Monday, October 30, 2006

[Advertising] Using Feedburner/RSS feeds, etc.

At the suggestion of a friend I've started looking into creating (?) an RSS feed for my blog but I seem to have run into a snag.

Feedburner has informed me that my feed is "invalid" and some handy solutions for fixing the problem, but I can't understand them, specifically this one:

column 414: managingEditor must include an email address: Liz

column 7578: author must include an email address: Liz (15 occurrences)

I can't find the spot in the Blogger template that controls this, so I don't know how to fix it. I'd rather not have to go into each post and edit the HTML (especially since there are only 15 occurences and I have 197 posts)- is there a better way to handle this issue?

In addition, this feed has issues that may cause problems for some users. We recommend fixing these issues.
column 12695: description should not contain onblur attribute (18 occurrences)

What is an onblur attribute?

column 78578: style attribute contains potentially dangerous content: ;font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;

Okay, totally clueless here. Dangerous style? Help!

I was going to post to the feedvalidator-users site, but since many of you have RSS feeds on your sites I thought I'd ask you folks first and see if anyone had some insight. All help appreciated.

This Post was written by Liz from Good Stuff


13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't comment on any of the other RSS issues, bu the dangerous content may refer to the font-family not having any 'back-up' styles or may even refer to the percentage size, which in some cases can mathmatically compound (get really really small).

Use a prioritized list (separated by commas) of fonts in case a user doesn't have georgia on their machine. Without it, it just reverts to the browsers default font. I'm not sure if capitalizing Georgia makes a difference or not, but it's worth trying.

font-family:Georgia, serif;

Annie said...

I'm not sure how to fix the exact problems you're having, but I find that Feed Validator often gives more specific information on how to fix issues. Perhaps it may provide more details:
http://feedvalidator.org/

Liz said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Kalyn Denny said...

To find the feed url in Blogger, go into dashboard, then settings, then site feed.

You're very smart to choose Feedburner. I've been very happy with it, and then you only need one link or button on your site.
Don't be discouraged when you start seeing the stats. For whatever reason, my feedburner stats show only about 1/4 of the people reading my site that Bloglines shows.

(To see who's reading your site through bloglines, subscribe to your own feed and the numbers will show when you're signing up.)

girlgastronome said...

I am having the same problem as you are with FeedBurner. I noticed we're both using the minima template so I'm wondering if that has something to do with it. I entered the site url and got the error messages you received. I just entered in the feed url and got the following error:

The feed address you entered includes an invalid leading or trailing character in the hostname. FeedBurner cannot resolve an address with leading or trailing punctuation. Try providing your feed's unique IP address to avoid this problem. (Blogger users hosted on blogspot.com cannot provide a unique IP address. We recommend a hostname that uses only alphanumeric characters.)

I have sent an email to FeedBurner support and will let you know if they reply. In the meantime, I hope everyone will please keep posting suggestions. Thanks much.

-gg

Liz said...

Okay folks,

First off, thanks for the suggestions.

Second, I figured out the "feed url" and now got a response, still a denial, that makes some kind of sense:

"The URL you entered does not appear to be a valid feed. We encountered the following problem: Error on line 15: The entity name must immediately follow the '&' in the entity reference."

So the question now becomes, where the heck is line 15????

Liz said...

Okay, tried again and got a totally different response that might help you, gg:

The version of the format of this feed is not supported by this validator.

Here's a link that might help:

http://www.atomenabled.org/2006/07/atomenabled-bloggers.php#115334590123672226

Apparently it's an "atom enabler." I won't be downloading this right now (I'm a work and they are nice, but I'm not about to test how nice they really are).

Suggestions still very much welcome. Seriously.

girlgastronome said...

hey liz,

i saw that info too but it doesn't apply to blogs with the .blogspot address (i.e. in order to install that php script the blog must be independently hosted). i'm still communicating with feed burner support and will post any pertinent info they pass on here.

txs!
-gg

girlgastronome said...

Hi Liz,

FB support just got back to me and the problem was finally fixed. I explained the issue I was having and this is what he told me:

Ahh I see. When I paste "http://girlgastronome.blogspot.com/atom.xml" into the box on our homepage it looks to be working right now. If you are typing it in, make sure you don't have any spaces at the beginning or end of the url and that everything is spelled right. Let me know if it still doesn't work for you.

Now, I had found that advice before and taken it so I have to think it was something else that was buggy. (Then again, it is true that I am far from perfect and do get in a hurry every so often). If this doesn't work for you and you continue to have issues, I suggest emailing them as I've found them to be quite responsive:

FeedBurner Support
feedback@feedburner.com

Hope that helps!

Best,
gg

Liz said...

Okay, this is utterly weird- I got the "Welcome" page. In other words, I have been validated. The sky is bluer, my Clif bar tastes... forget that!

Anyway, I am currently trying to figure out how to put the info into my template (there's a lot of helpful stuff on the forums- actually, too much). It sounds like from what gg said there's other issues going on there.

Anyhoo, if anyone has any bright ideas on how to put up the burner/feed stuff and where, do let me know.

Thanks all!

Susan Voisin said...

Liz, to put it on your blog, just go to Feedburner, click Publicize, and choose "Chickletize"--you can choose which icon you want to use and then copy the code for it. Then just open your template, find a spot in the sidebar where it will be noticed, and paste the code in. Preview it to make sure it looks right and save. That's it!

Liz said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Liz said...

I got it! Thank you Paul, Annie, Kalyn, Columbus Foodie, GG and SusanV for responding and not mocking me for being tech-challenged. :)

Have a good afternoon everyone!