WordPress

There are 26 posts filed in WordPress (this is page 1 of 3).

A question about rssCloud on WordPress.com

I have been trying to troubleshoot a problem with subscribing to RSS feeds from WordPress.com sites on my rssCloud blog tool MyStatusTool. I decided to use a rssCloud test app from Andrew Shell, and was able to set it up and run it successfully. I did a week-long test to see if I could detect posts from seven WP.Com sites, and it worked (see log file here). This weekend, I realized that the app did not re-subscribe to any of the feeds, but still remained active, receiving notifications from the subscribed blogs for over a week. This seems to be in conflict with the rssCloud walkthrough page, which states that a feed must be re-subscribed every 24 hr. Does anyone know anything about this?

What to do with too many open browser tabs

For me, I tend to open browser tabs when I am using my RSS reader River5 through my reading list app. I then keep the tabs open until I read the tab, and save it somehow if I want to keep the URL. For most of my browsing life, the “save” action is to copy the URL to a link dump file. I have used text files, Libre Office word documents, and a notes app on my phone. I used to let these files get really big, then I decided to stop doing that and creating a new file at the beginning of the month. You can probably tell that I have quite a collection of links. And, after copying links to the file, I rarely (IF EVER) would go back to those links (so mostly a write-only file). In 2022, I did try using a “zettlekasten” approach to collecting links by category (using an OPML file and a static website). However, I eventually went back to link dumps…

This weekend, with a lot of cold weather coming, anticipating I would not be going anywhere, I decided to bite the bullet and review all my open tabs, and create posts on my website for each link I wanted to save. If you are one of my 3-4 regular readers, I apologize for the link flood. I added categories for each link (all of them also have the “Links” category), started with using the Status post type, then switched to Link post type later in the day. I will be finishing the tab review today, then hope to keep up with adding links to my site. I will have to see how I like the look on the website (in other words, if I want to create a separate view for posts with the category “Links”), but I am hoping to give this a good try for the rest of the month.

Let me know if you have any ideas/techniques for managing links that you want to save!

Adding podcast cover art to a WordPress podcast

When I decided to create the Georgia v. Trump podcast, I wanted to have a more professional look, with some cover art. In my previous podcasts, I did not do anything extra, so the title in the RSS feed was all that would appear in my podcast app.

I was going to use WordPress for the website and the podcast, since I have used WordPress for other podcasts. I looked at the settings for the site theme, but did not see anything that let me add an image to the feed, so I decided to look for a plugin to help.

Before that, I looked into ways to create the podcast cover art. I  tried Edit.org, and was able to create an initial image. Next, I looked at several WordPress plugins that supported podcasting features. The first I tried was Seriously Simple Podcasting, but it was not as simple as the plugin title. I  also had some problems with post settings and image settings, so I  decided to look for another plugin, and went with Simple Podcasting. With this plugin, I was able to add an image for the podcast feed, add a podcast block within a post, and use the regular post structure for podcast posts.

During testing, I wanted to update the podcast cover art. The previous graphics tool created images that were smaller than the minimum size for Apple Podcasts,  so I went with Canva. I still had to use Microsoft Paint 3D to resize from 3000 to 2000 pixels to get the image to display properly in PocketCasts. My final test was to make sure that the post text would show up in PocketCasts. It took 3 posts before I could see the text. if I had been more patient, the post text probably would have showed up on its own. I know from some previous WordPress troubleshooting that my hosting company Bluehost sometimes caches RSS feed updates.

I hope this helps future podcasters to see that WordPress provides an adequate platform for hosting a podcast – no need to use Libsyn or other podcast hosting services (at least until you have the audience of a Joe Rogan….)!

Solved my problem with WordPress caching

For a long time, I have had problems with apparent caching of WordPress RSS feeds. In my recent work on WordPress support for rssCloud, I eventually was able to get a notification about a WordPress update from the RSS Cloud plugin, but the content of the feed did not update. I spent some time on this again this week, and decided to search for “wordpress caching issues bluehost” (since Bluehost is my hosting service). I found this post on ThemeSkills which described a feature within the Bluehost interface that controls caching on a site-by-site basis. After reading through the post, I was able to turn off caching on my test site for RSS Cloud. I then made a post on that site and saw the update within seconds on FeedLand and MyStatusTool, and saw the latest post display – at last!

Here are the steps:

  • Log into Bluehost account
  • Click on the My Sites link on the left navigation bar
  • Scroll to the site to review and click the Manage button
  • Click on the Performance tab
  • In the Cache Settings area of the page, slide the slider all the way to the left. If it is already there, move it to the right to the Blog area, then back all the way to the left
  • A pop-up will appear, click on the Disable Caching button

PS – Here is a Bluehost page on this topic as well

Lazyweb request – I am trying to make sure WordPress is not caching RSS feeds, I tried these things but it did not work. WordPress devs, please get in touch if you have any ideas! I am trying to test a RSS Cloud plugin I developed.