Yet Another “Feed Not Validating” Thread

[kraftomatic]

Hey Guys,

I’m trying to get the following feed to validate:

https://www.totalracingsolutions.com/feed

I get the following error:

XML Parsing Error: xml declaration not at start of external entity
Location: https://www.totalracingsolutions.com/feed
Line Number 2, Column 1:<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
^

I’ve searched for info and haven’t found any solutions. I’ve searched through for blank spaces in files, I’ve turned off all plugins. I’m not sure what else to try at this point. Of course the feed validates fine in IE.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Samuel Wood (Otto)]

You have the blank line problem.

See here:
https://feedvalidator.org/docs/error/WPBlankLine.html

[kraftomatic]

Yes, I realize that. The problem is I don’t know how/where to track down where the blank line is coming from. I’ve searched a number of files (all the theme files, the rss files, etc.) and cannot find it. Are there any other files I should be checking?

[Len]

Keep checking, it could be anywhere. It could even be a plugin causing it.

[kraftomatic]

I have disabled all the plug-ins. That in theory should cancel that out, correct?

[Len]

Not necessarily, it’s only a suggestion but could very well be the cause.

[Samuel Wood (Otto)]

The problem is I don’t know how/where to track down where the blank line is coming from.

Well, that’s the trick, isn’t it?

I can’t tell you where it’s coming from, but I can give you some tips.

Your main page has two blank lines before the doctype. This indicates to me that your theme probably has a lot of unnecessary blank lines in it.

Pay particular attention to the theme’s functions.php file, it should not have any blank lines at the beginning or end of the file. Just <?php and ?>, respectively.

Same goes for the wp-config.php file.

As far as the rest of the WordPress files go, if you have not modified them, then just download them again and reupload them to your site. The files as they come in the ZIP package are correct, without the blank line problem.

Beyond that, I don’t know what to tell you. You find it by looking for it and finding it. There is no other way.

Oh, and a deactivated plugin cannot cause the problem. So that rules them out, doesn’t it?

[popwireless]

I have the same issue and disabled the theme. That didn’t help. The problem was left inside the default Kubrick theme. I have so far found no blank lines. The quickest attempt at a solution may be to download the latest archive and just upload files.

[popwireless]

I found an extra line in the WordPress file wp-feed.php. I also found that the define statement for secret key was missing from my wp-config file so I added that. Once those twio changes were made my RSS feed reappeared.