problem with an xml feed and CMS

Ive got a problem with RSS feeds that are slow to load.

My RSS feed started to time out and slow my whole site so I had to temporarily disable RSS feeds. Once they are disabled the site runs fine. Since titles and story content continue to be fetched ok from database and server, we recon the server and database and CMS scripts are ok.


Because I needed to disable the RSS on main site. I set up two sites with RSS feeds that are on the same server.

http://www.flightstation.co.uk/index1.php
http://www.homesplaces.co.uk/index1.php

The one on homesplaces is similar to the full setup that failed on main site [same database and stories with paths changed for homesplaces]. Fails completely to load and wont pass validation - simply times out.

The one on flightstation is similar to the full setup that failed on ukcitymedia - except, I deleted entries down to about 40 so that the feed loads ok and passes validation. [same database and stories with paths changed for flightstation].


I believe it must be something else within XML and RSS technology and not CMS, mySQL or server.


Ok

Im really struggling to find experts that can help me. Im just hoping that you may have an RSS / Feeds guru that may have an idea what the problem could be - or some testing tools - or anything.


Im totally stumped !

We have noticed that, if you run the feed in webbug V5 that you get strange (hex codes?) characters appear.....

So far, cant see anything in the code that could explain this. Also, a search through the database (opened in wordpad) doesnt directly find the characters. They could aguably be within session ID's but I think that would be a red herring.

any further comments and ideas appreciated.





27
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
5a
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<channel>
<atom:link href="
3c
http://www.homesplaces.co.uk/news/rs...=property_news
35
" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
<title>
f
ttttttttttttttt
12
</title>
<link>
2f
http://www.homesplaces.co.uk/news/fullstory.php
15
</link>
<language>
5
en-us
1c
</language>
<description>
10
dddddddddddddddd
63
</description>
<!-- RSS 2.0 file generated by N-13 News -->
<generator>N-13 News</generator>

Discounted the chuncked hex code issue



I created a new database of over a thousand articles. on http://homesplaces.co.uk/index1.php

This loaded witnin 2 seconds and the the RSS feed and feed passed validation.



I then loaded my problem database of about 430 articles. Takes sixteen seconds to load but FAILS VALIDATION. this time there is an error message.



http://homesplaces.co.uk/news/rss.php?feed=New_News
timed out : IO Error



Can anyone offer pointers based on this error message ?

i also have been able to get this error



•nonnumeric port: '' (InvalidURL; misconfigured server?)



plus



timed out : IO Error



can anyone direct me on this ??