Kolbu

146 Comments to “Google News plugin”

1. 

   theAdmiral says:

   July 29, 2008 at 19:22

   Hi,

   I am getting a conflict with Ajaxed WordPress (AWP) that I cannot resolve.

   Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/interact/public_html/main/wp-content/plugins/google-news/google_news_old.php on line 739

   Interesting to me is the fact that the error only occurs on the main (index.php) and not on the post (single.php) even though I am calling the feed in footer.php?

   1
2. 

   Ammy says:

   July 30, 2008 at 13:18

   I have installed google news plugin in my wordpress blog, but I am not able to reate new news feed at all.

   2
3. 

   Scott says:

   July 31, 2008 at 14:27

   Hi.
   I see you are thinking about adding “nofollow” to the plug in.
   I say yes please.
   I check my site using a variety of tools from w3c. The link validation tool can’t run the Google links. I would like to also have the “noindex” rule as a check box option in the admin/ setting/ Google news along with one for “nofollow”.
   Optionally it could be for individual configuration for each use.

   One other note
   In the U.S. the political divisions go something like this Country, Region, State, State Region, County, City/Township. Could it be possible to include a drill down of some kind for this. I don’t there is a standard for this type of thing so I am sure it would be quite a challenge.

   3
4. 

   Chance says:

   August 17, 2008 at 07:18

   I installed the Google RSS reader a few days ago. It got the feeds at first, but then would display out of date feeds (as far as i can tell the first ones it ever retrieved). I switched from U.S. All to U.S. Top stories and it said something along the lines of service unavailable.

   I was wondering if Google may have changed the way it does it’s RSS. I am on your CNN reader right now with no problems.

   Thanks for your help and such great plugins!

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5. 

   webmaster says:

   August 17, 2008 at 22:52

   Hi everyone
   Sorry about the slow responses to some of the comments here, been out of the loop for a while.

   For the people having the “foreach”-problem after adding the plugin-call to a file in a theme using do_action, it looks like a bug in the plugin. The current plugin settings isn’t read from the database in all cases, so it fails. I’ll email the last few commenters with a fix and will release an update if the fix appears to have fixed the problem.

   OK

   5
6. 

   webmaster says:

   August 17, 2008 at 22:58

   Hi Chance!
   Googs doesn’t appear to have changed anything. As you can see on this page, there are four test-feeds and they appear to be running fine. Are you sure you have outbound access to the Google RSS web sites? Your admin/ISP may have started blocking them or something. From your server, try fetching http://news.google.com/news?output=rss and see if it fails or not.

   I’ve also heard people say they’ve been individually blocked by Google. Presumably due to breach of their acceptable use policy, however I’m unsure exactly what they had done to deserve that. The plugin itself follows the Google AUP to the best of my knowledge.

   OK

   6
7. 

   webmaster says:

   August 17, 2008 at 23:00

   Hi Ammy!
   Sorry about the late reply. Could you tell me a bit more about what you are trying to achieve and what error messages or other feedback you get from the plugin. Is it on the plugin configuration page you have problems, or do you create a feed and get no results from Google when you try to view the result?

   OK

   7
8. 

   Frank says:

   August 21, 2008 at 17:16

   Hi,

   since few days it appears this error when the plugin is actived :
   Fatal error: Call to undefined function: debug() in /home.10.23/magaziner/www/wp-includes/rss.php on line 504

   Do you think it comes from a change wich need an update ?
   If yes thanks for your support to fix it.

   Regards,
   Frank

   8
9. 

   Frank says:

   August 21, 2008 at 17:25

   Sorry for my last message, I didn’t see before the WP fix bug to change on line 504.

   Now it is working with :
   if ( MAGPIE_DEBUG ) { to if ( MAGPIE_DEBUG > 1 ) {

   Thanks again.
   Frank

   9
10. 

    Susan says:

    September 10, 2008 at 02:23

    Hello,

    First, thanks for the awesome Google news plugin that you developed for WordPress. I hope you don’t mind answering a question. I would like to show only top stories related to a specific topic (i.e. mortgage). If I add that extra search criteria under the optional query filter section, the result on my WordPress theme shows the news title first, then the next item in the list is an entry saying something like “all 8,223 news articles”, then the third item in the list is the next article title followed by a similar “all 830 news articles”.

    I would like only the news titles to display on my sidebar. Can you help me understand what I need to change? Thank you.

    10
11. 

    domi says:

    September 10, 2008 at 15:03

    Hi,

    i want to show the news about Andalucia, a region in Spain, on my site. So how do i set the optional query filter ? I use the code to put it in the PHP files now:

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12. 

    tester says:

    September 18, 2008 at 09:33

    Hi,

    I have the same problem as braddock!
    The Plugin shows:

    Google News : Österreich : Top News
    Google News unavailable

    but my tables are utf-8?

    12
13. 

    Michael Kydonieus says:

    September 28, 2008 at 17:37

    I’m having a few problems.

    1) When you use the ‘short’ version, sometimes there is an extra link that says something like ’98 additional articles.’ This link opens in the same window, leading the reader away from the website. How can I get it to open in a new window? (I can hack if necessary.)

    2) When you use the ‘long’ version, ALL the links lead away from the website. Again, I would like to get them to open in a new window.

    3) How can I use a complex query, i.e. something like “Religion and Politics” or “Religion or Politics”, that uses boolean logic?

    Thanks

    13
14. 

    webmaster says:

    October 2, 2008 at 21:52

    Hi Michael
    The links you see are inside the Google news content, which I’m technically not allowed to manipulate according to Google TOS. But I’ll look into adding a target=”_blank” to the links to make them use another window though, that can’t be too much against the rules.

    As for the complex query, it’s kinda limited in this release. If you just type in a list of words, that works as AND and will match articles that have all the words in them. For boolean or, you have to use the word “OR” as the first word in your word list. So “OR this that” (always without the quotes) means articles that have the word this OR the word that in them. I’m afraid that’s it for complexity at this point.

    OK

    14
15. 

    Mns says:

    October 5, 2008 at 20:18

    Thanks for coding such a great plugin. I am trying to have it working on my blog with no success so far. I am using WP version 2.6.2. It works fine as a widget. But when I try to do it as part of the theme using
    I get the error “No default feed available”. Please suggest.

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16. 

    JL says:

    October 13, 2008 at 21:43

    hi,

    getting errors now with the plugin before and after i upgraded it.

    Fatal error: Call to undefined function: debug()

    any ideas? it was working fine and then it just stopped.

    Thanks!

    JL

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17. 

    Paco Delacroix says:

    October 15, 2008 at 08:09

    Just to say that I am very gratefull for this plugin. Is is very usefull. thanks

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18. 

    Rasheed says:

    October 20, 2008 at 20:07

    After upgrading to 2.6.2 I got this message:

    =================
    Redirect Notice
    The previous page is sending you to an invalid url.
    If you do not want to visit that page, you can return to the previous page.
    =================

    Thnaks

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19. 

    jtsone says:

    November 10, 2008 at 02:38

    Using the Manage screen doesn’t seem to work in the WP beta 2.7. I click EDIT or ADD new …and nothing happens. works ok on previous WP

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20. 

    marty says:

    November 10, 2008 at 22:26

    I have installed the plugin just fine and have used it as a widget on my sidebar and also presented the headlines in the context of a page…I am curious to know if I can have the news items then displayed in my own theme or if it will always open in a new window?

    I am not versed in the programing at all and don’t know where to place the do_action(‘google_news’, ‘feedname’) code…that is what it needs in order to have the stories display in my own theme, right?

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21. 

    Hiram says:

    November 13, 2008 at 15:34

    I’ve installed your plugin and I love it! However, I’ve noticed one minor glitch where it conflicts with my theme.

    To generate the effect:

    1. From the Home Page of my site, notice the position of the right side widgets as well as the dividing space between the widgets and the rest of the page contents.

    2. Navigate to any other page or post. I use your plugin to display Google health news so you can select “Health News” from the top menu bar.

    3. Notice how the right side widgets shift over to the left and that there is now no dividing space between the widgets and the post content. This happens on ANY page or post you navigate to. If I deactivate the plugin, the effect goes away and the widgets stay in place from page to page.

    Any ideas on why this is happening — or more specifically, how I can fix it?

    Thanks in advance.

    Hiram

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22. 

    webmaster says:

    December 12, 2008 at 12:19

    Hi jtsone and Rasheed!
    I’m now running WP 2.7 here, and all admin-pages and other parts of the Google News plugin appears to be working fine. If you still have problems after upgrading to 2.7 final then let me know and I’ll try to debug.

    OK

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23. 

    webmaster says:

    December 12, 2008 at 12:21

    Ah, edit/delete seems to be stuffed under 2.7 yes. I’ll find out what the WP-boys have done to the code this time around and release an updated plugin. Hopefully this weekend.

    OK

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24. 

    Shaw says:

    December 13, 2008 at 13:51

    hi !
    i used to use google news and cnn new in my blogs but when i upgraded to wordpress 2.7 today i found a difficulty in managing my feed. I can not change anything. I wish if there is a solution for this problem even if a manual solution throgh mySql or something.
    thanx in advance

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25. 

    Alex at Net-Entrepreneur.com says:

    December 18, 2008 at 10:32

    Waiting for your WP 2.7 compatibility update….

    please hurry

    Cheers,
    Alex

    25
26. 

    Alex at Net-Entrepreneur.com says:

    December 21, 2008 at 07:31

    Hey Olav,

    I’ve just sent you an email. Your fix appears to be working.

    Thanks!
    Alex

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27. 

    Thomas says:

    January 6, 2009 at 22:53

    We cannot manage the google News, No Chance to Edit, Delete or adding extra feed. We revolution templage with WP 2.7.

    Best Thomas

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28. 

    Jeff says:

    January 29, 2009 at 06:49

    I noticed this entry:
    “46
    webmaster Says:
    June 25th, 2008 at 18:53

    Hi Karan!
    If Google is unavailable all the time, then it’s most likely a problem at your hosting provider. They may, as with Katrina, be a PHP configuration option that blocks outgoing connection attempts. It may also be a firewall that block outgoing connections. Do you have access to the webserver logs for your site? If so, see if there are PHP warnings/errors there that may indicate that outbound access is blocked. Either by PHP settings or an external firewall. Also, if you have access to the web server itself, you can try to access something remote with “telnet google 80″. If that fails, then you’re most likely firewalled. If that’s the case, the plugin won’t work unless you get them to open up. Note they will have to open for several external addresses at Google, so let me know if that’s the problem and I will provide you with the sites to open for.”

    I am having the same problem. I have contacted my hosting provider, and they want me to fill out this form:
    Please allow the outbound connections for scripts for FTP username: (my username)
    Local script filename (and location) which needs the outbound connection:
    1.
    2.
    …
    Remote server IP address and port number:
    1.
    2.
    …
    Exact purpose of this connection:
    1.
    2.
    …
    Please note that our firewall is IP based. If the remote host changes its IP address in the future, please notify us of the change.
    ————

    What information should I fill this form out with?
    Thank you.
    I appreciate your time and feedback.-Jeff

    28
29. 

    Nisse says:

    January 29, 2009 at 23:22

    I set up the PlugIn (Google News ver 2.4) in WP 2.3.3, today, and I get the ‘error’: “Google News unavailable”. The only filter word I passed was ‘OR Nacke Rygg’.

    Is there a problem with Google News (API) it selves?

    Regards

    29
30. 

    Mike B says:

    January 30, 2009 at 22:12

    Hello,
    I have Google News plugin, worked fine for awhile, but now I am getting broken html coding on the page.

    Works good in the Item Length> short mode, when switching to long mode I get the broken html coding.

    What can cause this?

    Regards,
    Mike B

    30
31. 

    Jeff says:

    February 6, 2009 at 20:44

    I’m trying to set up the RSS feed for Google news using this plug-in. However, my web host blocks outbound connections.

    They’re asking for the following information:
    Local script filename (and location) which needs the outbound connection:
    1.
    2.
    …
    Remote server IP address and port number:
    1.
    2.
    …
    Exact purpose of this connection:
    1.
    2.

    ——
    What do I give them for the remote server IP address and port number?
    Thank you.
    -Jeff

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32. 

    Tom says:

    February 18, 2009 at 01:36

    I am using WP2.7.1

    I am running two sites with WP, but the Google-News plugin only works with one of the sites.

    I put the [google-news name="business"] in a text widget, and I put the identical shortcode in my second site but it won’t work. I checked to make sure both sites were set up identically. Both use a different theme, however.

    Using the Text widget I was not able to get anything to work using

    Thanks for any help…
    Tom

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33. 

    Tom says:

    February 18, 2009 at 02:05

    PS – I WAS able to create a new page and put the short code into it, and the google-news worked fine, however, it still won’t work in the text widget on website number two.
    strategytrading1.com
    This one works, but the next one doesn’t work:
    hawaiitravelandweather.com

    Tom

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34. 

    webmaster says:

    February 19, 2009 at 10:41

    Hi Tom!
    It sounds vaguely like the theme on your second site has a problem with widgets in widgets. Do you get any outout if you try a random other widget that produces some output in more or less the same manner as the Google-Newx plugin?
    OK

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35. 

    webmaster says:

    February 19, 2009 at 10:51

    Hi Jeff
    Sorry about the late reply, takes a while to wade through the comment spam. The plugin uses the site http://news.google.com to fetch all the feeds from. This means that for IP you need (currently, Google might change this at any point in time) these four IP numbers:
    $ host news.google.com
    news.google.com is an alias for news.l.google.com.
    news.l.google.com has address 64.233.183.104
    news.l.google.com has address 64.233.183.103
    news.l.google.com has address 64.233.183.147
    news.l.google.com has address 64.233.183.99

    The port in 80 (standard http) in all cases. But NOTE! Google may be employing some kind of world wide caching system, so your server might see other IPs for news.google.com than I do from Norway. So do a host-lookup of news.google.com from your site and verify that the IPs are identical to the list above. Otherwise use the ones you get.

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    webmaster says:

    February 19, 2009 at 10:55

    Hi Mike B!
    Google screen-scrapes news from other sites, and they’re not very good at cleaning up the HTML code they get. Especially in long mode. The plugin tries to clean up the rest, but it’s not exhaustive. So my guess in this case is that one of the current news articles has html-bugs in it, and that breaks your site. Not a lot I can do about that, but if that really is the case then the problem should disappear once the offending article is no longer listed. Is this a persistent problem?

    O

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37. 

    webmaster says:

    February 19, 2009 at 11:00

    Hi Nisse!
    The unavailable-message can be a result of various reasons. What happens if you try a standard feed without any filtering words? Still the same problem? Can you see if you can reach the server news.google.com on port 80 from your wordpress server? Some ISPs may block outbound traffic, which is the most common scenario here.
    OK

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38. 

    brettbum says:

    February 20, 2009 at 10:20

    I had about 10 feeds setup, added number 11, and all of them were suddenly deleted.

    Has anyone seen this before?

    38
39. 

    webmaster says:

    February 20, 2009 at 11:07

    Hi brettbum!
    Hm, that’s a new one. I’ll try making that many feeds myself and see what happens. I can’t really think of anything in the plugin that would cause this to happen. The data about the feeds is stored in your MySQL backend database using the WordPress API, so the bug could really be anywhere. What version of WordPress are you running?
    OK

    39
40. 

    Sophiedog says:

    February 20, 2009 at 17:53

    I’ve tried to add the code into a text widget for the sidebar, but when I go to load the page, it just posts the text that I cut and pasted into the widget.
    The code I put in is:
    [google-news name="legal"]
    and that is exactly what shows up.
    When I put that text into a post, the news feed looks fine. But I would rather have the news feed in the sidebar.

    What am I doing wrong and what is the proper code?

    40
41. 

    webmaster says:

    February 23, 2009 at 20:37

    Hi Sophiedog!
    The text widget is just that, a text widget. You need something like the Executable PHP Widget for what you are attempting, see http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/php-code-widget/
    OK

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42. 

    Andrew M says:

    March 4, 2009 at 03:11

    Hello, I love the Google News plugin, but I have one question/suggestion. I’d like to be able to rel=nofollow the news links and can’t seem to find out where in the code to place that. A little help would be much appreciated.

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    webmaster says:

    March 6, 2009 at 14:57

    Hi Andrew!
    This one is actually non-trivial. The content that Google provides here is really a pre-formatted HTML-blob, and all the href’s are in there. So you’d need a preg_replace() call that looks for a ‘href’ and replaces it with a ‘rel=nofollow href’. I have it on my list of possible enhancements, but just not gotten around to doing it yet. If you want a suitable place in the plugin to try this on your own, then look for the line that has ‘squat’ in it. Around there is a good place to add the preg_replace().

    OK

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44. 

    dan says:

    April 2, 2009 at 05:46

    Exellent plugin, but the region/country I live in is not listed …

    For a country-specific feed not listed, can I add it manually in the script?

    Best -
    D.

    44
45. 

    ir says:

    April 2, 2009 at 17:25

    Hello, very nice plugin, but it stopped working once I upgraded to WP 2.7. I get an invalid url message (“The previous page is sending you to an invalid url.”) upon clicking on each link this plugin delivers… Both with and without a filter. Yes, I’m using the latest 2.4 version of the plugin. Is there a cure for this yet?

    45
46. 

    Donald says:

    April 16, 2009 at 16:56

    Hi, can any one tell me where do I need to put in order to calling plugin from theme. Any help would be appriciated.

    46
47. 

    webmaster says:

    April 21, 2009 at 23:41

    Hi Dan!
    The plugin lists all the regions/countries that Google provided when the plugin was released. If they have added more regions after that, then just add them manually to the script and you should be good to go. However, if you add regions not (yet) provided by Google, then nothing will happen.

    OK

    47
48. 

    webmaster says:

    April 21, 2009 at 23:43

    Hi ir!
    Hm, new one to me. I’m running the plugin on several WP 2.7 sites, and haven’t had this problem at all. Can you provide me with a link to your site so I can see it fail?

    OK

    48
49. 

    webmaster says:

    April 21, 2009 at 23:46

    Hi Donald!
    The accompanying documentation/readme should provide you with the html code you need, look for where it tells you to use do_action(). This information is also available on line at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-news/
    Hope this helps!
    OK

    49
50. 

    Joe B says:

    May 5, 2009 at 03:08

    I love your google news plugin. I’m wondering if I missed something with the filtering. I built a string via news.google.com and put it into your filter months ago – went to change it and am not sure that I really can do what I want. (or that it was really doing what I thought)

    This is fairly simple, but I’m assuming not simple for you to pass it through to google.

    I want a page with articles about rescued shelties and another page about shelties minus the rescue articles on the other page. One filter for news.google.com could be, e.g., ‘sheltie OR “shetland sheepdog” -rescue’ – I don’t think I can ask your plugin to filter this. Basically, the dog can be either called a sheltie or a shetland sheepdog — and I want one page to be about rescues and the other about anything else.

    If I understand your comments, the plugin cannot do this. I can’t see having a page for sheltie rescue and one for shetland sheepdog rescue, etc. – there would be overlaps – So, I haven’t come up with a good way to work around this issue. The filter is so powerful and useful.

    If I do understand correctly, and I cannot use the plugin filter to mimic news.google.com, would it be reasonable for you to add a filter feature to simply accept a line of text as delivered by news.google? I’m thinking it might give a plugin user complete flexibility and make it easy for you to allow it. But, of course, I don’t know..
    For example in this case: ‘sheltie OR “shetland sheepdog” -rescue’ works or, assuming it would be something for you to just slap in, something from the URL: sheltie+OR+%22shetland+sheepdog%22+-rescue — or maybe give you the whole google URL?

    I’ve looked at a couple of other similar processes and see that yours really does a super job of getting rid of extra trash, capturing the nice pics and pieces of articles — very very nice job — I get to appreciate it more as I look around!

    Thanks again for the fine plugin!! — Joe B.

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