Followed blog (andrewspittle.com) not showing up in Reader

[andreabadgley]

Quick summary

Recent blog posts from andrewspittle.com/blog are not showing up in my Reader even though I subscribe to it. The Reader says my subscription to the blog is paused, which I didn’t manually do, and now I can’t figure out how to follow the blog using the Reader. Below are three screenshots of what I see. In the third screenshot below, it won’t let me toggle any of the options to On.

Steps to reproduce

1. Go to https://wordpress.com/read > Subscriptions
2. Search for Andrew Spittle
3. Click Andrew Spittle's blog
4. Get a "Not Found" screen
5. Go to https://wordpress.com/read > Subscriptions > Manage
6. Search for Andrew Spittle

What you expected to happen

I expected to be able to manage my subscription to Spittle's blog to make sure his posts show up in my Reader.

What actually happened

In steps 1-4, I got a "Sorry, we can't find that site" screen. In steps 5-6, I got a screen that said my subscription is paused. I did not pause it. When I clicked the three dots to manage my subscription, all of the toggles are turned off, and I cannot turn them back on. When I click "View Feed," I get the "Sorry, we can't find that site" screen again. I am still unable to follow Spittle's blog via my Reader.

Impact

Some (< 50%)

Available workarounds?

No and the platform is unusable

If the above answer is "Yes...", outline the workaround.

No response

Platform (Simple and/or Atomic)

No response

Logs or notes

No response

[allilevine]

I can replicate this by adding andrewspittle.com/blog to my subscriptions.

[allilevine]

The API endpoint is returning that the site has been disconnected from Jetpack.

[allilevine]

There's a second feed: https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/110370510 🤔

Started a Slack discussion: p1727203946973989-slack-C03NLNTPZ2T

[allilevine]

@andrewspittle 👋 We're seeing two feeds for your blog:

1. http://andrewspittle.com/feed -- this is where your subscribers are, but the blog was disconnected from Jetpack, so the feed isn't loading correctly.
2. http://andrewspittle.com/blog/feed -- this feed is working, but doesn't correspond to any blog on our end.

Can you share which feed is the correct one, and if you migrated your blog recently? Any other context you can share would be helpful.

[eoigal]

Also in relation to the comment above - there appears to be an issue with the XML-RPC access on your site. I suspect something changed on your site which as broken the Jetpack connection.

Sites that haven't been in contact for 30 days are flagged as disconnected and disconnected sites will not stream their posts on Reader (due to the is_disconnected flag). This is handled here btw - fbhepr%2Skers%2Sjcpbz%2Sjc%2Qpbagrag%2Scyhtvaf%2Srynfgvpfrnepu%2Svaqrkvat%2Sjcrf%2Qyvo%2Qjcpbz%2Spbzzba%2Sfvgr%2Qcebsvyrf%2Qwrgcnpx%2Qsvryqf.cuc%3Se%3Qq308psrq%23184-og

You can see in the blog RC that no contact event happened some 11 months ago

Pc9OEs-v-p2

[andrewspittle]

Jetpack is not (and has not been for years) connected. I recently migrated from Flywheel to Pressable (where Jetpack is by-default installed but is inactive). The correct feed should be andrewspittle.com/feed The /blog page is just my site's posts page (static homepage) so there's no subdirectory or anything.

[allilevine]

Thank you for the context! We're seeing that we return an error for any feed associated with a disconnected site, which shouldn't be the case. I have a fix open: D162368-code

[andrewspittle]

How long has that error existed for? Makes me worry that lots of folks who once used Jetpack have had readers unable to subscribe to their content for a long time.

[allilevine]

How long has that error existed for? Makes me worry that lots of folks who once used Jetpack have had readers unable to subscribe to their content for a long time.

Since April, affecting Jetpack sites that had been disconnected for more than 30 days.

[obenland]

Adjusting the priority on this, Blocker level issues should be something that needs our immediate attention and be solved as quickly as possible.

[allilevine]

I've shipped the fix. @andreabadgley Can you confirm that the posts are showing up again for you?

[andreabadgley]

Yay!! Yes, the posts are in my Reader feed now :). Thank you! Feel free to close this if this confirmation is all you need to do so.

[allilevine]

Yay!! Yes, the posts are in my Reader feed now :). Thank you! Feel free to close this if this confirmation is all you need to do so.

That's awesome, thanks! Closing. 🙂

[andreabadgley]

I'm reopening this issue. I was on mobile today and tapped Andrew's blog in the Reader, thinking I could check my subscription preferences, and apparently I unsubscribed. Then when I tried to find his blog again in the Jetpack app, it only showed up as andrewspittle.net. I got on my laptop to resubscribe since I couldn't figure out a way to resubscribe on mobile.

In Chrome on my laptop, I went to Reader > Subscriptions > Manage to add andrewspittle.com back to my subscriptions. I searched for andrewspittle.com and saw andrewspittle.com/feed. I clicked "Subscribe" and got an error: "Sorry, we had a problem subscribing. Please try again."

---

When I clicked his blog in the Reader, I got the text version of the RSS feed instead of seeing a rendered view of his blog.

---

I tried to add a New Subscription on https://wordpress.com/read/subscriptions by typing his URL into the field.

---

I got another error:

[allilevine]

In Chrome on my laptop, I went to Reader > Subscriptions > Manage to add andrewspittle.com back to my subscriptions. I searched for andrewspittle.com and saw andrewspittle.com/feed. I clicked "Subscribe" and got an error: "Sorry, we had a problem subscribing. Please try again."

@andreabadgley Thanks for sharing this update! Did you try subscribing to andrewspittle.com/blog? That's the URL you shared in the issue, and it still works for me:

It's definitely confusing that .net and /feed are showing up in the search, instead of the actual blog feed.

[andreabadgley]

Ah, yes, I was able to subscribe to that specific address, thank you for the tip. His posts now show up in my reader feed, but my subscription to his blog still shows as Paused, and I can't manage notifications. I guess that's because it's just subscribing to a feed rather than being connected via Jetpack features to get the different kinds of notifications. So for the purposes of being able to see his feed in my Reader, that is now fixed again :D. Thank you!

[andrewspittle]

I don't understand why /blog/ is required. The feed is off my site's root URL and loads perfectly fine in the browser at https://andrewspittle.com/feed/ That feed also works in normal RSS readers. Why can't the WP.com Reader subscribe to that?

[allilevine]

I don't understand why /blog/ is required. The feed is off my site's root URL and loads perfectly fine in the browser at https://andrewspittle.com/feed/ That feed also works in normal RSS readers. Why can't the WP.com Reader subscribe to that?

I agree, I'd expect to be able to subscribe via the root URL or /feed. @davemart-in @eoigal Have you encountered this issue before? Could it be related to how the feed URL and blog URL are associated?

[davemart-in]

I've not seen this before, but I'd probably chase down this error, to see if we can figure out any additional details around why it's returning error_subscribing when trying to subscribe to https://andrewspittle.com/feed/:

[allilevine]

I've not seen this before, but I'd probably chase down this error, to see if we can figure out any additional details around why it's returning error_subscribing when trying to subscribe to https://andrewspittle.com/feed/:

We flag all Jetpack blogs that have been disconnected for more than 30 days as spam blogs: fbhepr%2Skers%2Sjcpbz%2Sjc%2Qpbagrag%2Syvo%2Soxvfzrg%2Sehyrf%2Spynff%2Qoxvfzrg%2Qfhofpevcgvbaf%2Qoybt%2Qehyrf.cuc%3Se%3Qn1rnsr6s%26zb%3Q1487%26sv%3Q36%2335-og

That's been the case since 2018. Similar discussion here: p5PDj3-4P7-p2

@davemart-in Since these disconnected Jetpack site issues keep popping up, I'd like to start a wider discussion on p2 about how they're handled on the Reader. Feel free to re-assign this to move it forward, otherwise I'll do that when I'm back next week.

[davemart-in]

Sounds good. I agree, P2ing this sounds like the best next step. We can pick this back up when you return. Thanks!

[allilevine]

I posted about this here: pe7F0s-2eF-p2

[allilevine]

Diff to resolve: D163336-code

[allilevine]

I shipped the diff and I can now subscribe to the root URL or /feed. The remaining issue I see is this one that @andreabadgley raised:

His posts now show up in my reader feed, but my subscription to his blog still shows as Paused, and I can't manage notifications. I guess that's because it's just subscribing to a feed rather than being connected via Jetpack features to get the different kinds of notifications.

I haven't dug deeply on this but it sounds right to me. If we don't have a blog id, we should show a different status and hide the notification management. I opened an issue here: #95228

@andrewspittle I'll leave this open in case you want to test further.