FeedWordPress version 2009.0613 is now available for download.

This is a very minor update, which I guess should not be too much of a surprise, if you take into account the fact that I made a major release just yesterday. However, due to some difficulties that some people have been having, I thought it would be a good idea to push out a release with better diagnostics.

The basic issue is this: until WordPress version 2.7, FeedWordPress used the Snoopy HTTP library (which is included in WordPress) to fetch feeds for updating, and also for the feed finder that helps you subscribe to new feeds in the administrative interface. With WordPress 2.7, however, the WordPress team decided to deprecate Snoopy -- so it's still included with WordPress, but not used internally, and it may be dropped from future releases -- and to introduce a new custom API for HTTP requests (the WP_Http class and some wrapper functions that make use of it). So, if you're using WordPress 2.7.x or 2.8, FeedWordPress uses the new functions rather than the deprecated Snoopy module. One of the advantages of the new code is that it is supposed to be able to make use of any of several different HTTP transport APIs which may be available, depending on your PHP set-up (for example libcurl, fsockopen, URL support in fopen, etc.). But I've been noticing problems that many users have had that tie back to problems with the underlying HTTP transports used by WordPress's new code, and, for reasons that are unclear to me, the WordPress development team decided to make some changes in WordPress 2.8 which make these problems even more likely to occur and even harder to get around. In any case, this is almost certainly the underlying issue if you, like others, are encountering something like this when you try to syndicate a new feed:

Error: I couldn’t find any feeds at <http://example.com/> [HTTP request error: :]. Try another URL

The best solution for you will depend on details about your own hosting situation -- in particular, what version of WordPress you are using FeedWordPress with, and whether or not you are able to install new PHP modules on your web host, or, if not, whether or not you have someone who is willing to install new PHP modules for you. Unfortunately it's not likely to be something that FeedWordPress itself can fix. But I have made some updates so that FeedWordPress will, at least, provide some more useful diagnostic information -- which may help you figure out what needs to be done, or which will hep me help you figure it out, if you send the diagnostic information to me along with your support request.

So, anyway, all that said, that's why I'm pushing out a new release today. (There are also a couple other minor changes included in the release, but I would probably not have bothered with a public release just yet except for the number of support requests I've gotten since yesterday's release, which the diagnostics would help with.) Other than some under-the-hood re-arranging of the code, here are the significant changes between 2009.0613 and the previous releas, 2009.0612:

• INTERFACE/BUGFIX: WORDPRESS 2.8 CATEGORY BOX FIX. Thanks to a subtle change in class names between the WordPress 2.7 and 2.8 stylesheets, category boxes in the FeedWordPress settings interface tended to overflow and have a lot of messy-looking overlapping text under WordPress 2.8. This has now been fixed.

• FeedFinder FAILURE DIAGNOSTICS: When FWP's FeedFinder fails to find any feeds at a given URL (for example, when you are trying to add a subscription through the administrative interface and you run into an error message), FeedWordPress now provides more diagnostic information for the reasons behind the failure. If that helps you, great; if not, it should help me respond more intelligently to your support request..

Download and enjoy! As always, you have any issues with the release, or if there is anything that you would like to see included in a future release, please use the comments form or drop me a line to let me know about it.

Please remember that your generous gifts to the project tip jar make ongoing development, quick fixes and timely support for FeedWordPress possible.