RSS Feed in vB 3.7.4

[David LeBow]

I'm trying to add an RSS feed to my site which will then populate a forum thread. The feed is here:

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/rss/business/index.xml

Unfortunately, when I preview the feed, I get the following message:

Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to www.swissinfo.ch:80 (Ein Verbindungsversuch ist fehlgeschlagen, da die Gegenstelle nach einer bestimmten Zeitspanne nicht ordnungsgem?? reagiert hat, oder die hergestellte Verbindung war fehlerhaft, da der verbundene Host nicht reagiert hat. ) in [path]\includes\class_rss_poster.php on line 98
Warning: Unable to fetch RSS Feed in [path]\includes\class_rss_poster.php on line 231

The German is roughly: the connection attempt failed because the opposing side didn't answer correctly within the given time or the connection was faulty because the connected host didn't respond.

I can imagine that there may be some required setting at the server, but could anyone point me in the general direction so that I can let them know where to look?

Thanks.

[Dismounted]

Most likely, there may be a firewall in place on the server blocking such connections.

[newguy]

Originally Posted by Dismounted

Most likely, there may be a firewall in place on the server blocking such connections.

Would a firewall mess with the RSS feed in any other way? I am not getting the feed posted like it is from the source.

[SEOvB]

View the RSS feed in a RSS feed viewer, see if that matches whats posted in your forum

[Dismounted]

Originally Posted by newguy

Would a firewall mess with the RSS feed in any other way? I am not getting the feed posted like it is from the source.

No, a firewall should either allow something, or block something. It should not alter it.

[David LeBow]

Just to wrap up my question: it turns out that the hoster was blocking access of this sort back out through the firewall. They've enabled access for the feeds I was after and it seems to work fine.

The problem above ("something not formatted correctly") might be related to something I saw once the feed worked. The default body template which is provided when creating a new feed needed a bit of work. Default is this:

PHP Code:

{feed:description}

[url={feed:link}]More...[/url] 


I added quotation marks so that the [url] tag didn't show up as [url] in the feed.

PHP Code:

{feed:description}

[url="{feed:link}"]More...[/url] 


[newguy]

Originally Posted by Dismounted

No, a firewall should either allow something, or block something. It should not alter it.

Mine is getting altered.

Originally Posted by David LeBow

Just to wrap up my question: it turns out that the hoster was blocking access of this sort back out through the firewall. They've enabled access for the feeds I was after and it seems to work fine.

The problem above ("something not formatted correctly") might be related to something I saw once the feed worked. The default body template which is provided when creating a new feed needed a bit of work. Default is this:

PHP Code:

{feed:description}

[url={feed:link}]More...[/url] 


I added quotation marks so that the [url] tag didn't show up as [url] in the feed.

PHP Code:

{feed:description}

[url="{feed:link}"]More...[/url] 


I will try this and report back...

[David LeBow]

I am not getting the feed posted like it is from the source.

Maybe you could post the nature of the changes.

Keep in mind, if you view the source, it often comes with a DTD which adds formatting information which is rendered by your viewer or browser. Your forum post won't interpret that. It's all about the template and whatever you do with that in the RSS Manager. You can basically count on the text content (is it correct?) but the formatting's up to you.

[newguy]

The text is correct, but all links are typed in and showing http:// what ever the link is and they are not links. Just plain text... All links are plain text.

If you were to type a URL in notepad that is what all RSS posts look like for me.

Here is a post by my RSS account.....That is what was actually posted. When I look at the feed in IE from the source all is fine with it. But the result is below.

Marcus Dairy, Inc. - Danbury, CT has an immediate opening for Class B CDL. Teamster union salary and benefits pkg. Apply in person 3 Sugar Hollow Road, Danbury... br From HotJobs - a href="http://www.indeed.com/job/ROUTE-DELIVERY-at-MARCUS-DAIRY-in-Danbury,-CT-61d3cc3b19fbf214"save job, email, more.../a

I have been testing and the {feed:description} & {feed:title} is working correctly. The problem I have is in the body template.

[David LeBow]

Ok... I might have the answer for you. I had the same problem. I had thought that it was the quotes in the template (see above). I'm now fairly convinced that it had to do with the forum definition. Check the forum definitions for

Allow BB Code

I'm pretty sure you want it set to yes. Otherwise the links come in as [url].

Another question - the template only expands a small set of codes. Does your RSS feed have a <link> element? If it's called something else, the {feed:link} tag (see sample above) won't find it.

If the BB Code doesn't solve the problem, you'd need to post a sample item from your feed.