RSS Problems in Wordpress

Last week, I realized that there was an error with BlogCampaigning's RSS feed. Although some feedreaders were still able to grab the content, others were getting XML Parsing Errors. As I often do when I get a warning message I don't quite understand, I Google it. Chances are, someone else has had the same problem as me and figured it out.

Quick Online Tips helped me fix the problem. The error was caused by some blank spaces in one of my .php files. Since I often muck around in the theme, this could easily have been caused by me or one of the plugins I added.

Going through thousands of lines of code didn't seem like a good way to spend my afternoon, so I installed the Fix RSS Plugin. It scanned all my code, and quickly fixed the error. While the appeal for a $4.99 donation to the creator of the plugin is the first time I've seen something like that in Wordpress, I think it is worth the money.

The lesson to learn here is that even if you think your site is working perfectly, other people might be having problems with it. After making any major changes, you need to thoroughly check to make sure everything works (or have a good team of writers that occasionally check things for you).

Thanks for reading BlogCampaigning—and if you notice any other errors, let me know!

Cheers,

-Parker

Browser PlugIn Idea

Even though I've heard that E is the most commonally used letter in the English language, I'd say that the letter J might be the key that is used most often on my keyboard, and that has to do with the fact that it is the shortcut for Google Reader that allows you to quickly jump to the next post.

I check the RSS Feeds that I subscribe to a couple of times a day, and using the J key (and occasionally the K key to backtrack when I go too fast) I can get through a hundred of feeds in a couple of minutes as I scan the headlines and text for something that interests me.

The other day, as I was looking actually visiting a blog, I automatically went for the J key to scan to the next post. It obviously didn't work, but it gave me an idea:

How neat would it be if there was a browswer plugin that would allow you to quickly navigate a blog or website using only a few keys in much the same way Google Reader works? I imagine the pluggin as working so that it would automatically recognize a Headline or new section and jump to it.

On a blog, it would work relatively easily. On a site with a more complex website, I think it could work as well. Rather than scrolling all over the place though, it would just move onto the next section and highlight it for you.

What do you think? Does this idea have merit?

-Parker