RSS feed not updating

Should the RSS feed for my blog update instantly?

Yes.

It seems to take hours, sometime not at all unless I republish the post.

When you say it takes hours, are you looking at your feed via https://sunnysweetpea.com/feed directly in your browser, or something else?

Long story, haven’t had internet at home so have been checking using https://validator.w3.org/feed/ on my iphone.

I can’t look at https://sunnysweetpea.com/feed on my iPhone as it just opens the podcast app.

Anyway, I assume that the feed validator website would update immediately too, but it doesn’t. It took over 4 hours to yesterday.

Internet is being fixed today so I can check when I get home. Do you recommend checking the feed as soon as I’ve hit publish?

Yes, check the feed in your browser as soon as you publish. Feed Validator caches their results, so the difference could just be their cache.

So I’ve just published a post and my feed hasn’t updated. I’ve checked https://sunnysweetpea.com/feed directly.

Oooo! I’ve just clicked on ‘flush cache’ in my wordpress admin and it’s worked.

Is this something I will need to do every time I post? I have to say I don’t actually understand what caching is….

So now I’ve got my feed working, is there a reason why Bloglovin’, feedburner, feedly etc take a long time to pull the posts? Then suddenly pull at the same time?

This is the problem I’ve been having for weeks…

Hm, you shouldn’t need to clear the cache every time. What plugin are you using for the cache?

Those other feed services tend to load feeds at their own intervals, WordPress really has no control over that.

No plug in. I don’t think. I’m with GoDaddy and the bar at the top has an option to ‘flush cache’.

Oh, ok, you’re with GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress hosting.

I recommend contacting them ASAP. Their cache tools should flush the feed cache too when you publish or edit a post, this is probably something they can fix.

I’m still having on going issues with this. My feed seems fine. My new post is there. But all the RSS readers haven’t pulled it yet. I posted over 5 hours ago.

The readers will all suddenly pull at exactly the same time – feedburner, feedly, bloglovin etc.

Is there anything I can do to fix this? It can’t be an issue with individual readers if they suddenly pull at once, can it?