Site RSS feed compatibility issue
Hello!
I'm writing about main site RSS feed - http://images.videolan.org/videolan-news.rss
I faced the following issue. After subscribing via RSS reader, the feed is not updated properly e.g. when news appears on the site, RSS reader shows no updates in the feed.
I contacted RSS reader developer, and after double checking the problem, he adviced me to contact site administration, so they could fix the feed.
According to the source code of the rss feed, links to news in rss feed are linked with news position on the main news page
$newItem->setLink("http://www.videolan.org/news.html#news-".$count);
instead of the actual news post link.
When new post appears on the feed, the link points at news.html#news-1, instead of the actual news item (like news.html#news-2020-10-23 or news.html#news-2020-09-23) on the site itself.
This behaviour happens because, code for RSS feed, and for news page is different.
Source code for news page on the site:
echo ("<div class='title'><a href=\"/news.html#news-$postdate\">".$title."</a></div>\n" );
RSS readers think that feed is not updated, because http links to news and md5 of the broken link (#news-1) are constant all the time.
<link>http://www.videolan.org/news.html#news-1</link>
<guid>urn:md5:1a1f0b49-4dcb-a05a-afe3-afcb6d09db53</guid>
...
<link>http://www.videolan.org/news.html#news-2</link>
<guid>urn:md5:9730b2ed-8175-9a5f-4e7e-cadd86b90626</guid>
It makes RSS feed broken, as it doesn't do what it's made for - show site updates.
Please fix rss feed, so links point to the actual posts with updates like it's done on the sites'news page "#news-2020-10-23"
That way, link will be different each time, guid will be different, and rss reader will mark feed post as new and show it as unread.
Best regards,
Toshik