Hey all. I’m getting an error when trying to load an RSS feed into The Grid plugin. IT’s saying this:
Sorry, an error occured while retrieving RSS content:
This XML document is invalid, likely due to invalid characters. XML error: Reserved XML Name at line 3, column 38
What does this mean?
Hi There,
Could you please provide the Feed URL so we can take a closer look?
Thanks.
thank you
Hi there,
I don’t see any error, plus, there is no The Grid on your page. Would you mind providing the exact URL?
Thanks!
Ah. I misunderstood. Here is a post with the grid on it which is giving me the error. I was giving You the RSS feed URL as the error with RSS seems to be more than just with the grid. I have recreated the grid and here is a link to the post that it references -
Hey There,
Thanks for updating in! You should be able to display from a RSS Feed for inserting any valid rss feed url.
A lot of services have RSS feed like:
Would you mind providing us the RSS Feed url that you are using so that we can also test it in our local testing server?
Thank you in advance.
is this not proper for the RSS feed for this site?
I mean, the error comes up every time I try to use this URL or the URL from another sub-site in the network. What is going on?
note - I just tried it again, and got the same error here -->
Hello There,
You are not using your own sites RSS feed. This is why it returns an error. Please find your site’s actual rss feed to be able to use it.
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/how-do-i-find-my-rss-feed-url
https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Feeds
Hope this helps.
That doesn’t make sense. I’m wanting to list the RSS feed from the sub-site http://www.peterfae.intothemythica.com/feed on the MAIN site http://www.intothemythica.com
it used to work. yet now, I keep getting an error. What do you mean by not showing my *own sites * RSS feed?
Hi there,
This feed is invalid http://www.peterfae.intothemythica.com/feed, you can access it but the problem is the XML parser will not able to read it since it’s corrupted. I checked it here and it can’t be validated it either https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpeterfae.intothemythica.com%2Ffeed%2F.
If you’ll compare it here https://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fdemo.theme.co%2Fintegrity-1%2Ffeed%2F&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0, it says This document was successfully checked as well-formed XML!. That’s our demo feed.
The problem is the source and not your main site 
, you may try other feed if you wish to confirm it. Or fix the feed issues from here http://www.peterfae.intothemythica.com/feed. You could start with testing for a plugin conflict. You can do this by deactivating all third party plugins, and seeing if the problem remains. If it’s fixed, you’ll know a plugin caused the problem, and you can narrow down which one by reactivating them one at a time. Then make sure there is no echoed empty lines from your child theme’s functions.php. Again, this troubleshooting should be done in http://www.peterfae.intothemythica.com/
Let us know how it goes!
Mmm … that was VERY helpful and is giving me more clarity on what’s going on. The basic issue is that we have a publishing site, and it is INTEGRAL to be able to show the feed from the sub-sites on the main site (in a multisite context). What is interesting is that it is not simply the ‘Peter Fae’ site but another site in the network which also shows the same problem with the feed. What do you mean by ‘echoed empty lines’ in the functions.php file?
Hello There,
“echoed empty lines” means that there could be some custom php in your child theme’s functions.php file that displays an empty lines which have affected the feed url.
Hope this helps.
Something very odd is going on. Let me express what I’ve done here -
I went further than checking for empty lines within the child theme code. Instead, I went all the way down to a vanilla install of the main site (intothemtyhica.com) and the two sub-sites (peterfae.intothemythica.com and yeshuallucis.intothemythica.com).
I shifted ALL the themes to Twenty-Seventeen, and disabled all network-wide and local plugins on the sites. Total vanilla.
The problem * seemed * to be solved, so I began systematically turning on plugins on the network-level (before initiating them on the local level, while still having all themes set to ‘Twenty-Seventeen’.
I continued to encounter inconsistencies. By this I mean, before I engaged in this deep process it seemed the XML feed from one or both of the two sites would give the error message listed above. As I began installing plugins from the vanilla state, it seemed to work until I activated Akismet, and then it messed up again.
So I turned off Akismet. The problem persisted.
So I went back to the vanilla install, turning off everything … the problem remained.
This made no sense to me. As my site is hosted on WPENGINE, I contacted their tech support for a second opinion as I was engaging this dialogue with the gracious allies at Apex. They couldn’t figure it out either. I wondered, was there perhaps something else, something NOT plugin or theme-related, that was causing the issue? Yet I did not know how to track down the error which continually-yet-inconsistently said -
RSS Error: This XML document is invalid, likely due to invalid characters. XML error: Reserved XML Name at line 3, column 38
Honestly, I am at a loss of what to do on the computer level. I fee that I’ve done the ‘nuclear option’, which is bring everything down to it’s base and move upwards from there, and even with that meticulousness, the inconstancy of the appearance of the issue happened * again *. It isn’t about the Akismet plugin, for I turned that off and went back to vanilla to check. It seems to be something else. Something I haven’t yet found. Help?
I’m not sure what to do with that, Rad. If You read my latest entry at the bottom of this thread (the latest post), I went all the way into the vanilla-nuclear-option mode with the themes and still no dice. What is confusing to me is that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t not. I feel that by going through all the processes of disabling all plugins AND returning both sub-sites and the main site to Twenty-Seventeen and still getting the issue, that I am obviously missing something.
Why would the feed be corrupted on both sub-sites? Also, I had a tech at WPENGINE check on it (I’m hosted on WPENGINE) and they loaded up fine. I am confused. How to debug and fix a supposedly corrupted feed?
(note, this was meant to be an inline response to an earlier post, I hope I did it correctly and it wasn’t confusing to X-staff who are helping out most graciously)
Hey There,
Could you please set up another staging site perhaps from a different platform like pantheon.io, flywheel.com or any other staging sites so that we can compare the output. Like as your have mentioned, even with vanilla version, it still happen. There must be something from the platform, might be something else from the server or the WP installation is causing this issue.
You may clone one of your sub sites or main site so that we can have a point of reference.
Please let us know your test results from the other staging site.
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