RSS feed not updating on some readers

[DorianBay]

A few hours ago I've updated my RSS feed in VSCode as I have done the past two times. But now, it seems like the feed doesn't want to update on some readers.

Up until now I've used Fluent Reader for Windows and the RSS Viewer web app, neither of which seem to work now. Only the RSS Atom Viewer and this RSS reader display the most recent article about the TTRPG diary.

Is there something I've done wrong and can fix to make my feed be updated for all readers? I've spent hours searching and couldn't find an answer.

Here is a link to my feed. If you want to go onto the site itself, please be careful if you are photosensitive as it contains a lot of animated GIFs.

Here is the code if it's necessary. There's no change from the hosted file other than the CDATA tags.

Code

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
    <channel>
        <atom:link href="https://dorianbay.neocities.org/rss.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
        <title>Dorian's Page update feed</title>
        <link>https://dorianbay.neocities.org/</link>
        <description>The feed of updates for my gay AF site full of fairy magic!</description>
        <webMaster>dorianbay@proton.me (DorianBay)</webMaster>
        <language>en</language>
        <ttl>1440</ttl>
        <lastBuildDate>Sun, 07 Dec 2025 19:00:00 +0100</lastBuildDate>

        <item>
            <title>The TTRPG diary page is up!</title>
            <pubDate>Sun, 07 Dec 2025 19:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
            <category>New pages</category>
            <link>https://dorianbay.neocities.org/home</link>
            <guid>https://dorianbay.neocities.org/home-2025-dec-07</guid>
            <description>The <![CDATA[<a href="https://dorianbay.neocities.org/ttrpg_diary">TTRPG diary</a>]]> is finally up! I've made pages for the
                <![CDATA[<a href="https://dorianbay.neocities.org/TTRPGs/goblin_quest">Goblin Quest</a>]]>, <![CDATA[<a href="https://dorianbay.neocities.org/TTRPGs/maoch">Monsters and Other Childish Things</a>]]>,
                <![CDATA[<a href="https://dorianbay.neocities.org/TTRPGs/fabula_ultima">Fabula Ultima</a>]]>, and <![CDATA[<a href="https://dorianbay.neocities.org/TTRPGs/brindlewood_bay">Brindlewood Bay</a>]]> games which I have played!
                Definitely tell me what you think about it. It will probably undergo somechanges in the future, but for now I am pleased with how it looks.</description>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title>I made a button for the site!</title>
            <pubDate>Thu, 20 Nov 2025 22:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
            <category>Updates</category>
            <link>https://dorianbay.neocities.org/home</link>
            <guid>https://dorianbay.neocities.org/home-2025-nov-20</guid>
            <description>The site finally has its own button! It's found on the <![CDATA[ <a href="https://dorianbay.neocities.org/about_me">about me page!</a> ]]> I also added two DVDs I forgot to add 
                last time to the <![CDATA[ <a href="https://dorianbay.neocities.org/dvds">DVD collection.</a> ]]>  The voting for 
                <![CDATA[ <a href="https://petrapixel.neocities.org/contest" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">PetraPixel's Indiweb contest is now open,</a> ]]> so if you want, 
                go vote :3 There are quite a lot of amazing sites there, as well as mine hehe.</description>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title>The RSS feed is up!</title>
            <pubDate>Tue, 18 Nov 2025 22:27:18 +0100</pubDate>
            <category>New pages</category>
            <link>https://dorianbay.neocities.org/home</link>
            <guid>https://dorianbay.neocities.org/home-2025-nov-18</guid>
            <description> The <![CDATA[ <a href="https://dorianbay.neocities.org/rss.xml">changelog RSS feed</a> ]]> is finally here! You can now get these updates to your RSS reader! 
                I've also made some and published some The Owl House-themed <![CDATA[ <a href="https://dorianbay.neocities.org/stamps">stamps!</a> ]]> Finally (I think), 
                I've added my newest DVDs to the <![CDATA[ <a href="https://dorianbay.neocities.org/dvds">DVD collection page.</a> ]]></description>
        </item>
    </channel>
</rss>

[Dan Q]

I'm not certain, but I'd speculate that the problem might be that the <link> for all three <item>s is the same.

Where a feed has both <guid>s and <link>s, feed readers should use the <guid> to differentiate between items, but some don't, probably because feeds with <link>s usually have different links for each item. The spec explains the confusion.

Note that the spec suggests that the <link> of an <item> should point to something related to the item, not to your homepage. If you don't have a specific page related to an item, the correct approach is to omit the <item>'s <link> entirely. If you did this then the problem would probably be resolved (as fast as the cache cleared, although BTW you can bypass the cache in rssviewer.app by appending a cachebuster string to the URL, e.g. use https://dorianbay.neocities.org/rss.xml?cachebuster=2025-12-11-1227 where that's the current date and time at the end to force rssviewer.app to reload from scratch).

An even better idea, IMHO, would be to keep the <link>s but have them point to the specific item in your changelog. E.g where your HTML says <strong>Dec 07 2025</strong>, it could instead say <strong id="2025-12-07">Dec 07 2025</strong> (or the id="..." could be on some wrapper of it, like the <p>). Then your <link> for that item could contain the URL https://dorianbay.neocities.org/home#2025-12-07. This would mean that somebody following the link from their RSS reader would land directly at the relevant changelog entry. (And it'd fix the above problem, if my guess is correct.)

One final suggestion, and it's not related to your problem: rather than wrapping each piece of HTML (e.g. each link) in a <![CDATA[ ... ]]> block, you can just wrap the entire contents of the <description> in a <![CDATA[ ... ]]>  block. The result is the same, but it's less code and probably easier to maintain.

Hope my guess is right!