Help Centre

What exactly does Rsscheck check for?

Rsscheck examines your feed for the defects that actually break feed readers and podcast directories:

• Missing or duplicate GUIDs — every item needs a unique, permanent identifier. Without one, readers cannot track which episodes are new.
• Missing titles — items without a title appear blank or get skipped.
• Missing links — items with no link cannot be opened from most readers.
• Unparseable dates — if a publication date is in a format a reader cannot interpret, the item may not appear in the right order or at all.
• Encoding mismatches — if the XML declaration says UTF-8 but the bytes are actually ISO-8859-1, some readers will show garbled text.
• Wrong Content-Type header — a feed served as text/html instead of application/rss+xml or application/atom+xml may be rejected by some readers.

Each finding is labelled with a severity: Error (will break most readers), Warning (may cause problems in some readers), or Info (worth knowing but not blocking).

My feed has errors. How do I fix them?

The fix depends on the specific defect. Here are the most common ones and where to address them:

• Missing GUIDs — Your podcast host or CMS should have a setting for "permanent link" or "GUID." Ensure every episode has a unique identifier. For podcasts, the GUID should never change even if you move hosts.
• Bad dates — Publication dates must follow RFC 822 format for RSS 2.0 (e.g. Mon, 15 Aug 2025 14:00:00 GMT) or ISO 8601 for Atom. Check your publishing platform's date format settings.
• Encoding issues — Make sure your feed generator saves the file as UTF-8 and that the <?xml encoding="..."> declaration matches the actual encoding.
• Content-Type header — This is set by your web server, not the feed itself. You may need to add a directive like AddType application/rss+xml .xml or AddType application/atom+xml .xml to your server configuration.

If you use a podcast hosting platform (Buzzsprout, Transistor, Captivate, etc.), most of these settings live in their feed configuration panel. If you publish via a CMS (WordPress, Ghost, etc.), check your theme or plugin settings.

Why does Rsscheck only show the first 100 items?

For performance, Rsscheck analyses up to 100 items per check. Most feeds have far fewer items than this. If your feed has more than 100 items, the report notes how many were not shown. A batch analysis option with no item limit is planned for the Pro tier.

Can Rsscheck monitor my feed for new episodes or run on a schedule?

No. Rsscheck answers only when you ask it. It has no scheduled checks, no email alerts, and no notification system. You submit a URL and get a diagnosis at that moment. If you need ongoing monitoring, that functionality is not part of the product at this time.

Is the Pro plan available? Can I subscribe now?

The Pro plan (Coming Soon) will include batch checking of multiple URLs, export to JSON and plain text, and priority processing. It is not yet available. The pricing page shows a demo checkout form for illustration purposes only — no real payment is taken and no subscription is created. You will not be charged for Pro until it launches and a payment processor is connected.

To use Rsscheck today, the Starter plan at $0 is fully operational and includes everything listed on the pricing page: single-feed diagnosis, RSS 2.0 & Atom, item-level defect breakdown, content-type and encoding checks, and date range analysis.

Does Rsscheck store my feed data? Do I need an account?

No and no. Rsscheck does not store, log, or share the feed URLs you submit or the diagnostic results. Each check is ephemeral — the data exists only long enough to return the report to your browser. There are no user accounts, no cookies, no analytics trackers, and nothing to sign up for. See the Privacy Policy for full details.