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RSS Feed Return Webpage

Hi everyone,

I'm attempting to access feeds off a forum and have them display them on a website. Thus allowing the admins of the forum to create a news category and have the discussions also posted on their website. I have been able to access the feeds by the link which is provided on the forum.

http://community.portal2abyss.com/categories/website/feed.rss

The problem is when I try to run that link in an aggregator or validate it. The returned message while using W3 validation service is "It looks like this is a web page, not a feed." and sure enough it will return an HTML document; however, a similar feed link such as the one below will validate, but it won't display any of the topics/discussion inside nor do these show up in the XML.

http://community.portal2abyss.com/categories/the-wire/feed.rss

One more aspect of this problem (as if it couldn't get any more confusing), is when I run the first link in my browser. What is returned is a nicely formatted XML document.

I know there have been many questions regarding the use of RSS with Vanilla forums, but I'm stumped and I haven't been able to find any topics which address this issue. If there is any other information I can provide, let me know. Any help or suggests you guys have are greatly appreciated.

Notes:

Best Answers

Answers

  • Thanks for getting back to me.

    What you're saying makes sense from what I'm seeing. Do you know if they a part of their own feed? and any thoughts on why the other link is returning a webpage for the validator and aggregator rather than an XML?

  • Thanks for the insight. Turns out that plugin doesn't seem to work - not a big issue. Also, from what you're saying about the other link being private, I think that just answered my questions to the fullest. After playing around a bit, I managed to get the aggregator to pick up the discussions coming from the "the-wire" feed (I changed them to basic discussions). As for the other link, I believe because it is private the aggregator and validator are unable to gain access to the XML therefore, they get the unauthenticated home page of the forum.

    What I've learned (for anyone else who comes here):

    • Announcements are not included in RSS feeds.
    • Forum posts & categories which require users to login to the forum to view can not be accessed by aggregators.

    Thank you peregrine, you have helped me greatly!

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