Source-referenced editorial guide; illustrative scenarios, no claim of hands-on product tests or measured results.
An RSS feed is consumed by software, so a page that looks almost correct in a browser can still be invalid XML. Request the feed directly and inspect its…
Inspect the feed as data
An RSS feed is consumed by software, so a page that looks almost correct in a browser can still be invalid XML. Request the feed directly and inspect its status, content type and response body. Note the exact line or character reported by a validator.
Distinguish an XML parsing error from an authentication page, HTML error page or redirect. These problems do not share the same fix.
Trace unexpected output
If content appears before the XML declaration, inspect the deployment change that introduced it. Debug output, warnings or whitespace from a custom file can contaminate the response. Turn production error display off appropriately while keeping errors logged for investigation; simply hiding a warning is not the same as fixing its cause.
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