Title: WordPress RSS feed broken Last modified: August 22, 2016 --- # WordPress RSS feed broken * Resolved [sevensoutbill](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sevensoutbill/) * (@sevensoutbill) * [11 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-rss-feed-broken/) * In WP, when editing or adding a post, the checkbox “Show AddThis sharing buttons” is checked and this breaks the XSL stylesheet that renders our WP newsfeed. This switch is adding additional HTML to our description element in our feed. This checkbox is checked by default. Is there a way to make this unchecked by default? * [https://wordpress.org/plugins/addthis/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/addthis/) Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 32 total) 1 [2](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-rss-feed-broken/page/2/?output_format=md) [3](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-rss-feed-broken/page/3/?output_format=md) [→](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-rss-feed-broken/page/2/?output_format=md) * Plugin Author [addthis_matt](https://wordpress.org/support/users/addthis_matt/) * (@addthis_matt) * [11 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-rss-feed-broken/#post-5776706) * Hi there, * I’m checking with our developers to see if it’s possible to have that option unchecked by default. I’ll get back with you as soon as possible. * Plugin Author [addthis_matt](https://wordpress.org/support/users/addthis_matt/) * (@addthis_matt) * [11 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-rss-feed-broken/#post-5776725) * The AddThis placeholder divs are normally added to each of your pages/posts once the plugin is activated, even if the “Show AddThis sharing buttons” box is unchecked. * Can you let us know what HTML is causing the issue with the description elements in your feed? If you uncheck the “Show AddThis sharing buttons” box, are you seeing that it resolves the issue? * Thread Starter [sevensoutbill](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sevensoutbill/) * (@sevensoutbill) * [11 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-rss-feed-broken/#post-5776825) * Thanks for looking into this. Yes, after the recent update, the placeholder divs were added to all posts. When we deselect the Show box, they do not appear in the feed. It is these divs that are causing issues with XSL style sheets that is applied when the feed in rendered on another site. The placeholder divs break the HTML structure and layout of the page on which the feed is rendered. We can uncheck boxes on posts, but as we have hundreds of posts, this would be too time consuming. * Thread Starter [sevensoutbill](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sevensoutbill/) * (@sevensoutbill) * [11 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-rss-feed-broken/#post-5776826) * On related note, we have the Addthis code in our page templates, we don’t need to add this code to the top of all pages and posts as well. If we can turn this off globally somehow that would be appreciated. * Plugin Author [addthis_matt](https://wordpress.org/support/users/addthis_matt/) * (@addthis_matt) * [11 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-rss-feed-broken/#post-5776847) * Thanks for the information. Typically, there’s not a way to have the checkbox set to not show the buttons by default. I’m consulting with our developers to see what the best approach would be and will get back with you as soon as possible. * Thread Starter [sevensoutbill](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sevensoutbill/) * (@sevensoutbill) * [11 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-rss-feed-broken/#post-5776851) * Much appreciated! And thanks for the quick responses. * Plugin Author [addthis_matt](https://wordpress.org/support/users/addthis_matt/) * (@addthis_matt) * [11 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-rss-feed-broken/#post-5776983) * Our developers are requesting additional information about the feed feature that you’re using. Are you using the WordPress feed feature or another plugin for the feed? Any additional information about how the feed is generated is helpful. Thanks! * Thread Starter [sevensoutbill](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sevensoutbill/) * (@sevensoutbill) * [11 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-rss-feed-broken/#post-5776985) * Sure thing, we’re using the built-in feed feature for a category. So, like this: * [http://www.example.com/category/categoryname/feed](http://www.example.com/category/categoryname/feed) * Thread Starter [sevensoutbill](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sevensoutbill/) * (@sevensoutbill) * [11 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-rss-feed-broken/#post-5777001) * Further to this, we just updated to Version 4.0.5 and now have another issue. After updating, our UTF-8 feed no longer validates due to invalid characters in the feed: * error on line 30 at column 25: Input is not proper UTF-8, indicate encoding ! Bytes: 0x06 0x05 0x07 * We traced this down to 3 invisible ascii characters being added to the beginning of the element. See Bytes above – you can look them up. In IE, view-source, we could view them and they look like a hyphen, pipe and bullet. * Luckily we caught this in our Dev environment. We won’t be able to update Production until a fix is found. * Any help is much appreciated! * [Heyitsrick](https://wordpress.org/support/users/heyitsrick/) * (@heyitsrick) * [11 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-rss-feed-broken/#post-5777002) * **I can corroborate what sevensoutbill says above.** We had to troubleshoot why our WordPress feeds weren’t working today, and there are three ASCII characters that are included in the tag of our RSS feeds generated by WordPress when the latest version of the AddThis plugin is activated. (We probably didn’t notice the broken feeds when the plugin was first updated a couple of days back). * **Important:** Actually, it’s not really the RSS that’s the problem – these ASCII characters _**are being injected into the post source code**_, so it’s just that the RSS is breaking because the source code itself is bad from whatever AddThis is adding. * We’re seeing this in any page/post that has summaries/excerpts while AddThis is activated. What happens is that in the summary/excerpt, the first

tag gets three ASCII control characters after it, the ACK ENQ and BEL character codes. You can plainly see them when looking at the code in a text editor. * **sevensoutbill**: Find a page of yours (like a category page) that has excerpts or summaries. Copy the page’s source code into a text editor. See if you don’t see those ASCII characters right there in the source code after the first

tag like we’re seeing with AddThis activated. Once we deactivate AddThis, those ACK ENQ and BEL characters that immediately follow the

tag go away and the code looks clean (and hence, the feeds work again). * [Heyitsrick](https://wordpress.org/support/users/heyitsrick/) * (@heyitsrick) * [11 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-rss-feed-broken/#post-5777003) * Just looking around at the AddThis code, and it appears these ASCII control characters are intentional (although I’m sure not where they are ending up, lol). There are references to these control codes in at least one of the AddThis PHP files and at least one AddThis Javascript file. * Here’s a code excerpt from the “add-divs-to-coded-excerpts.js” file: * ``` /** * Queries window.document for a 3-letter non-printing code * The order of the code identifies a type of excerpt (archive, category, etc). * Inserts sharetoolbox and recommendedbox divs on either side of the excerpt. * * @alters window.document */ function addDivsToCodedExcerpts() { var excerptNodes = getDocumentNodesWithCode(); for(var i=0; i