FeedWordPress 0.993: WordPress 2.5.1 compatibility and a couple new features(posted on 08 May 2008)
FeedWordPress version 0.993 is now available for download.
There are a few new features that I am in the midst of working on for an upcoming release of FeedWordPress, but I have released version 0.993 now in order to resolve the critical compatability issue with WordPress 2.5.1. I am still doing compatibility testing to see whether there are any kinks in compatibility with WordPress 2.5.x, but upgrading to this release should eliminate the fatal error that prevented 2.5.1 users from accessing the Syndication Options and the feed settings pages from within the WordPress pages. There are some small bug fixes and the beginning groundwork for some features that will become more fleshed out in the upcoming, more feature-rich release, which aren’t worth going into in detail; besides those, here is what’s new since FeedWordPress 0.992:
WORDPRESS 2.5.1 COMPATIBILITY: FeedWordPress should now be compatible with WordPress 2.5.1.
WORDPRESS 2.5 INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS: FeedWordPress’s Dashboard interface has undergone several cosmetic changes that should help it integrate better with the WordPress Dashboard interface in WordPress version 2.5.x.
SYNDICATED POSTS CAN BE MARKED AS “PENDING REVIEW”: WordPress 2.3 users can now take advantage of WordPress’s new “Pending Review” features for incoming syndicated posts. Posts marked as “Pending Review” are not published immediately, but are marked as ready to be reviewed by an Administrator or Editor, who can then choose to publish the post or hold it back. If you want to review syndicated posts from a particular feed, or from all feeds, before they are posted, then use Syndication –> Syndicated Sites –> Edit or Syndication –> Options to change the settings for handling new posts.
AWARE OF NEW URI FOR del.icio.us FEEDS: Previous releases of FeedWordPress already automatically split del.icio.us tags up appropriately appropriately when generating categories. (del.icio.us feeds smoosh all the tags into a single
<dc:subject>element, separated by spaces; FeedWordPress un-smooshes them into multiple categories by separating them at whitespace.) Unfortunately, del.icio.us recently broke the existing behavior by changing host names for their feeds from del.icio.us to feeds.delicious.com. Version 0.993 accounts for the new host name and un-breaks the tag splitting.
If you have put off upgrading to WordPress 2.5.1 due to this bug, and plan to upgrade after installing FeedWordPress 0.993, please remember that after you upgrade WordPress, you will need to reinstall the FeedWordPress MagpieRSS upgrades in order to keep your feed parsing from getting broken.
Enjoy! As I mentioned, I’m actively working on a release, probably due sometime before the end of the month, including bug fixes and a few significant new features, so let me know about any ongoing issues that you may still have.
taileong replied:
Great job with fixing the interface! I realised that when FeedWordPress 0.993 plugin is activated on WordPress 2.5.1, the dashboard’s Incoming Links, WordPress Development Blog, Plugins etc could not aggregate information.
Bryan replied:
Great stuff on the new release! Thanks for your hard work.
Robert Morgan replied:
Great work! I did both upgrades; and it worked, first rattle outta the box!
Jeff replied:
The upgrade works great on 2.5.1, but it has added a Tag with the following name to all my feeds:
“Warning: implode() [function.implode]: Bad arguments. in /home/sitehome/wp-content/plugins/feedwordpress/trunk/feedwordpress.php on line 540″
jure replied:
Excellent work. Thks!
PL replied:
I lova you! :-) Great work, thX!!!
Shripriya replied:
I just discovered this plugin and absolutely love it! Thank you!
The one thing that I really need though is support for imbedded videos. Right now, I pull in a feed from a blog where almost all the posts have videos and it is always broken.
Interestingly, the RSS feed that it uses is not broken and the videos show up fine in all feed readers. It is just when usind FeedWordpress that the post shows up without the video.
I really hope that this request is part of your new release!
Shripriya replied:
and taileong is right - even on WP 2.5, if the plugin is on, the WP stats plugin, incoming links, development blog, plugins don’t work. They all show up blank.
Deactivate the FeedWP plugin and they all come back instantly…
Patung replied:
The plugin seems to kill the Ajax functionality in the general wordpress admin area, like when moderating comments, it just stopped working. I deactivated the plugin and the Ajax came back.
taileong replied:
must we upload the trunk folder as well? cos it seems like a duplicate content with its parent directory. sorry for this noob question.
Anna replied:
First off, thanks for this great plugin - I myself am using it to get the most out of my mobile phone’s integration with Blogger.com and it’s a treat! =)
Unfortunately I’m having a rather big problem after updating it today - I’m running WP 2.5.1 and when FWP (0.993) is active I can’t use the media uploader! I can upload f.e. new images, but when clicking show and/or hide in the dialog box nothing happens and therefor I can’t add them to my posts. =(
Hope this is something fixable, really really really don’t want to go without you plugin! =)
Rad Geek replied:
Jeff and taileong,
Thanks for the reports about the weird duplicate `trunk` directory and about the PHP warning. Both of these were the result of (different) small errors in the original upload of 0.993. They have, hopefully, been fixed and merged into the stable release branch, so if you re-download and re-install version 0.993 these problems should be fixed.
taileong, Shripriya, Patung, and Anna,
Thanks for the reports about conflicts between FeedWordPress and the WordPress Dashboard interface. I will check these out as I work more on bringing FeedWordPress up to speed with the WordPress 2.5 Dashboard interface, and hopefully have a fix by the next release.
Shripriya,
The problems you’re having with embedded video are, most likely, the result of problems with the code that FWP currently uses to sanitize incoming posts. I plan to change this code out for a much more sophisticated solution in the next release, and also to provide some options within the user interface to turn sanitization off entirely, as a last resort.
For testing purposes, would you be willing to provide me with the URI of the feed that you’re trying to syndicate which includes posts with embedded videos? It will help a lot if I have real-world test cases to run on my testbed server. You can leave the URI in comments here, or contact me privately, as you prefer.
Shripriya replied:
Sent you an email with the feed address. Thanks!
Another issue I noticed. It set up a feed and it imported the last 10. Okay, good so far. Then I went in and deleted 6 of the posts. But when I next came back, it had imported those posts again (!)
Not sure how to get around this…
Patung replied:
This is not specific to this version, but..the plugin adds two javascript calls on all pages of the site, thickbox and I think the other is jquery or something like that.
Are they necessary for the front-end display of posts that have been generated by the plugin?
If I removed the calls would that make the back-end functionality impossible?
I can find the thickbox call in the plugin files, I can’t seem to find the jquery one, which file would I need to edit to remove it? Thanks!
taileong replied:
I’m facing the same problem as Anna as well; the able to upload images to WP Media Library but unable to insert them into post (Show button doesn’t work).
Also, I am unable to Find Feed from blogs by Blogger but works pretty fine with WordPress blogs. Finding feed for Blogger blogs return “no feed found”, thus I was unable to import future posts from them.
And yes, this is by far a very fabulous plugin =) Thanks Rad Geek for creating this plugin to people who needs it.
John replied:
I recently upgraded to wp 2.5.1 and the new feedwordpress version as well. Feedwordpress does not work for me. When I add a new feed, it does not show it in the feed list. I get a message that the feed has been added, but when I go to the syndication site again, the feed list is empty.
John replied:
Okay, I see. It was a problem with the syndicated link categories.
Herve replied:
The AJAX interface to manage the widgets is not working since I updated the feedwordpress plugin.
Hervé
Allen replied:
Very nice plugin!! Hows does one delete a draft and keep it deleted? Each time new articles arrive the ones I had previously deleted reappear.
Thanks again!
oliver replied:
Thanks and Excellent work
Jeff replied:
Strangely, FWP seems to kill the flash widget manager - I can’t drag and drop the sidebar items when FWP is enabled.
Topino replied:
Error in WinXp SP3 Firefox & IE when upload a photo. Javascript erroro null()
downgrade to 0.992
Mike replied:
Hi. Great plugin. I’m using it since several months ago. I saw you said you are working on new features. I have a suggestion for you. Can you make it ignore duplicate title items and not post them? You know WP ads a “-1″ or “-2″ and so on if it finds a duplicate title item. Thank you for your work.
Jay replied:
I’m running WP 2.5.1 and I installed the latest FWP (0.993), but I’m still not seeing the list of syndicated sites, so I can set options for them or run the Update. I can add a feed, and it confirms that it has been successfully added, but there’s no list, and it says, “There are no websites currently listed for syndication.” When I click Update, I get this error: “Error: There was a problem updating”.
Travis replied:
This release coupled with a new install of Wordpress 2.5.1 fixed the duplicate post issue that drove me (and quite a few others) nuts over the past several months. For anyone that’s still having that problem, upgrades only made it worse for me, start fresh.
A huge thanks to Rad Geek for this release, and especially the next one which will hopefully fix the image insertion issue in the WP 2.5 admin :)
Josh Bowers replied:
Got the plugin working but having an issue:
When it updates the posts, it updates ALL posts, instead of just adding the latest post from the feed. So posts from the syndicated site which are made days a part are showing up as being posted at the same time.
Is this an option I have to modify somewhere?
Site is here: http://www.sarasotatalk.com
Chris replied:
I’m having the same problem as others. The ability to drag and drop widgets is stopped after install of this plugin.
Shripriya replied:
Rad Geek - thanks again for this plugin. It is huge!
One other issue I am having - as I mentioned, the plugin doesn’t pull the videos from the feed. So I go in and insert the video code myself. That causes all of the formatting to break entirely. :(
Darren replied:
Thanks again for a great plug-in, Rad Geek! Upgrading to 0.993 and WP 2.5.1 seems to have fixed my problems with duplicate posts and changes getting blown away (so far — 24 hours and counting).
One new problem has shown up: It looks like FeedWordPress is interfering with the new WP media manager. A LOT of people are having problems with WP 2.5’s new way of inserting images into posts with the media manager. This post details troubleshooting:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/164999?replies=1
I followed these instructions, updated everything, and disabled all my plug-ins. It’s FWP that is preventing the image insertion from functioning in WP 2.5.1.
In #4 in the linked post, the moderator indicates that “any plugin loading its own jQuery can cause the issue.” Hope this helps to fix. Thanks again!
Darren replied:
Follow-up: I wonder if this is also what is keeping the WP Dashboard boxes blank. When I disable FWP, the Dashboard works as it should.
Shripriya replied:
follow up - FWP imports the RSS, but if I touch the post, it breaks all the formatting and I have to go in and put at the end of every line. so, I think it is not reading the RSS properly with all the formatting.
anyway - just trying to give you enough data for this fabulous plugin :)
thanks again.
taileong replied:
@Shripriya: yeah, but I find it acceptable because if we aggregate posts, we aren’t supposed to modify the content of the aggregated post, but I guess its still considered a bug :)
by the way, does anyone encounter problems aggregating posts from blogspot blogs? Funny thing is I have no problem aggregating posts from WordPress blogs. This issue only happened after upgradin from 0.992 to 0.993.
Help!
Travis replied:
Not sure if anyone else has had an issue with Alex King’s Popularity Contest, but for me, when activated it kills all the custom fields from Feedwordpress when new content is syndicated.
I was only able to test and identify this in WP 2.3.3 with FWP 0.993. I’ll try it with WP 2.5.1 when I get a chance.
Popularity Contest is quite the (ready?) popular plugin (I’m so damn funny). :) So this could be a much needed fix if it’s an issue with FWP.
Dikkenek replied:
It does not ping technorati anymore
Dikkenek replied:
i mean after uprading to 0.993 and adding tags Technorati and others are well pinged but they dont index my posts anymore. When i write a new post myself the post is indexed.
D replied:
When I use Feed Wordpress to syndicate all my blog sites into one blog, it doesn’t follow the more tag from those pages. It ends up posting the entire post…and it also won’t align the picture right (while on their own individual blogs more tag + pictures work). Any advice or tips for fixing this>
Shripriya replied:
@taileong - I was editing a post by putting in the YouTube video that got left out :) If that problem is solved, I don’t need to edit the post at all. And… just to be clear - the post I was aggregating was written by me on another blog!
taileong replied:
@Shripriya: my bad =P btw, do u hav problem aggregating from another blogspot blog?
Shripriya replied:
@taileong - I haven’t tried blogspot at all. Sorry I couldn’t be of help here.
Eric replied:
How do you add extra words after the title? After it syndicates and displays the posts, I want to add extra words after the title.
If the title is ‘video games’, I want to add news at the end of it and have it become ‘video games news’.
I want all posts to have ‘news’ at the end.
Please also tell me how to add a “space” right before news so it won’t be ‘video gamesnews’.
Thanks, and great plugin!
Michael replied:
Having the same problem that Jay posted above.
Any ideas?
Michael
I’m running WP 2.5.1 and I installed the latest FWP (0.993), but I’m still not seeing the list of syndicated sites, so I can set options for them or run the Update. I can add a feed, and it confirms that it has been successfully added, but there’s no list, and it says, “There are no websites currently listed for syndication.” When I click Update, I get this error: “Error: There was a problem updating”.
nieuwsmirror.nl replied:
Nice tool, maybe a idea to add nowfollow and at the bottom of the article a link with title to the source
Nancy replied:
I just installed on my local machine for my new site but It doesn’t works at all.
I used WP 2.5.1 and later on WP 2.5 as soon as I click on switch feed it do some process in background and then blank page comes with WP header:
Feed Finder: Yahoo! User Interface Blog » YUI Theater
I don’t know what’s then problem can you help me ?
John replied:
Thanks for your work. After spending a good part of a morning with the plugin, I want to report a couple of things I noticed: Like others have shared, I noticed the dashboard not being able to load while the plugin was activated. The timestamp for all of the published feed content was 12/31/1969. This seemed strange. I checked my server and mysql database and the time was accurate in both places. Otherwise this is a super plugin. A suggestion for the future…..when configuring the plugin to publish automatically,perhaps include the ability to specify how many items to include.
Cheers, John
Christina Ward replied:
This is an awesome plugin and I’ve found it really simple to use so far even for my limited coding abilities.
I’m wondering if I can get someone to point me in the right direction for a problem I’m having though.
I have created blog site with a few custom text fields that I have created using FreshPost. I have used ‘Feed Wrangler’ to create a custom rss feed that includes one of the custom fields.
I want to display the posts from the rss feed on another blog including the custom item but when I try to syndicate the rss feed to the other blog using ‘FeedWordPress’ it seems that it is not stripping my custom item from the xml file into the wordpress database. I have checked the mysql database and can find all the other data that has been syndicated but not my custom item.
Can anyone help, hint, suggest what I could do or what code to insert where to get my custom field out of the rss feed and into my wordpress database? Any help is much appreciated. :)
Levi Wallach replied:
This is a really great plugin and one I’ve been hoping was out there but wasn’t sure what to look for. I’m hoping to use it as part of my workflow which will involve either marking stuff shared on Google Reader, or adding delicious bookmarks to google reader entries as I read them (either via FF add-on or through a greasemonkey script add-on to GR).
I’ve been playing around with these on another site where I have a test implementation of WP (2.3) and it seems to work well for Google Reader Shared Feed, except that it seems that some feeds embed their own links for Digg, comments, etc. I would rather not display this stuff, of course, so I may end up going with the delicious option, however, ideally I would like to use GR and if there’s some way to truncate the entry, perhaps by the number of characters? Could that be easily added as an option? I realize that might break some content if one cuts it off in the middle of an html tag or before a closing tag, etc., but maybe there is a way around that? Not sure…
As far as delicious, I added a couple of delicious addresses as feeds, which include just a single tag (although that tag has a hyphen - not sure if that’s an issue), and it doesn’t seem to work. When I add the feed in the syndication screen, it does show me the last post, so it’s obviously getting the data, but so far it’s not imported any of the items. One of the items is now almost an hour old, but hitting the update button does not bring it in, still. Actually, I know delicious has updated the feed because I have it as one of my GR feeds and it’s gotten to GR already, so I’m not sure what the problem is with it getting brought into FeedWordPress.
Any insight you could provide would be great, and thanks again, I will definitely be sending you a donation!
Levi
Levi Wallach replied:
Oh, forgot one more question to you as well as others out there - has anyone tried this on 3.0? Just wondering if when I’m ready to upgrade, I can do so without FeedWordPress breaking?
Levi
Kiim replied:
The fact that it breaks upload functions in the backend of wp 2.5.1 is critical. Even with the “visual editor” turned off its impossible to use wp combined with this fantastic plugin. As mentioned above is must just be a little tweak to fix this.
Anyone tried to fix it themself?
Levi Wallach replied:
Just an update on my comment above. Looks like there was something wrong with delicious feeds yesterday, as they eventually came through, except hours later. Now they come through immediately.
As far as using google reader and the embedded links, I’m thinking of using a text replacement plugin to remove them. We’ll see how well it works!
Levi
Anthony replied:
Thanks for the updates, much appreciated! I wanted to comment and share a confliction I found with your plugin and Wordpress 2.5.1.
It appears that when the plugin is activated it will not allow you to rearrange the sidebar widgets.
Not sure if you’re aware of it or not, but I just wanted to make note! Again, thanks for a great plugin!!
Tony replied:
If I wanted to modify the title of a post found in an RSS stream BEFORE it were injected into my database, where would I place the substr_replace() ?
George replied:
Hi,
First off, as others have stated, great plugin.
I’m having some issues with it updating - everytime I click “update now” for my feed it says there are 0 new items. I know this not to be the case. I then go to add the same feed (so it is listed twice) and it imports the most recent RSS item.
I’m using the latest version of WP and FeedWP.
Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!
-g
Marcel Doornbos replied:
Hi,
I have a problem. It doesn’t show the Feeds(From the other sites) on my Websites Feed. And i want it to be at my Websites feed also. So it posts the messages, but it doesn’t post the messages in my feed: http://www.itopdomains.com/?feed=rss2
Marcel
Travis replied:
Hey Radgeek, Any updates on the Wordpress 2.5 media insertion and dashboard rss issues? Or as anyone else been able to pinpoint the cause and patch it?
jahora replied:
Hello,
I am tring to add this feed: http://rssblog.ameba.jp/xmickaelx/rss20.xml
I m getting error.
This feed is in Japanese.
Is it the problem?
Thx
Richy replied:
[quote]If I wanted to modify the title of a post found in an RSS stream BEFORE it were injected into my database, where would I place the substr_replace() ?[/quote]
Good one, I have several rss feeds with item titles that always end with the same words, rather ugly and useless clutter. I would like to be able to modify that to.
SX replied:
I’ve commented lines 86 to 92 to temp-fix the issue with Media Uploader.
SX replied:
Btw, for Rad Geek, i’ve created a plugin (check my website) working with feedwordpress. It auto-displays a link (text or image) for each post syndicated via FWP, so everyone can add a “go to source” wherever they want in the article (after the excerpt for example) without playing with title/permalinks. And it counts the number of clicks too, with a ’simple’ admin panel.
And i’d like some changes in FWP if possible for the guid (more possibilities) or even the dates (more possibilities), because i always re-develop my hacks when you change versions :)
And for new features : some websites dont have dates for each single post in their rss/feeds. So every post get added, and re-added every hour with a new time. Is there a way to handle such items ?
Thanks
Carefreetrip replied:
Thanks for the update! Just so you know, what ever fix you put in it has made it so I have problems using the Flash image uploader for posts. If I disable your plugin the uploader works fine. Might be a bug to look into. Thanks - great plugin.
Jeffro replied:
Has anyone patched the issue with image uploads? Thanks//
Pippo replied:
Hello, do you know why this feed show “unknown” date? www dot quotidianocasa dot it
The problem is that if date of items is “unknown” feedwordpress always considers them as NEW items.
Why feedwordpress only report rss0.92?
Another questions: when I manually write an article, the text is put between p tags. How can I let feedwordpress to add the feed items insite p tags?
Thanks
Norman Jones replied:
Is 240 minutes to long:
Will setting the “Check for new post: Automatically every _____240_____ minutes.” cause a problem with the program?
Keith Solomon replied:
What script is line 88 (wpenqueuescript(’post’)) calling? “Post” isn’t a recognized default script handle according to the Codex, and there’s no source parameter included.
This is the line that’s killing AJAX/jQuery in the admin screens…I comment out this line, and my dashboard and widget control panel starts working as it should.
Richard replied:
Hi there and, as always, thanks for the superb plugin. I’ve noticed an incompatibility issue though between FeedWordPress and TDO Mini Forms. These are both superb plugins and I’d love to have them both living in harmony. The problem is that when FeedWordPress is activated, it’s not possible to configure TDO Mini Forms via its drag-widgets-across-to-form interface.
If there’s any chance of fixing this in the next release, I’d gladly donate something to the cause.
Thanks again Richard
Travis replied:
Keith or Rad Geek, Have you been able to figure out the AJAX issue in WP 2.5 that you mentioned was because of line 88 in Feedwordpress? I’m dying to make the move to 2.5 :)
Walt replied:
Fantastic plugin and enhancements. However….
I posted this at Wordpress.org because I believe it’s a Wordpress issue. But, if you have any ideas or suggestions…
“I’m not sure if this is a bug or if I’m just missing something.
I’m using FeedWordpress for some product feeds. FeedWordpress creates user names and assigns them to a link category of “Contributors”. All well and good.
I’ve gone into all of the feed profiles, assigned them a nickname, and set the nickname to be the default to display.
In my theme I have wplistbookmarks(); in the sidebar. The category “Contributors” comes up as a heading, and then it lists the feed profiles - but, it lists the original user profile rather than the nickname I’ve given them. It appears the “display publicly as…” is not working.
I’ve looked at the wplistbookmarks(); parameters, and I don’t see anything that looks like it controls that. So, I have to assume either a bug exists or something is just not consistently being handled.
Any suggestions for work-arounds?”
Shripriya replied:
Small glitch - I have a blog with syndicated posts and non-syndicated posts. At the top of the page, there is a “previous post” link and a “next post” link.
On the syndicated post page, both these links go back to the originator blog instead of to the previous and next posts.
Dikkenek replied:
@Shripriya
in the category.php :
<a href=”" rel=”bookmark” title=”">
remove and use
Dikkenek replied:
D replied:
Does anyone know how to fix the image problem?
As I mentioned previously, the images that come from my other feeds (all wordpress blogs) will not align right or left.
This is best plugin I’ve found for syndicating sites, but these problems since I upgraded have really made it hard to run the blog with all the syndicated posts.
I have the image problem. On the source blogs, all images are left or right aligned. On the blog with this plugin, the pictures are posted above all the text in an awkward spot.
There is also a problem with my technorati tags and “buy me a beer” plugin adding a bunch of broken code. If I allow it to upload the feeds on it own, the code breaks and expands my blog template because the code is so long. If I update manually this problem doesn’t happen.
Finally, the worst problem I’m having is before, the blog with this plugin would acknowledge the “more” code in the original blog posts. Now it posts the full blogs and since all of the blogs come from different colored wordpress themes, they contain multicolored ads, none of which match the syndicated blog’s template.
Why isn’t this blog reading the more tag and cutting off the post there the way it used to before I upgraded?
harp replied:
In the options, I have selected “Permalinks point to: this website”
Is there a way to automatically post a link to the original source url at the end of each article?
I am definitely willing to pay someone (radgeek) for this option.
TN replied:
This is rather odd, enabling feedwordpress breaks Wordpress 2.5.1’s media library. When browsing uploaded media, the “Show” button doesn’t work, as in, I can’t edit the metadata of images or insert them into posts.
Weird stuff.
I appreciate your efforts with the plugin even though I can’t use it :D, I’ll definitely keep an eye on any development.
Richard replied:
Does anyone know please if commenting out the line 88 script as mentioned by Keith above has any adverse effect in WP2.5.1 on the normal functioning of FeedWordPress? I’m keen to have full sidebar widget functionality but have been experiencing the same problem as Keith and others. At the same time, I don’t want to comment on line 88 if it could adversely effect FeedWordPress.
Many thanks in advance for any advice.
Richard
Kevin replied:
Any idea about this error?
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /homepages/24/d111658159/htdocs/vaccination/wp-content/plugins/google-news/google_news.php on line 739
Unknown feed name vaccine used
Jane replied:
Two questions
Is there a reset for this? I.e., if you are testing and do an import of the RSS feeds, then you don’t get any new posts on an update. So I would like to go back and reset so the plugin doesn’t know that I’ve already imported the feeds.
Is there a way to filter on the basis of tags instead of just categories?
Zach replied:
I have been using feedwordpress for awhile now and everything was going well until I tried adding a new feed. I have around 30 feeds from my other sites all pulling into our main site and they all work fine. Now when I have tried to add our last two I keep getting this error message:
Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/content/f/a/n/fansided/html/wp-content/plugins/feedwordpress/feedwordpress.php on line 272
Thanks for any help….
Zach replied:
Thanks for all your help! Love the plugin and your assistance…
Jane replied:
I found an answer to my own question of Number 1)
The way to do this is first to delete the posts that you are going to recreate. Second, login to the mysql-admin. Click on wp_links and edit the link that you’ll want to reset.
Look for link_notes and delete everything in there. Go back to the wp-admin page of the blog and re-run the update. It will act as if you’ve never syndicated before.
I am now, though, having an issue with Expression Engine RSS feed coming in with a 12/31/1969 date. I’ve tried this fix here:
http://wiki.evernex.com/index.php?title=FeedWordPressdateproblem
but have had no success.