Hack fix for WordPress 2.9 not displaying full text RSS

March 18, 2010 | Posted in WordPress | | 21 comments

I got a FaceBook comment today from my classmate Steve asking for the URL of HTML2WordPress. I thought I set my WordPress blog feeds to full text, but it was displaying excerpts instead. I’ve gone back to check on my Reading Settings and sure enough, it was set to full text. Yet it’s still displaying excerpts!

Searched in the WP forum and the only hint I found was on this support thread: Google Reader: No Full Text RSS feed since WordPress 2.8?.

I managed to work it out. Yay! Here’s the code hack to display full text RSS feeds:

Open up feed-rss2.php in the wp-includes folder

Find the line (should be line 44)

<?php if (get_option('rss_use_excerpt')) : ?>
		]]>
<?php else : ?>
		]]>

Replace that with

<?php if (get_option('rss_use_excerpt')) : ?>
		]]>
<?php else : ?>
		]]>

Basically, the code originally displays the excerpt rss feed regardless of whether you set the rss to use excerpt or not. What we did was to fix it so that the full text version (the_content_feed()) is used if you haven’t set it to use excerpts.

So make change in the file and save the new version back onto your server and you’ll be good to go! :)

21 Responses

  1. FatMoneyPig says:
    Sep. 27, 2011 at 5:15 am

    Thanks for the Fix. I was about to smash my computer trying to fix my RSS. I have the latest version of WP and still I had to use this hack.

    Seems like every new WP build has this problem?

    Thanks,
    MoneyPig

  2. Emci says:
    Sep. 23, 2011 at 11:37 am

    YES YES YES !!
    Finally a working solution.

    I spend a lot of time tring to solve this issue.
    When googling this issue, It’s is a returning problem for years now.

    It worked in WP 3.2.1.

    THANKS !!

    Emci

  3. Kristi says:
    Jun. 19, 2011 at 3:51 am

    Help! I tried this hack when I was in WP 3.1, and it worked! But now that I’ve upgraded to 3.1.3, my feed has gone back to publishing excerpts only. I am relatively new to reading and editing code, so I feel sort of uncomfortable experimenting in the .php files to see if I can make it work. Did anyone else have this problem with 3.1.3?

  4. Kevin says:
    Jun. 12, 2011 at 1:50 am

    I have been wrestling with this problem for 2 hours. Thank you! It worked!

  5. Lewis says:
    Mar. 12, 2011 at 5:05 pm

    Thank you very much – your hack worked. I would have never suspected an issue and the 3.1 core.

  6. William Fay says:
    Jan. 8, 2011 at 8:18 pm

    Please disregard my last comment. I had my js turned off so it wasn’t showing properly. It is now showing properly and I will try the hack. TY so much.

  7. William Fay says:
    Jan. 8, 2011 at 8:16 pm

    Ok so maybe I’m blind but the two code snippets above appear to be exactly the same to me… I’ll paste below what my browser is showing. Please help as this is a critical issue on a site I just rebuilt.

    Find the line (should be line 44)

    Replace that with

    Basically, the code originally displays the excerpt rss feed regardless of whether you set the rss to use excerpt or not. What we did was to fix it so that the full text version (the_content_feed()) is used if you haven’t set it to use excerpts.

  8. William Bryant says:
    Jan. 8, 2011 at 4:08 pm

    This still didn’t work for me and I can’t figure it out! I even copied and pasted old code for the older version of the rss feed from another site I have in which the feed does display the full text (same settings behind the scenes). Still nothing! And I’m using the same RSS reader (Google) for both. Driving me bananas!

  9. Mark says:
    Jan. 3, 2011 at 4:38 pm

    Worked for me too. Just remember to clear your browser cache to see the change to your RSS feed if you’re already looking at it in the browser.

  10. Marc says:
    Dec. 2, 2010 at 1:09 pm

    I can not believe they still haven’t fixed this. We’re well into WP3 now. Thanks for the fix.

  11. kris says:
    Oct. 30, 2010 at 9:16 pm

    hi guys,

    i replaced the code with the one suggested but the feed still comes off truncated. i am using 3.0.1 here.

  12. Cheryl says:
    Oct. 8, 2010 at 4:49 pm

    Stellan: Heh! The difference is pretty small… If you look at the very end of line 4 in the snippets above, we’re changing the code to output the content feed instead of the excerpt feed.

    Basically if you copy the first snippet and search for it in feed-rss2.php and replace the whole thing with the second snippet, it’ll fix the problem.

  13. Stellan says:
    Oct. 8, 2010 at 10:22 am

    Hi Cheryl, this is a problem I’ve been battling with for a long time. But I cant’t seem do detect any difference between the code snippets whatsoever? Or am I blind? ;)

  14. Cheryl says:
    Sep. 13, 2010 at 8:17 pm

    The file has not been changed in v 3.1. The fix is still valid.

  15. Eric says:
    Aug. 12, 2010 at 10:58 pm

    Hey. Have to looked into 3.1?

    Thanks
    Eric

  16. Eric says:
    Aug. 7, 2010 at 6:17 pm

    Thank you,Thank you,Thank you,Thank you! I picked up some syndication partners for my blog but my feed was not acceptable because it was truncated. The hack worked perfectly. Thank God I found this post and didn’t have to pay a programmer for this.

  17. Cheryl says:
    Jun. 24, 2010 at 6:23 am

    I just took a quick peek. I didn’t notice any change to the feed-rss2.php file… The hack still works for WP 3.0.

  18. Cheryl says:
    Jun. 24, 2010 at 5:41 am

    I haven’t had a chance to look into 3.0 much yet. I’ll let you know when I find out. :)

  19. mzehnich says:
    Jun. 23, 2010 at 3:14 pm

    Any idea how to get this to work with 3.0? They changed the file in question.

  20. Cheryl says:
    Jun. 14, 2010 at 8:15 pm

    You’re welcome! Thanks for adding it to the WP forums. It totally escaped my mind to do that.

  21. Tony says:
    Jun. 14, 2010 at 8:06 pm

    Thanks for the fix! This worked great for me.. I included it on a couple threads on the WP forums… hope its able to help some other people…

 
 

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