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RSS feed errors and how to revalidate a feed

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Letterhead automatically crawls each RSS feed you add. Most failures are retried automatically — up to 15 times in a row by default (this limit can vary by account) — before Letterhead stops checking the feed. A few failures (called out below) skip retries and stop the feed right away instead. Either way, once Letterhead stops checking a feed, it shows an error status and your channel admins get an email with the error reason and suggested fixes. Once you’ve fixed the root cause, revalidate the feed to start it up again.

Common errors and how to fix them

Section titled “Common errors and how to fix them”
  • Content too large — the feed’s file size must stay under 1,572,864 bytes (1.5 MiB). Remove excessive images or attachments, reduce the number of items in the feed, or shorten item descriptions, then revalidate. This error stops the feed immediately, with no retries.
  • The request timed out — the feed server took too long to respond. Confirm the feed URL loads in your browser, contact your feed provider to report the timeout, and try again later — this can be a temporary issue.
  • No content in the feed, an unexpected feed error occurred, the service encountered a bad gateway, the service is currently unavailable, or error fetching content — Letterhead couldn’t retrieve valid content. Open the feed URL in a browser and confirm it’s valid XML with a <channel> and at least one <item>, and run it through the W3C Feed Validator to catch formatting issues.
  • The request is invalid, too many requests, or the feed server refused the request — the feed’s server blocked or rejected Letterhead’s crawler. Confirm the feed URL loads in your browser, safelist *.tryletterhead.com, letterhead.email, and letterhead.ai on your server, and make sure it accepts the LetterheadCurationBot user agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; LetterheadCurationBot/1.0; +http://tryletterhead.com/bots). “The request is invalid” stops the feed immediately, with no retries; the other two are retried.
  • There is a conflict with the request — more than one system is updating the feed at the same time. Make sure only one system is publishing to it, and check for third-party tools that might also be modifying it. This error stops the feed immediately, with no retries.

Make sure the root cause is fully resolved before revalidating — otherwise the feed will just fail again.

Revalidate the feed

Section titled “Revalidate the feed”
  1. Open Curations and go to the RSS Feeds tab — it gathers every feed in one place, so quiet or failing feeds are easy to spot.
  2. Find the feed showing an error status — labeled either Invalid or Error depending on the failure — and click Revalidate.
  3. If the issue is resolved, the status flips back to Valid.

The Reset button on the same screen triggers this identical check, so if Revalidate didn’t clear the error, Reset won’t either — see resetting a feed for the full detail on both buttons.

Make sure Letterhead can reach your feed

Section titled “Make sure Letterhead can reach your feed”

Most feed errors trace back to the feed’s own server blocking or failing Letterhead’s crawler. Safelist *.tryletterhead.com, letterhead.email, and letterhead.ai on your site, and make sure it accepts the LetterheadCurationBot user agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; LetterheadCurationBot/1.0; +http://tryletterhead.com/bots).

Confirm the feed is properly formatted with the W3C Feed Validator. If the issue persists after troubleshooting, contact support.

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