I have an RSS feed from another site in a Center Block on my Home page of the TP (0.9.8).
It works fine most of the time but sometimes I get this in the center block:
"XML error: mismatched tag at line 204".
Along with this error in the center block the entire Righthand panel of the Homepage disappears.
If I deactivate the Center block, then the Righthand panel blocks reappear.
The RSS feed has not been updated or changed and is working on other sites that use it (when I checked the last time this happened).
My site is: http://forums.borderkingdoms.net/ (though currently the error has corrected itself and there is nothing wrong to see!).
Anyone any ideas?
I'd say that there was an error in the RSS feed, which has now been corrected.
Yeah, mostly likely.
More of a concern to me is that the right side panel disappeared while this was happening.
I don't mind if the feed goes down but if it affects something unrelated to it and affects the display as a whole then I need to look into it.
Thanks for the reply anyway, I'll post back if it happens again or take a screenshot! :)
Also...which is funny is that when I put 0.9.8 in brackets in my first post it changed the 8 ) into a smiley. Nice. :)
If any code with an unclosed tag is put into a block it can easily affect other blocks, even cause a fatal error which can fubar your whole site. It is because of this that we strongly recommend that admins always set blocks to not show in Admin, so that you can get in and turn off blocks and Bloc has built in a noblocks command.
To go straight to the admin panel - http://mydomain/index.php?action=admin
To go straight to the forum without blocks - http://mydomain/index.php?action=forum;noblocks
Thanks good to know.
Is there anything I should do about this?
Essentially all I did was create an RSS block and insert the link to the feed.
I'm learning as I go.
If the feed errors, theres not much TP can do about someone elses code.
Understood but is the right-hand panel disappearing when this happens something you/I can stop?
The RSS feed is in a Center Block but when it errors the Right-Hand panel (all blocks) disappear.
Nothing you can do on your end when the RSS feed is giving you bad code. Not that I know of anyway.
I know I sound like I'm repeating myself but it just seems strange to me that it is not a bug of somekind when one completely separate part of the portal (center block) affects the workings of a another part of the portal (right hand panel blocks).
And these two parts really have nothing to do with one another.
I know the feed is the thing at fault but what I would expect to see if the feed was faulty would be just an empty center block or a center block with an error in it. Not a center block with an error and a completely unrelated absent right hand panel while the left hand panel blocks are unaffected.
Tell me I'm not being crazy here!
Actually I had this same problem if I'm reading your post right. When I added my rss block on the left panel all of the other left panel blocks bellow it went poof! But when I deactivate the rss block they reappeared. So than I just deleted the rss block and remade it and they appeared again. Maybe you can try doing the same.
Yeah it's something similar except my problem is that i create an RSS center block and all my right-hand side panel blocks disappear (but only when there is an error on the RSS, otherwise everything is fine).
I don't really want to be deleting and creating the RSS block everytime...I might be offline when this happens and my members will be left with missing right-hand blocks for no reason.
I just think it's odd.
As TP is only running RSS feeds through an eval statement there's not much we can do. Thats where there are 3rd party sites that will do things with RSS feeds. You use there site to control the RSS feed and I think they do a pretty good job of keeping the feeds under control. Take a look at some of these and see if they work for you.
http://www.tinyportal.net/index.php?topic=14424.0