\t\t\t\tMy RSS feed came down with a problem recently and began returning the following xml error:<\/p>\n
“XML parsing error: :1:1: xml declaration not at start of external entity”<\/p>\n
How do you deal with this? This blog gives a short tutorial on how to proceed to fix it. If the problem has just arisen then it might be a template you edited in the last 24 hours. If you have access to your shell (in linux) then type the following to see which templates you have edited<\/p>\n This command will return a list of relevant files and if it does then you can check them individually for the problem.<\/p>\n If that doesn’t help (perhaps because the problem is more than a day old) and you cannot remember which files you have been editing then it is a fair bet that it will be in one of the configuration templates (if you are using WordPress templates) – wp-rss.php, wp-atom.php, wp-config.php or in one of the theme templates (very likely the functions.php file).<\/p>\n
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\nWhile the cause of the problem is straightforward it is a tricky one to solve because it can involve a search for the veritable “needle in the haystack”. The problem arises because there is a blank line (or space) either before or after the declarations in php in one<\/strong> of your templates. It seems to be a common problem and arises from not being careful when editing a file to clean out all blank lines – most likely at the end of the file (that is, outside the closing ?> php tag) – and brought about, for example, by just hitting the enter key once.<\/p>\nfind . -mtime -1 -name \\*.php<\/code><\/p>\n