RSS Feed Links In header

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I’m having the exact same issue. As soon as I enable the plugin the regular rss feed links in the page headers are removed everywhere – even from other sites on a multisite setup. Is there an option to prevent this?

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by thedaysse.

@thedaysse I have to add custom code to add the RSS link back in the header. Not able to fix it with the plugin support or settings. So you may have to look for a custom code fix for this.

I had an issue with my theme – Genesis Framework also as they have removed the feed redirect settings so I had to remove the redirects with the help of small code in function.php. Here is how to do that (in case it’s needed) – https://metablogue.com/update-redirect-feed-settings-genesis-framework-3-0/

Hello @sanjeevmohindra and @thedaysse,

I assume we are talking about the following link:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Title of Podcast" href="https://example.com/podcast.xml" />

Can you give a use case why you need the RSS feed link in every page on your site and multiple feeds for that matter in your header?

We added code about a year or so ago specifically for Google search. Google search wants to see only one page with the RSS tag set for the podcast feed. If you need additional feeds you can use the features in PowerPress to create a static page and add the RSS feed at the time. Google is very strict on this, you can only have one link rel=”alternate” …> in any given page and they only want to see it on the main webpage for your podcast website, not all pages.

Thanks,
Angelo

Hello,

We just released PowerPress 8.1.2. If you install this new version and add the following line to your wp-config.php file:

define(‘POWERPRESS_NO_REMOVE_WP_HEAD’);

then the plugin will not remove links from your webpage.

Thank you for using PowerPress!
Ben

@amandato The issue is not about having multiple feeds in the header. The issues are that we do not get any feed link in the header. The blog feed link is removed from everywhere and the podcast feed link is not added. So all the pages in the site do not have a feed link.

What I would like is to Podcast pages to have the podcast feed link and remaining pages to have the blog feed link in the header. I had to write a small PHP function to get this working. The plugin setting does not make any impact.

@benbeecroft Thanks, I will install the update and check. I hope it will work as intended.

@benbeecroft this “fix” doesn’t appear to do anything. I have the same problem as @sanjeevmohindra – my site feed meta tags are there until I activate PowerPress, and then they disappear. If I deactivate it, they appear again. I’m running the latest version: 8.2.7.

Ben forgot to include a 2nd parameter to the define, the define in your wp-config.php needs to set a true value to the define.

define('POWERPRESS_NO_REMOVE_WP_HEAD', true);

If its set to false or empty it will do the past behavior.

That didn’t work, but defining it as a string did for some reason: define('POWERPRESS_NO_REMOVE_WP_HEAD', 'true');

To be honest @amandato I’m really struggling to understand why you think it’s acceptable, let alone desirable, for your plugin to strip sites of RSS feed <link> tags, and then provide an undocumented ‘solution’ via an addition to a config file where users are forced to opt out rather than opt in.

The podcast is just one thing that runs through my site’s pages, and the feed is for the audio files, not the web pages. I don’t want a podcast RSS feed anywhere on my site. I want the appropriate RSS feeds in the headers for each page type: which is what WordPress and every other CMS in the world does out of the box. Why are you messing with site RSS feeds? The appropriate fix is for you to rewrite your code to not remove the feeds by default – not to make users add some random code to a config file, that may or may not work, and which is not documented anywhere in the official docs.

If you read this thread, this has to do with Google, not what I want or think is acceptable. Keep in mind if you do not do this, Google will not associate your homepage with your podcast which can have negative consequences if you wanted your podcast in Google search results.

Ref: https://developers.google.com/search/reference/podcast/homepage-requirements

Quote from Google’s documentation:

The homepage cannot have another <link type=”application/rss+xml” rel=”alternate”> element on it.

The solution we put in PowerPress is a compromise to decide what is best for what the goals a podcaster is trying to achieve. If you want to podcast, we assume you want to be found on Google Search and Google Podcasts. If you want to be found on Google podcasts and treated as a podcast in google search you have to have one feed link per page, and this indicates the “homepage” for your podcast. When google first launched podcasting and released this documentation our tests lead us to have to do add the code in PowerPress to deal with this. When we spoke with Google engineers about this they asked us “what does our use of a tag that has otherwise not used by anyone in many years impact?”, we did not have an answer. Google’s basically decide that since no one is using this meta tag today they can now use it for their purpose for identifying a podcast homepage when crawling a website.

PowerPress in this situation is stuck between a rock and a hard place, either we do what Google requires or we don’t. If we didn’t put this logic in the plugin, we would have many more PowerPress users complaining that their podcasts do not appear in google search like other podcasts appear in google search. We added an option with a define you can add to your wp-config.php to let users like yourself keep with with old logic, and by adding that define to your wp-config you understand the consequence with Google search and podcasts.

If you can give me a link or multiple links to a services or applications that uses the feed links in the meta tags of web pages, please reply with them. I can go to our rep at Google and plead with them to change how they use the meta link tag for podcasting.

Thanks,
Angelo

Putting this in my wordpress.php file worked.

define(‘POWERPRESS_NO_REMOVE_WP_HEAD’, ‘true’);

Do I need to set-up a child theme to avoid having this line removed from the wordpress.php file?

Hello Eric,

If you put that define in your theme, anytime you change your theme you need to add that define to it. Instead add it to your wp-config.php then it will not matter what theme you pick.

We are still waiting on Google to launch their new podcast portal. Once they do and they change how Google indexes your podcast pages we will be removing this. In other words, I would not plan on needing that define for years.

I am curious to know what service or app uses the RSS feed links in the headers of your pages that you are concerned about supporting? I’ve asked others to explain why they need it and so far the only answer is “it’s information that WordPress adds so it should be there”, and there is no good answer why its there today but I know why it was there 15 years ago. I suspect we’re getting wrapped up about something that no app or service today is using (other than Google with their strict requirements for podcasts), but if someone can point to for example a page that explains how Bing is using blog rss links in the headers of pages that would be great to know. My research I found no service or app that looks for these tags for feeds.

Thanks,
Angelo