Basic version layout very limited – Was: Does not work properly

Hi @bsoftde, we’ve seen this happen a few times and it’s typically either an intermittent issue when the plugin is first installed (we’re looking into this), or it may have to do with any other add-ons being used on your site.

Had you contacted us in support about this? We’ll be happy to help you figure it out. I can assure you that it’s not normal behaviour and it can most likely be easily sorted out.

Here are a few questions that can help us resolve this for you:

1. Which admin preview are you referring to above?
2. If you go to the “Feed Items” page in the admin dashboard, do you see any feed items listed?
3. What is the exact shortcode that you’re using on your page or post?
4. Are you using any WP RSS Aggregator add-ons on this site? If yes, there may be filters or post type settings that may cause the feed item list to be empty.

Hi Mark,
thanks for hearing from you. I did not contact your support, as your plugin site says there wouldn’t be any support for the free version except the FAQ (at least I think I read something like that, maybe I misunderstood).
In the RSS Aggregator menu => Feed sources the timer for Next Update is running upwards (!), and the number of imported items counts to zero. If I click on the feed title, however, the Feed Preview shows the latest 5 feed items out of ten.
The site is not online, but this should not have any effect for just displaying an external RSS feed, shouldn’t it? There is another RSS Retriever plugin running well (WordPress RSS Feed Retriever by Theme Mason) but I am looking for an alternative due to missing German translation. I deactivated that plugin to no effect. Clicking on “fetch” makes the wheel spin, but nothing else happens.
I use the divi site builder, maybe there’s an issue with that?
Any help is highly appreciated!

Hi @bsoftde, can you please let me know which sentence on our website gave that impression? We’ll see how we can improve it.

We do provide free support for the free version of WP RSS Aggregator here on the forums. In fact, we try to reply to all free support requests within a day or two unless it’s a particularly busy period.

The site not being online won’t make a difference, but I may know what’s wrong.

The preview shows just that, a preview of the items to be imported, but they are not yet imported unless you see them in the “Feed Items” list.

When the update interval is rising and the number of imported items is zero, the most likely cause is stuck cron. This issue is explained further here – https://kb.wprssaggregator.com/article/120-issues-with-cron-jobs

There are other possible causes for this listed here: https://kb.wprssaggregator.com/category/80-feed-items-or-posts-not-importing

Can you please have a quick look at these and let me know whether any of them solve the importing issue for you? If not, we can take a closer look at your setup to see what’s going on.

Thank you for getting back to me and for giving us a chance to help you resolve this.

Thanks for your quick support.

There was a cron issue indeed, which means that the site definitely has to be online with a proper DNS record to get the plugin to work. Maybe a good idea would be to optionally let the switch off cron usage, maybe as a fallback option also.

Sad to say, only providing a list template with just headline, date/time and author is not enough. There are other free RSS plugins around that offer more.

Thanks anyway.

The plugin is still usable on localhost sites, the cron issues can happen anywhere really, it’s a WordPress issue rather than a WP RSS Aggregator issue.

We do have a Templates add-on that offers more layout options aside from the list view.

Given that the issue you reported in this review was related to a cron issue rather than a plugin issue, would you consider updating the review rating, please?