Is there anyone that can tell me how to resolve this error that I posted above?

Thanks!

Yet one more thing. Is this normal?

I suggest you both start with a feed that is known to work. There are quite a few variables and if you try to solve everything at once you might not succeed.

Here's one that works for me:

http://www.bonsai-today.com/rss/bonsai-today-rss.html

2. Nothing will happen unless the Article Bot is enabled and associated with a user. Did you create a user and assign the article bot to a user?

Advanced Settings - Leave all that regex stuff blank for now.

3. Did you configure the RSS Feed?

Mine for the feed listed above is

ID:1
http://www.bonsai-today.com/rss/bonsai-today-rss.html
Forum: General - choose your own forum
Icon ID: 1
RSS Label: [Bonsai-Today]
Post Interval: 1500 ***See note below***
Fetch Limit: 1
# Skip: 0
Build Similar Thread: Yes
Skip articles that don't contain descriptions: Yes
Enabled: Yes
Advanced Stuff: All Blank

***Nothing will happen until the 1500 minutes elapse, so set it to some low value for testing, like 60 minutes or 5 minutes if you're impatient

Set up your cron. I am using Cpanel X with Cron Jobs:

Click the Cron Jobs icon and choose Standard.

Command to run:
You need your full, absolute path here. My path won't work for you.

Minutes: 0
Hour(s): Every Hour
Day(s): Every Day
Month(s): Every Month
Weekday(s) Every weekday

You won't get any posting if

*you use a bad feed
*mess up on the cron path or don't have any cron
*don't attach a feed to a robot
*don't attach a robot to a userid
*set too long a time period
*choose the wrong forum for posting

Summary: Get it working with a known good RSS first, then you can experiment with others.

Regards,

Matt

Yup. Got it. I have a second feed (from the same source, I might add) that works. The first one continues to give the error that I posted above. Now, if it's a bad RSS feed, great. But if there is a way that I can work with what I have and figure out what's messing up the feed in one RSS that isn't messing it up in the other.

Here's the kick though. The same RSS feed that is messing up with this bot, works through different mod (for a CMS, not a forum) and pulls the feed just fine without error. So ... is there a way around this? I'm hoping. I'm watching this mod actually work with one feed.

Okay. Also, in the RSS Admin, I'm see that the Post Total equals 93, but there's only 4 posts and I'm quite sure they are from the functioning RSS feed (since I can see those posted). That would leave 89 posts somwhere. Where? I got a different report this time when I changed my cron function from what was listed in the install.html to what you have above (with my own foum path, of course). Now I this:

Different than the MagpieRSS error, but still not something that I understand. If it's not the Magpie error, where are the posts?


Edit: The second report just came in. Now it's back to both the above code AND the original code.

Two ideas for you now

It sounds like it is incompatible with the importer for one reason or another. A couple things you might try

1. Validate the RSS feed and see if it passes validation
2. Post the url to the feed and ask someone else to try importing it using their vbArticle Bot
3. Be very careful with the board you select. The robot has the capability to post to any forum, including boards that are not "forums," boards that are permissions excluded to ordinary users, boards that don't accept posts and boards that are otherwise closed. Tell the robot to post and it will post, whatever the circumstances.

Regards,

Matt

Okay. Let me ask this. The Advanced area that does replacements. I think I can see the problem. One feed validates but with "potential issues" -- therefore it posts. The other does not validate but because it doesn't like the & or \ in various places. Is the replacement aspect that I see there a way to replace these characters with something more "friendly"? Or am I way off here?

BTW, I want to add this in here as I start to actually simmer down. Thank you. You've been an incredible help in this process.

I think those regular expression fields are provided to "Clean up" various tags left in posts after they are imported and parsed. You could try making replacements, but I think that's after the fact. Maybe you should contact whomever is providing the feed and tell them that their feeds aren't validating.

Regards,

Matt

The problem is that they don't care. Sad, but true. I'll try the replacement today and see what happens.

Any way to stop "Unknown Location" in the Who's Online list?

I've set it up, and got it working for Crontab.