins" you can select for the really old RSS (0.9.2 I think) and the pretty much not popular RDF format. MAYBE they'll like one of those, but if they are looking for a very specific format then they should be able to show you what they want. So it'd be good to know what they think a properly formed XML document looks like yah?

Oh wait another minute! afan.tv is YOURS?

What I'm curious about is a link to the place that can't handle RSS2 or ATOM, and ideally an example of what that site CAN handle. Hope this is making sense.

EdB wrote:

Oh wait another minute! afan.tv is YOURS?

What I'm curious about is a link to the place that can't handle RSS2 or ATOM, and ideally an example of what that site CAN handle. Hope this is making sense.

No, afan is not mine. It is a site that wants to run our feed. They gave the example of the CNN feed that worked with them:
http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss

The CNN feed is RSS 0.92 whereas the B2evo feed is RSS 2.0. See for detail some sites like http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification

Ijust checked. There is still a 0.9 feed for B2evo. That is simply _rss. so for your blog that is http://www.championshipsubdivisionnews.com/?tempskin=_rss Try that one instead.

Good luck

Thanks, I'll let you know.

That format gives only the main url etc., not very specific. xtwocentsx

Reply from AFAN:

"I’m sorry to put you thru all that trouble and I was really hoping that would work, but sadly it still didn’t parse the RSS feed.

I just checked and I’m using 2.0 also for our RSS feeds. This is what my XML file looks like, if that helps at all?

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<channel>
<title>CoMedia Corporation Press Release</title>
<link>http://www.thecomediacorp.com/</link>
<description>CoMedia Corporation Press Release</description>
<lastBuildDate>Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:00:18 PST</lastBuildDate>
<language>en-us</language>
<item>
<title>American Football Alumni Announces the Developmental Football League</title>
<link>http://www.thecomediacorp.com/press.cfm?id=39</link>
<guid>http://www.thecomediacorp.com/press.cfm?id=39</guid>
<pubDate>Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:00:18 PST</pubDate>
<description>November 6, 12:59 pm ET
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The American Football Alumni, Inc. creates the Developmental Football League (DFL) and its associated website at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.godfl.com/&quot;&gt;www.GoDFL.com&lt;/a&gt; . For the first time the DFL allows football players the opportunity to develop and advance their skills at the pro level with the ultimate goal of playing or continuing to advance at the professional level.
</description>
</item>
<atom:link href="http://www.thecomediacorp.com/rss.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
</channel>
</rss>

You are sending:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?><!-- generator="b2evolution/2.3.0-rc1" -->
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/">
<channel>
<title>The Championship Subdivision News Log</title>
<link>http://www.championshipsubdivisionnews.com/</link>
<description>Championship Subdivision News College FCS Football</description>
<language>en-US</language>
<docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>

<admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="http://b2evolution.net/?v=2.3.0-rc1"/>
<ttl>60</ttl>
<item>
<title>Bad-body Humphries now combines golf and charity</title>
<link>http://www.championshipsubdivisionnews.com/?title=bad-body-humphries-now-combines-golf-and&amp;more=1&amp;c=1&amp;tb=1&amp;pb=1</link>

<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jan 2008 01:48:03 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>focus</dc:creator>
<category domain="main">FCS News Articles</category> <guid isPermaLink="false">266@http://www.championshipsubdivisionnews.com/</guid>
<comments>http://www.championshipsubdivisionnews.com/?title=bad-body-humphries-now-combines-golf-and&amp;more=1&amp;c=1&amp;tb=1&amp;pb=1#comments</comments>

</item>
</channel>
</rss>

This is the 2.0 feed

What is your setting at Blog settings -> features -> RSS/Atom feeds?

Well I can't figure this out. b2evolution provides 4 different feed formats for your blog: rss (092), rdf, RSS2, and ATOM. The first two are not installed by default, so you would have to go to your global settings->skins->install new and install them, but not select them for a blog.

You will then 4 different completely standard and totally valid feeds to play with. Perhaps afan will like the "rss (092)" flavor? Really it would be nice if they told you what standard they want, but if all you got is the CNN example then you could edit one of the other feed skins to match what it puts out. Start with the rss(092) skin and turn it into _afan if you follow me.

BTW a feed is just a skin that wraps the appropriate bits into the tags that make xml be what it is.

He just called and said he thinks the problem is in his code. ARGH! Sorry for bugging everyone about this but I did learn a lot from your input. Thanks!

He finally grabbed a widget off the web to display the feed and it works fine:
http://www.afan.tv/test.cfm

Geeesh!

EdB wrote:

BTW a feed is just a skin that wraps the appropriate bits into the tags that make xml be what it is.

FYI FWIW
Yes and no. Yes itś a skin. No, you forget there are three output types from B2evo: htmlbody, raw and xml. You explicitly want xml ouput for this one.

@romputer: I never doubted the B2evo output. The one who made them adores standards.