Troubleshooting RSS Feed Issues

If your RSS feed content isn't sending or displaying correctly when used with AWeber, find your issue below. These problems are usually caused by feed configuration, caching, or security settings on your website or blog platform.

Common Issues and Solutions

Blue and yellow gradient blocks appear instead of content

• Check if your website is blocking AWeber

• Check if your RSS feed is inaccessible

Old content displays instead of new posts

• Reduce your feed's cache time

RSS automation emails don't send when you publish new content

• Check your automation's schedule

• Reduce your feed's cache time

• Check if your website is blocking AWeber

Text displays but images show as gradient blocks or don’t display at all

• Check if images are in your feed

Troubleshooting Steps

Prevent your website from blocking AWeber

Your website's firewall, Content Delivery Network (CDN), or hosting provider may be blocking AWeber's requests. To resolve this:

1. Contact your website hosting provider, CDN (like Cloudflare or Fastly), or firewall administrator

2. Request that they safelist these AWeber user agents:

   • AWeber-Feed-Proxy/2.11.1 +https://www.aweber.com/blog-newsletters.htm

   • AWeber-Link-Proxy/1.52.3

3. Have them configure safelisting using patterns like AWeber-Feed-Proxy/* and AWeber-Link-Proxy/* since version numbers update periodically

4. Note that AWeber's IP addresses change, so safelisting must be done by user agent as indicated in step 2.

5. After safelisting is complete, test your RSS feed in AWeber to verify content displays correctly

Validate that your RSS feed is valid and accessible

Your RSS feed may have technical issues like server errors, broken URLs, expired SSL certificates, or incorrect XML formatting that prevent AWeber from accessing or reading it. Here's how to diagnose and fix the issue:

1. Use the W3C Feed Validation Service to check your feed - enter your RSS feed URL and click "Check"

2. If the validator shows your feed is valid, your feed is accessible and the problem is likely elsewhere

3. If you see errors or the validator cannot access your feed, contact your blog platform or RSS provider to resolve:

   • Broken or incorrect URL

   • Expired SSL certificate (if using HTTPS)

   • Server errors or downtime

   • Invalid XML formatting

4. Share any error messages from the validator with your blog platform or RSS provider to help them fix the issue

Reduce your feed's cache time

Most blog platforms and RSS providers cache feeds for 1 hour or longer by default. This means if you publish at 9am, your new post may not appear in your RSS feed until 10am or later. This caching delay can prevent RSS automations from sending when you expect. To reduce or eliminate caching:

1. Contact your blog platform or RSS feed provider

2. Explain that you're using RSS automation and need new posts to appear immediately in AWeber

3. Ask them to either:

   • Disable caching on your RSS feed entirely for real-time updates, or

   • Set a short cache time to (example: 15-30 minutes)

4. For RSS automations, update your workflow to check for new posts "immediately after publishing" rather than on a scheduled time. This ensures AWeber checks your feed as frequently as possible to identify new content.

5. After making changes to your automation schedule, re-publish the workflow for the changes to take effect

Check your automation's schedule

AWeber only checks for new items in your RSS feed at the times you specify in your automation workflow settings. Follow these steps to verify and adjust your schedule:

1. Visit the Workflows page and open your RSS automation workflow

2. Check the schedule in your RSS trigger. Learn more about configuring your RSS automation schedule

3. For the most reliable results, set your automation to check "immediately after publishing" - AWeber checks your feed as frequently as possible to identify new content

4. If you prefer scheduled checks, be aware that feed caching can delay when new posts appear - see Reduce your feed's cache time to understand how this impacts your automation timing

5. Verify your RSS feed URL in the automation is correct

6. After making changes, re-publish your workflow for the changes to take effect

Check if images are in your feed

Images may be missing from your feed or blocked by your hosting. Follow these steps to identify and resolve image issues:

First, check if images are in your RSS feed:

1. Open your RSS feed URL in a web browser

2. Look for image tags in the XML for each post item:

   • <enclosure url="..."> tags

   • <media:content url="..."> or <media:thumbnail url="..."> tags

   • <description> tags containing <img src="..."> HTML

3. If you see image URLs in these tags, your feed includes images

If images are in your feed but not displaying in AWeber:

1. Copy an image URL from your feed and paste it into a browser to test if it loads

2. If images don't load, contact your blog platform or hosting provider to:

   • Fix broken image URLs

   • Remove hotlinking protection that blocks AWeber

   • Ensure image URLs match your feed's protocol (if your feed uses https://, images should too; if your feed uses http://, images should also use http://)

   • Remove password protection from images

If your feed doesn't include any image tags:

1. Contact your blog platform or RSS provider to:

   • Enable featured images in your RSS feed

   • Configure the feed to include image URLs for each post

2. For WordPress users, you'll need to install a plugin or add custom code to include featured images in your RSS feed; WordPress doesn't include them by default. Contact your WordPress developer or hosting provider for help with this.

Need more help?

Contact AWeber’s Award-winning Customer Solutions Team with your RSS feed URL and a detailed description of what you're seeing.