now it gets wierder. - this only happens in Mozilla Firefox. When I use the links in Internet Exploiter it works fine. -

????????????????????

Not sure what the problem is, as I checked your PHPinfo page in your install directory and saw you have 4.3.8 which AFAIK shouldn't bork your RSS. I had borked RSS with 5.0.0 and am now running a snapshot which fixed my issue.

HOWEVER - I shouldn't have been able to hit up your install directory! DELETE this directory now, or anonymous browsers could drastically alter your b2evo setup. It is highly recommended to delete the directory as your blog is up and running.

Sorry I don't know what to tell you, but you should delete that dir ASAP.

hey thanks man. forgot entirely due to all the breaking and reinstalling I've done in the last week . - directory gone.

the wierd thing is I think the rss feeds are working correctly - the links can be viewed successfully in IE - I'm getting hits from news aggregators... but I can't view the links in Firefox - should I even be able to ? is there some difference in the parsing of xml between browsers ? - I tried it also with Mozilla 1.2 and no go either.... this is the first time I saw Mozilla fail where IE works .. ??

ok I've got further details- although it seems I'm talking to the wind here...
I went to feed validator http://feedvalidator.org/
and got this report

Sorry
This feed does not validate.

line 2, column 0: XML Parsing error: <unknown>:2:0: xml declaration not at start of external entity

<?xml version="1.0"?>
Source: http://technicallyoverboard.com/blog/xmlsrv/rss.php?blog=2

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- generator="b2evolution/0.9.0.10" -->

Can anyone give me any idea of whats going on here?

Post the contents of your rss.php file. Now it looks like you've taken out the xml declaration.

Your rss2.php file validates, but rdf.php and rss.php bork in the xml declaration.

I've mickey moused it into working..

Congratulations!

[Valid RSS] This is a valid RSS feed.

This was fixed by removing these lines... in rss2.php

echo "<?xml version=\"1.0\"?".">";

<!-- generator="b2evolution/<?php echo $b2_version ?>" -->

I dont know why these lines in particular cause the feed to be marked invalid but they do ... no other rss feeds I examine have any lines before <rss version XX> I took them out and got a succesful validation and now can read my own feeds perfectly in any rss reader.

The reason the rdf and others bork is because I havent removed these 2 lines from them yet. - as soon as I do I'm willing to bet it works.

Your rss2 is fine.

The first few lines of rss.php should look like this:

<?php
	/**
   * This template generates an RSS 0.92 feed for the requested blog's latest posts
	 *
	 * See {@link http://backend.userland.com/rss092}
	 *
	 * b2evolution - {@link http://b2evolution.net/}
	 * Released under GNU GPL License - {@link http://b2evolution.net/about/license.html}
	 * @copyright (c)2003-2004 by Francois PLANQUE - {@link http://fplanque.net/}
	 *
	 * @package xmlsrv
	 */
  $skin = '';										// We don't want this do be displayed in a skin !
	$show_statuses = array();     // Restrict to published posts
	$timestamp_min = '';					// Show past
	$timestamp_max = 'now';				// Hide future
	/**
	 * Initialize everything:
	 */
  require dirname(__FILE__).'/../b2evocore/_blog_main.php';
  header("Content-type: application/xml");
  echo "<?xml version=\"1.0\"?".">";
?>
<!-- generator="b2evolution/<?php echo $b2_version ?>" -->
<rss version="0.92">

In the code you just posted that you said you took out, it's missing the PHP end tag ?> right after the echo statement and before the html comment for the generator version.

I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure it should have the version tag in there. I'll wait to see what one of the devs or experts has to say.

francois, isaac, graham, kiesow? Any thoughts?

If I took out that particular php end tag - and I really don't know what the heck I'm doing =--- >
wouldnt that invalidate the statements above
i.e.
$skin = ''; // We don't want this do be displayed in a skin !
$show_statuses = array(); // Restrict to published posts
$timestamp_min = ''; // Show past
$timestamp_max = 'now'; // Hide future
/**
* Initialize everything:
*/
require dirname(__FILE__).'/../b2evocore/_blog_main.php';

then leaving an open ended tag?

I'd love to keep everything in there but the version is what the rss validator choked on. - still, I must state again that I dunno what I'm doing and as it gets later in the day I'm having more beers making me unstable and much more likely to be playing Doom III :D

ok now I'm starting to see some continuity here. - in your rss.php you had the header(contenttype) tag - I did not. - after adding it and removing the above stated lines my rss feed validates.

let me maybe stem the tide of research here by asking - could anything I've done in my index.php file be affecting this ? (hence causing the above problems ? )

the only other conclusion I could make is that somehow my install got munged and that would explain my rss.php missing the header line... ?

bonus either way though as at least 2 of my feeds are now working.