Syntax error in update 2.6.0

Same error happens to me.

Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '[' in /home/yourusername/public_html/wp-content/plugins/send-images-rss/includes/class-sendimagesrss-feed-fixer.php on line 169

Hey guys, first off, my apologies that this happened at all! And thank you so much for reporting the errors. I am trying to track down what it could be–unfortunately, at this point I am unable to replicate the issue on any of the sites where I’ve installed and gone through the update process.

If you can find it, can you tell me what version of PHP your sites are running? I don’t know that it should matter, but just in case.

Also, if you are able to FTP to your site (for emergency plugin deactivation if needed), and willing to help me check a fix, can you let me know, either here or through my site, and when I have an updated file, we can try it?

Thank you both, and I really appreciate your patience.

Hey Robin, thanks for replying back. According to redbot.org, my website is running PHP 5.3.

I don’t have a problem with any blank screens, the plugin just doesn’t activate.

Would you need anything else?

I have pushed an update which I hope will fix this. If you can FTP/upload files to your site, can you please replace your plugin files with the latest version (you should replace them all, although I think replacing just the affected file might work–most of the update changes were in here).

If you can try this fix and let me know if it works, I would appreciate it very much. If it works, then I can get it updated for everyone. Thank you! And if you need more hands on help, please contact me and we can chat directly.

Hi Robin, thanks for solving this.

The plugin can be activated now.

However, I’m still unable to call for the featured image when sending my RSS campaigns through mailchimp. Neither *|FEEDITEM:CONTENT|* nor *|RSSITEM:IMAGE|* work.

This is probably not due to your plugin, I’ve tried a number of RSS image plugins and my featured image still doesn’t pull on RSS campaigns, so the fault is on me, for sure.

I don’t know what else to do at this point.

Oh, that is good news, John, thank you for letting me know!

As for the other, here is a gist of the MailChimp RSS template I usually start from: https://gist.github.com/robincornett/50ab013e4600dafba80e

*|RSSITEM:IMAGE|* will only work with the featured image, and this plugin only works on the full content. *|RSSITEM:CONTENT_FULL|*is the key to getting everything from your feed into your email. Also, make sure your feed is set to full content, and not excerpts/summaries (under Settings > Reading).

Robin, thanks for the explanation.

So your plugin, along with *|RSSITEM:CONTENT_FULL|* is what makes the article content to fit in the email template? Because previously when I added *|RSSITEM:CONTENT_FULL|* the email sent would cover 900px or so, instead of the 600px of mailchimp’s template. Or am I talking nonsense here?

Hey John! No, you are not talking nonsense at all. The merge tags can be super confusing. RSS feeds in general are kind of dumb and awkward to work with, and all that MailChimp can do is to pull the data from the outputted feed–it has no insight into any of the fancy bits of WordPress.

So what you encountered previously is exactly the issue I wanted to resolve with this plugin–because our websites are now really big, or can be, and emails still have to be fairly small. So the plugin works on the WordPress site to change what is output to the feed, so that MailChimp sees appropriately sized images. So the plugin actually swaps out your large (900pxish) images and replaces them with email friendly sized images, and if an email size image doesn’t exist (usually because you uploaded it before the plugin was active), it will try to style it to display at a friendly size.

So MailChimp has two merge tags for full content. One is *|RSSITEM:CONTENT_FULL|*, which is everything in the content–text and images. The other is *|RSSITEM:CONTENT|*, which is just the plain text of the content, with no images. So you need the first one.

Hope that makes sense. I would always do both a visual preview in MailChimp, plus send myself a test email, to verify that the images are outputting the way I want.

Great, thanks for clarifying that, Robin. Previewing and sending a test email are good tips as well. I’ll stick with your plugin as it seems to do what it’s needed. Although… what I really wanted is just show the featured image + excerpt on the RSS email. But failing that, well, I’ll have to stick with showing the full article with all the images (through *|RSSITEM:CONTENT_FULL|* and your plugin).

So for what you really want, John, you don’t want my plugin at all. If you are willing to muck around in your code a little bit, you can do this. I wrote a blog post with some sample code and merge tags–try it and see if that does what you’re wanting.

Neither Corey’s plugin nor the snippet worked.

It’s ok though, I’ll just resign. It must be something with my theme. I’ll just show an excerpt with no images.