When a feed stops updating
First work out whether the site stopped publishing or the fetch is failing.
Start with the feed page
This service publishes the fetch status of every feed: when it was last fetched successfully, whether recent fetches are failing, and how many articles it has produced per week.
If the last successful fetch is recent but there is nothing new, fetching is working and the site simply has not posted. There is nothing to fix on the subscriber side.
When fetches are failing
Feeds with ongoing errors show the kind of error on their page. These are the common ones.
- http-4xx — the feed URL changed, the feed was retired, or the site refuses bot traffic. This is the case where a feed loads in a browser but cannot be fetched
- http-5xx — trouble on the site side. Usually temporary and recovers on a later fetch
- timeout / network — no response, or the host cannot be reached. Also usually temporary
- too-large — the feed exceeded the size limit and was cut off. Happens on sites that put their entire archive in one feed
- too-many-redirects — the redirects loop. Sometimes seen while a site is being migrated
When the URL has changed
Feed URLs change when a site migrates or switches publishing tools, and the old URL keeps returning 404.
Running detection again against the site URL often turns up the new feed. Subscribe to that one and drop the old one.
When the same article keeps reappearing
Whether two entries are the same article is decided by the per-item ID the feed provides. If that ID changes on the site side, the article comes back as new.
This happens on sites where editing an article changes its ID or its URL. It is a site setting, so there is nothing to change on the subscriber side.
When the ordering looks wrong
Ordering uses the dates in the feed. Feeds with no dates, or with the same date on every item, will not come out in the order you expect.
A burst of old articles arriving as new has the same cause. A migration or a bulk edit that rewrites publication dates looks like new material to any reader.
Sites with no feed at all
More sites have dropped their feeds. This service can detect updates from a page directly, so sites without a feed can still be followed.
It is less reliable than a real feed: both missed updates and false positives are more likely. If the feed comes back, switch to it.