C. Johnson

Hi Ben,

So, what I would usually advise here would be not to edit the core code of feedwordpress directly (such changes are easily lost or need to be done over again if you later install an upgrade; it’s easy to inadvertently make mistakes or do things with unexpected side effects; etc.).

The best way to do this is to add some code of your own to your functions.php file (or to a small add-on plugin module, if you prefer) and then add that code as an action on the feedwordpress_update_complete event hook.

FeedWordPress triggers a number of filter and action events using the standard WordPress plugin API in the course of running an update process, feedwordpress_update_complete being the hook that is triggered at the end of a scheduled update process. (It’s also the same hook that I typically use to trigger scheduled events in add-on modules for FWP that need to process recently imported posts or to clean up in some way after an update procedure.) Here’s an example of how you would do that:

https://fwpplugin.com/wiki/feedwordpress_update_complete/

Hope that answers your question! Let me know if the technique works for you.

Hey there, just wanted to let you know that I pushed all of the changes currently in github to the WordPress plugins repository. Let me know if this resolves the issue for you, if everything seems like it should, etc.! -C

You’re right. Thanks for noticing and pointing this out. I made a quick change to the development branch of the code to prevent this problem; the fix should be included in the next public release of FeedWordPress.

No problem. Would it be possible for you to send me a copy of the patched version (you can get email etc. from here so I can run a diff against 2013.0504 to see if there are any fixes in your version that I have missed in subsequent updates?

As far as not getting updates in with the newer version: have you tried running an update with some of the Diagnostics on, in particular those having to do with checking each item on the feed, or deciding a post is a new post, duplicate or update? If so, what’d you find? If not, let me know and hopefully I can dash off some step by step for some diagnostic settings that might be useful in troubleshooting this problem.

hi @thatstevensguy,

Glad to hear that you were able to figure out one part of the issue on your end; sorry to hear there is another problem that you’re running into. Could you let me know, either here or (if it’s a long story) via email, (1) what problems you’re seeing with the current version (i.e., what specifically isn’t working) when you update, and (2) what were the patches you applied to 2013.0504?

Thanks!

O.K., thanks.

I checked out the URL you provided on my test server (WordPress 4.9 beta, PHP v7.0.22) and didn’t have any trouble finding content:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1tlvmox4j4amp5e/Screenshot%20from%202017-10-27%2010-10-41.png?dl=0

… which would indicate to me that the problem is not in FeedWordPress per se, but in a bad interaction between FeedWordPress and some other feature of your local WordPress installation or hosting environment. The first thing I’d want to look at is, whether or not you are running any add-on modules or other plugins that are intended to work together with FeedWordPress? (For example, I have a number of add-ons that are called things like FWP+: Keyword Filters, FWP+: SIC ‘Em, etc. There are also third-party add-on modules like Bas Schuling’s FeedWordPress Advanced Filters.) If you log in to the WordPress admin interface and go to Plugins > Installed Plugins, do you see any of these listed and activated?

O.K., weird. Sorry to hear you’re running into this problem. Whatever the cause, it’s probably not directly related to PHP 7, if you are using the most recent version of FeedWordPress (which is currently tested on a PHP 7 server and has incorporated fixes for some compatibility problems that older versions of FWP had).

Just to make sure I understand, the problem is, that these are feeds you are trying to add (to subscribe to as content sources), using something like the New source: input box under Syndication > Syndicated Sources. You know there’s content on the feeds, but when you add them, it doesn’t show up in FeedWordPress?

Just to be clear: do you mean that when you first tell FeedWordPress to add the feed, and it goes to the “Feed Finder: Subscribe To…” page, the “Sample Item” panel for that feed indicates that there are no items found on the feed, even before you’ve added it as a source?

Or do you mean that the “Sample Item” panel shows some content, and you add the feed as a source, but after you add the subscription, no new content comes in to your WordPress posts table?

Sorry to hear you’re having this problem. Could you provide me with the URL(s) of the feed or feeds where you are having this problem, so I can test them out on my end, and see if I can replicate (and thus, hopefully, figure out a way to fix) the underlying problem?

Thanks! -C

ok, great. Let me know how it is working for you.

hi y’all.

There’s no built-in feature for setting a Featured Image on syndicated posts. This would require some custom PHP filters, or an add-on module, to provide it. As @crazylegsmurphy notes, there is a freely-available add-on that I wrote, FWP+: SIC ‘Em (for Syndicated Image Cacher), which attempts to provide some of this functionality. If you want to install this add-on and try it out, see https://github.com/radgeek/FWP—SIC–Em There are some underlying technical reasons, however, why SIC ‘Em can at best only make a guess at the right image to select for Featured Images, and cannot guarantee that the image it chooses is the same image that was used as the Featured Image on the source website.

The underlying issue here is that there is currently no widely-implemented standard way for RSS or Atom feeds to indicate the “Feature Image” to associate with a given post. If you look at the XML of the feed from a WordPress site that has Feature Images set on posts, there’s actually no tags that link to that image, unless it is also included elsewhere in the post content.

Now, the good news is that it IS possible for FWP+: SIC ‘Em to pick up more intelligently on this information, but ONLY IF you can install a plugin not only on the destination site (the site where you have FeedWordPress installed, and where the syndicated posts are supposed to be imported to), but ALSO have access to install plugins (or can persuade the site owner to install plugins) on the source site (the WordPress site that has the original posts you are trying to syndicate).

If that is the case in your situation, then you need (1) to install and configure FWP+: SIC ‘Em on the destination site alongside FeedWordPress; and also (2) get the FWP+: Pitch Media Gallery plugin at https://github.com/radgeek/FWPPitchMediaGallery and install and activate it on the source site that you are hoping to import posts from. If you are able to do (2), then the feed you are importing from will have new codes added to it, which clearly indicate to SIC ‘Em which image to import and mark as the Feature Image for each syndicated post that has a Feature Image assigned.

I realize this is a bit complex, but I hope it may either help you get what you need set up, or offer some explanation, with my regrets, of why it may be hard to get it set up under the circumstances.

Thanks for getting in touch about this. It’s likely that at some point within the next year or so I will make an effort to integrate this functionality into the core WordPress code. HOWEVER, in the meantime, it is unfortunately not available “off the shelf” without either (1) some custom PHP coding by you or (2) installing an add-on module alongside FeedWordPress to do the work for you.

Happily, I do have an experimental add-on that was written some time ago, but has been tested with recent versions of WordPress (up to 4.8.2), which may allow you to do what you want, called FWP+: Keyword Filters. You can check it out here: https://github.com/radgeek/fwp-keyword-filters to see if it does what you need (use the green “Clone or Download” button to download a ZIP file of the add-on, and then install and activate it like you would a normal WordPress plugin).

Let me know if this helps!

Sorry for any confusion! The string “7 days” should be correct, and would indicate that a newly syndicated post will be set to expire 7 days from the time when it is first syndicated.

If you’re not positive you’ve got the right setting, you can enable some diagnostics to test this out. Go to Syndication > Diagnostics in the WordPress admin interface and find the Display Diagnostics panel. Find the check box under Diagnostics output marked “Echo in web browser as they are issued” and turn this checkbox ON. Then, scroll down to the Updates settings panel and find the checkboxes labeled as each syndicated post is added to the database (in the first group of options) and as posts are assigned expiration dates (in the second group of options). Turn both of these settings ON. Then scroll down and mash the blue Save Changes button at the bottom. (You may see some weird technical-looking PHP notification messages after you save; you can safely ignore these for the time being.)

Once you’ve got these diagnostics turned on, go to Syndication > Syndicated Sites and find a source feed that will have new posts available to syndicate. Mash the grey “Update Now” button to start an update process, and watch the diagnostics messages that appear in the panel. If everything is set up correctly, these should indicate that the posts will expire at a date 7 days in the future.

If you’re still having trouble with getting this set up, I’d say to e-mail me via https://feedwordpress.radgeek.com/contact/ and I can help do some more hands-on troubleshooting to figure out whether everything on your end is going as it should or if there’s something else that needs done.

Thanks for the kind words!

The feature you’re describing is not currently available in FeedWordPress’s off-the-shelf code. But you may be able to get what you need by installing a freely-available custom add-on module, called FWP+: Limit posts by date. See here: https://github.com/radgeek/fwp-limit-posts-by-date

To install the module, click on the green “Clone or download” button and choose the “Download ZIP” option. Then install the add-on, either by adding the contents of the ZIP file to a new directory called fwp-limit-posts-by-date in your wp-content/plugins directory, or by logging in to the WordPress admin interface and using Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin and uploading the ZIP file that you downloaded. Activate FWP+: Limit posts by date like you would a regular plugin; then go to Syndication > Feeds & Updates and you should find a new settings panel, labeled “Limit posts by date.” This has some options which are probably not relevant to your needs, but it will also include a setting called “Expiration date,” which I think should be able to do what you need.

I should note that, as with any add-on that involves hiding or removing data, you should pretty surely take a backup of your current site before applying and testing out this module. Let me know here or via email if it works for you, if you have any questions, etc.

Hi there, thanks for your question. This feature is not currently built in to the FeedWordPress core code.

You could implement a feature like this, but it would take some PHP coding to create an add-on that customizes FeedWordPress’s behavior.

There already is an experimental add-on that I wrote for FeedWordPress several years ago which may allow you to do something like what you’re looking to do. However, as a warning, (1) the code is old and hasn’t been tested with recent versions of WordPress or FeedWordPress; so proceed with caution and keep backups of everything; (2) the problems that the add-on was attempting to solve are potentially a bit different from the problem that you are trying to solve, so the match may not be perfect. But, here it is: https://github.com/radgeek/fwp-limit-posts-by-date (to install, use the green “Clone or Download” button, and choose “Download ZIP”; then upload the contents of that ZIP file to your wp-content/plugins directory, and activate the add-on from the WordPress interface under Plugins > Installed Plugins). It will create a new settings panel under Syndication > Feeds & Updates, which should allow you to exercise a bit more control over rate-limiting the incoming posts from the feed.

If you’re relatively comfortable with PHP coding and the module doesn’t do quite what you want, then hopefully the techniques used in the code should help you to get an idea of what you would need to customize in order to get the more precise behavior you’re looking for. Or, if that’s not something you’re familiar or comfortable with, drop me a line through https://feedwordpress.radgeek.com/contact/ and we can talk over whether it would be possible to get the feature implemented for you.

Hi @aa_haq, sorry you ran into this problem. The explanation that @gyrus suggests above is correct. I put out new release of the plugin, 2016.1230, which eliminates the use of short array syntax and so preserves backward-compatibility with very old versions of PHP (>=5.2.4, <5.4). You should be able to fix the problem by downloading the latest release. Let me know if it works for you.