Faqs

You can do this by going to the template.css file and looking at the top.  You’ll see this:

div.news a{
//color:#cccccc;
}

Just un-comment the color line and put in whatever color you want, so it will look like this (with you own color):

div.news a{
color:#FFFFFF;
}

For many ways you want to change the way the output looks, you can use parameters. For example, if you are using the DEFAULT template and want to change the way the images float (say, to the right) and keep images smaller (say, to 100pxx in width), you simply use parameters in the shortcode, like this:

[wp_rss_multi_importer floattype="right" maximgwidth="100"]

You can find all the parameters available by going to the Style Options tab in the admin section of the plugin.

If you get this message:  You have one feed and it’s not valid. This is likely a problem with the source of the RSS feed. Contact our support forum for help.

The problem is likely that your server is not able to pull an RSS feed from another web site.  This is most often due to a server configuration that your web hosting service has.  You can see what’s going on by putting in this shortcode in place of what you have now:

[wp_rss_multi_importer dumpthis="1"]

The output on the page will have a bunch of information which you can send to me using the contact form.  This will allow me to see what is going on.

If you get this type of error message:

RSS Error: A feed could not be found at (put your RSS feed URL here). A feed with an invalid mime type may fall victim to this error, or SimplePie was unable to auto-discover it.. Use force_feed() if you are certain this URL is a real feed.

This means simply that there is a problem with the RSS feed.  There is no cure that can be done on the part of the plugin.  The problem resides with the RSS feed.  You can confirm this for yourself by using the WordPress RSS widget that comes with every theme.  When you put that RSS feed in the widget, you’ll get the same error.

Suggestion:  Drop that RSS feed, or contact whoever provides the RSS feed to tell them there is problems with their feed.

All feeds must be at least validated by using a resource like:

http://validator.w3.org/appc/

Also, put the feed into a Firefox browser. If nothing shows, then then feed doesn’t work. If it sometimes shows, when you refresh the browser, then the plugin will sometimes show the feed, and sometimes not.

In short, if the feed isn’t valid or isn’t working on its own, it simply won’t work in the plugin.

This error occurs where an external feed is causing problems (typically do to their server), or possibly when the feed is not formed correctly in the admin section of the plugin.

To find out what’s going on with that error message, you need to try this. Change out the short code you have their now and put this in instead:
[wp_rss_multi_importer dumpthis="1"] (you can add any category parameter if you current have them)

Then, go to the page and refresh until to see the error message. Above the output you’ll see a lot of garbage (it’s actually an array of the information brought in by the RSS feeds), but that is what I need. So, wait until you get the error message, then send me the garbage output. You can send that to me using the contact form on this site.

If you get this warning message, this means your server is having a difficult time retrieving the image from the server that is giving you the RSS feed. This happens for several reasons but is typically unrelated to the plugin.

Here is workaround. You’ll need to edit the final called template.css. If you don’t know how to do this, watch this quick movie.

The add the top of this file (or anywhere, really) add this code:

.imagefix img{
width:150px;
height:auto;
}

and save. Now your images will be restricted to 150px wide, which is what the getimagesize function that caused your problems was trying to do.

If you are using the Feed to Post option, and selected using the featured image in your posts, then most problems on how the featured image looks, etc, are totally due to the theme you are using and having little or nothing to do with the plugin.  All the plugin does is take the image and make it the featured image…the rest is done by your theme.

If you edit the post and don’t see a featured image there, the first step is to make sure the feed actually had an image that could be used.

Here is a common question:

I’ve got 5 feeds but only 1 or 2 of them are coming in.  What’s wrong?

The answer often lies in the way you have 2 settings in the Feed to Post panel.  Here is one example:

Here is the problem.  That this says is to pull in 10 posts per fetch (the second number) but 10 posts from each feed.  If the first of the 5 feeds has 10 posts, then the requirement of getting 10 posts is fulfilled, and there is no reason to get any more posts from any other feed.

You can easily solve this, but getting, say 2 posts from each feed…then each of the 5 feeds will have 2 posts (or a total of 10).  This is how you’d set this up:

Your situation may differ but the basic idea stays the same.  As it says, the Number of Total Post Entries per Fetch (should be much greater than the number of entries per feed).

There are several things that could be happening here, the first one is whether the cron scheduler is working properly on your site.  First, download this plugin

Cron GUI

Then go to Tools, What’s in Cron, and you should see what the arrow’s are pointing to

If this is working as shown, and you’re still not getting an update, then it’s possible the feeds are not being pulled in by the server.  So, one thing you can try is using the shortcode on a page and see if the feeds are pulling in ok or giving you an error.

Contact me through the contact page if you’re still running into problems.

To understand what might be happening, here is how the code works to prohibit a feed item being made into a post multiple times.

Each feed brings in multiple feed items.  When each feed item is brought into the plugin, the first thing the program does is see if that item has already been entered.  It does this by taking the permalink of the item (the URL) and putting into the WordPress meta_posts table.

Each feed item then is first checked to see if it’s permalink is in the meta_posts table.  If it is, the item isn’t entered again as a post.  If the permalink doesn’t exist, this means it has been entered yet, so it’s posted as a new post.

The cron scheduler will take care of bringing in the posts and as long as the scheduler is working well, you should have no problems.  But if you click on Click to Fetch Feeds Now at the same time the cron scheduler is firing, the ability of the plugin to check if the permalink has already been entered doesn’t work well (because WordPress need to process many things at the same time).  As a result, you may get a double post.

There are also some rare situations where the permalinks for a given feed post change and that will cause double posting problems.  But, again, these are rare.

Here is a simple way to get help fixing a problem you think my plugin is causing. Just do 3 things:

1. Clearly explain what you found is the problem.
2. Provide the RSS URLs that are involved in this problem
3. Clearly specify any errors that you found on your site (the more precise the message, the easier it is to figure out what is going on)

Without these 3 things, it is usually impossible for me to help you.

You can state these 3 things on the discussion list on this site or at the wordpress site.

Finally, you should check out the other FAQs in  case your question has already been answered.

Here’s how you use the categories. First, set up categories on the Category Settings tab.

Then add the feeds and you’ll see you’ll be able (once you save a feed) to then assign it to a category (a feed can then be assigned to a category).

You’ll notice on the category page that each category also as an ID number (the shortcode is given for you). Just take the shortcode for any category and place that on the page where you want the feed that is assigned to that category to go).

So, for example, let’s say you have the category of News and you see this shortcode next to the News category

[wp_rss_multi_importer category="1"]

Then if you place that shortcode on a page, the items you see will come from all the feeds you categorized as News.

That’s it.

In this way, you can assign all the feeds in the admin section to different categories, then have all the feeds show up on different pages on your web site, depending on the category.

My plugin uses the wordpress scheduling program to do various things, most importantly to bring in feed posts at a regular interval. However, there are well known limitations with this scheduling program, including:

• DNS issue in the server.
• Plugins conflict
• Heavy load in the server which results in WP-Cron not executed fully
• WordPress bug
• Using of cache plugins that prevent the WP-Cron from loading
• And many other reasons

When the schedule is missed, WordPress typically fires off the cron job the next time some visitor hits the site.  But, as noted above this still may not work on your site.

The only way to solve this is to use a real cron scheduler..which your web hosting service probably has.

Go here to learn more about this.

If you put the shortcode on a page, save it, then nothing shows up, here are some things to do right now:

1. Make sure the shortcode is correct, for example [wp_rss_multi_importer].  If you also have a parameter (like a category parameter), make sure that is included, as in [wp_rss_multi_importer category="1"].
2. Make sure the shortcode is entered in the HTML mode (as compared to Visual mode).
3. If 1 and 2 are correct, then add this parameter to the shortcode (dumpthis=”1″), like this:  [wp_rss_multi_importer dumpthis="1"].  Then look at the page again, and capture what is there and send it to me using the contact form on this site.

Here is a quick way to see if images are in the RSS feed in a way that this plugin can recognize them. Watch this quick video.

If you get this warning message, this means your server is having a difficult time retrieving the image from the server that is giving you the RSS feed. This happens for several reasons but is typically unrelated to the plugin.

Here is workaround. You’ll need to edit the final called template.css. If you don’t know how to do this, watch this quick movie.

The add the top of this file (or anywhere, really) add this code:

.imagefix img{
width:150px;
height:auto;
}

and save. Now your images will be restricted to 150px wide, which is what the getimagesize function that caused your problems was trying to do.

If you get results like is show in this image, where some entries seem to be out of alignment, here is what you do.  Watch this quick movie which shows how to change the CSS file (this assumes you are using the default template).

http://screencast.com/t/ND07J2Om9j

If you find this is happening, first make sure you have the most updated version of the plugin.  The problem is that while the lightbox will show, you can’t scroll…this is a problem with the iphone, not the plugin.

Several sites do not allow the lightbox to work. This is because a lightbox is an iframe. Pinterest and the NYtimes are examples of sites that will not allow you to view their sites via a lightbox.

There are certain sites that do not allow other sites to show their content inside a lightbox (otherwise known is an iFrame).  This includes but is not limited to Pinterest.  I’ll post other such sites here as people point them out.  Another culprit is Twitter who has said it will discontinue it’s RSS feeds.  In both of these situation, simply choose another way to open the link.

If you want a lot of control over when feeds are fetched, given the problems with WordPress’ own scheduler, I suggest using a free “cron” scheduler (cron just is a technical term for something that allows you to schedule things).

If you’re using a web hosting service, they might provide this for you in the control panel.

Here are some free cron sites you might try out as well:

• www.onlinecronjobs.com
• cronless.com
• www.easycron.com
• www.mywebcron.com

In all cases, these services allow you to set up several cron schedulers, so you can fetch feeds at various times.

What you’ll need is a page where these services can hit to fetch the feeds.  To give them that page, the first thing is to decide which feeds you want to fetch.

Go to the admin section of the plugin, click on Feeds and note the ID numbers of the feeds you want to fetch on a given schedule.  The ids are noted next to each feed (noted by the arrow in the diagram).

Put all the id numbers of the feeds you want to fetch at a given time into a comma delimited string and add them to the url of your wordpress site using the key rssmi_feedID.  Here is an example.  If you wanted to fetch feeds with ids 2, 6 and 7, have the scheduler hit this URL

http://www.mywpsite.com?rssmi_feedID=2,6,7

If you’d rather use a category as the basis for scheduling, the first get the category ID number and use the key rssmi_catID, like this example (for category IDs 1 and 2)

http://www.mywpsite.com?rssmi_catID=1,2

In this way, you can set up multiple schedulers pulling in a single or multiple feeds whenever you want.

Since RSS feeds often have a timestamp that is from the country or GMT time zone, they may come into your site (if you’re using the Feed to Post option) that results in them being scheduled for the future.  You can override this by a setting in the admin section for the Feed to Post to set it for the current time.

But in some situations, even that doesn’t work.  In these situations, first make sure your wordpress site has the timezone set correctly.  Go to the settings for wordpress and you can see where to set this:

If this doesn’t solve the problem, go to this web site and find your timezone:

http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php

Then place the timezone in the server time zone field (in the Feed to Post settings).  For example, if you are in France, you could put in this:

Europe/Paris

or if you are in Montreal, you would use this:

America/Montreal

Here is an example of entering the timezone for Los Angeles

If you’ve set up to have feeds updated using the scheduler in the plugin, and you find it isn’t updating, here is something you should first understand.

The way the WordPress scheduler works is that it tries to fire, say every 15 min (if that’s what you have it for), but it will only fire if someone actually visits your web site.  So, if nobody visits your web site, it won’t fire.

For some people, it still won’t fire, but that isn’t a problem with the plugin, but rather a problem with WordPress and/or the server it’s running on.

For this reason, you can try another solution, which requires an outside scheduling service.  You can find more about that here.

http://www.allenweiss.com/faqs/how-to-have-more-control-over-scheduling-of-feteching-feeds/

Just go to the vertical_scroll.php file and increase the number as shown here.