Blocks on the right dissappeared due to RSS block

Blocks on the right dissappeared due to RSS block

by Timothy Takemoto -
Number of replies: 6
The problem below was cured.

The problem was the RSS feed block. When I made the RSS feed block invisible, the blocks on the right hand side reappeared.

I guess that

This problem may be the same as that reported elsewhere by Crafton Williams and Paul Shephard.

The problem occured during the night while I was not doing anything to my blocks so I guess that the change (the disappearance) occured due to the arrival of something in the RSS feeds. Perhaps a title was too long, or contained strange characters? I guess that this may suggest the need to incoming feeds?

This was the problem

The blocks on the right hand side of my course pages had disappeared.

  • The right hand side is there on the main site page.
  • When I move blocks from the left to the right hand side they dissappear too.
  • The add blocks block is on the right, so I can't add blocks.
  • Pressingly, I would like to use Brian Koontz's wonderful Course Date Manager Block but that was on the right hand side so it has disappeared.
Any suggestions? resetblocks.php?

Tim
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In reply to Timothy Takemoto

Re: Blocks on the right dissappeared due to RSS block

by Timothy Takemoto -
I tried to see which of the feeds is causing the problem but whenever I make the RSS feed visible again, it is not displayed along with all the blocks on the left hand side of the screen.

When I display even one item from the feeds it does not work, so I guess that the top item in one of the feeds is causing the problem, maybe.

I was subscribed to the following
VOA News: Asia Voice of America: Asian News Up to the minute news from Voice of America
http://www.voanews.com/english/customCF/RecentStoriesRSS.cfm?keyword=Asia

Rotten Tomatoes: Top Movies Top Movies This week's top movies in release http://i.rottentomatoes.com/syndication/rss/top_movies.xml

BBC Learning English BBC Learning English For learners and teachers of English around the world http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/rss/leweekly.xml

Japanese Culture Nihonbunka http://nihonbunka.blogspot.com/atom.xml

I will subscribe to them all using googles rss reader and see if any contain strange characters. I did that and they all look fine on google (one needs a gmail account. I will be happy to oblidge).

I guess that the odd one out is the VOA with its ".cfm" file.

I would try deleting the feeds from the database, but the instances that are using these feeds will then be left specifying a non-existant feed. And that does not seem like a good thing.

Tim





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In reply to Timothy Takemoto

Re: Blocks on the right dissappeared due to RSS block

by Ger Tielemans -
I guess that the problem happens when one of the RSS-feeds is down and becomes empty. I saw the same with the old RRS-block and the Italian Publicea blocks for older version. (No proetction for empty content-parts?)
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In reply to Ger Tielemans

Re: Blocks on the right dissappeared due to RSS block

by Timothy Takemoto -

Thanks Ger. But in my case, iIt seems that none of my feeds were empty.

And then one of my teachers happened to be homework using the RSS feeds. So I had to get them back in a hurry.

I decided to delete the rows of the block RSS feeds database table one by one. When I got to the third, the BBC feed, the RSS block came back (with even the top two feeds that I had already deleted). I replaced these rows in the table. 

The BBC feed does not seem to be in the global list of feeds, and there is no warning about instances of the block being linked to a non-existant feed. 

I wonder what could be wrong with the BBC RSS feed. 

Looking at the feeds on the BBC site the only one that has a little trouble at google is

 Words in the News - Riots continue across France (Wednesday 9th November)

Becuase it is a bit too long.

The others on the same feed are

Weekender (Friday 11th November)
London Life (Wednesday 9th November)
Entertainment (Thursday 10th November)
Ask about English - will stay or will be staying
The Flatmates (Tuesday 8th November)
Talk about English (Wednesday 9th November)
Words in the News - Webmaster faces legal action (Friday 11th November)
Wordmaster

And none of them look dangerous.

This is quite a problem with the RSS block. If a feed can put a stop to the block, and with it all the other blocks on the same side, then the RSS block is quite a risk.

Tim

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In reply to Timothy Takemoto

Re: Blocks on the right dissappeared due to RSS block

by Timothy Takemoto -
In retrospect, if your RSS client falls down and your suspect a dodgy feed (i.e. that somethign in the feed is causing the block not to be displayed) then there is no need to fidle with the database. Login in as the administrator and go instead to
http://yoursever.com/moodle/blocks/rss_client/block_rss_client_action.php
where you will be able to edit the feeds available. Perhaps this page should be linked from the block configuration screen.
I will post a bug and include this suggestion.
I am also trying to see which headline caused the block to fall over.
Tim
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In reply to Timothy Takemoto

Re: Blocks on the right dissappeared due to RSS block

by Eugene Lyu -

Dear Timothy,

     You don't know how much appreciative I am of your insightful ideas concerning this RSS-Block problem.  I encountered the same problem and now I follow your suggestion and go to http://yoursever.com/moodle/blocks/rss_client/block_rss_client_action.php.  I delete one of the feeds which caused the add-blocks block to disappear.  Magically, the add-blocks block is back again.  Yeah, I guess some of the RSS feeds provided by certain websites do casue problems.  But, your suggestions can save a million of moodle users.

     Thank you, my hero.  (Sorry for not being able to kiss you.  I'm a guy.)

Best regards,

Eugene

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In reply to Timothy Takemoto

Re: Blocks on the right dissappeared due to RSS block

by Timothy Takemoto -
The bbc rss feed still really grunges things up really badly.
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