This part of the previous post is missing...

Now, there are many other examples of feeds that are not using RFC822 formatted dates, and that is causing a lot of feeds to fail.  I know that Peter is looking into the issue, and I'm going over the code this week, too.  My first impression is that the new module is being too strict, given the lack of public newfeed sources following the RSS v2.0 spec.  However, the new module is attempting to allow it to be used as a news agregattor, and that is a very difficult task, as it is also, trying to automate the transformation of several different feed formats into RSS v2.0.  Trouble is Atom and RSS v1.0 (RDF) type feeds don't really have a pubDate element.

I think there is some workaround possible, and I'm looking into the issue and will discuss it with Peter, when I get more familiar with the source. Meantime, if you are getting this error with a feed, take a look at the news feed source code to see if your pubDate element in the feeds is in RFC822 format. Usually, it's a date in this format:   Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:03:53 GMT - where the day of the week and secconds is optional.

I understand about the need to have some type of enforcement for the sake of the aggregate function.  Not sure that RFC822 has to be the only format though.  What I find interesting is Atom and RDF type feeds don't have that type of date format in their available types of elements for date.  I agree a more universal date format is more useful, though I still say it's a favorite 'flavor' kind of choice.  The RFC822 isn't really an American format, but it was a way to 'standardize' the date for exchanging data.  If everyone using RSS v2.0 would follow the format then you could easily code to change it to whatever format you wanted.

As for the standardization of internal feeds for dnn, that is something to accomplish.  Although, in this case, I believe that some of the core modules don't use any of the internal methods to syndicate, and the Blogs/Forums was one.  I did notice though that the Blog module on dnn does emit a valid RSS v2.0 feed, but the Forums do not.  That is the issue I find most troubling, it seems to me if you are going to go your own way with syndication, you ought to at least validate the feed you are syndicating.  That's the main issue to me, and takes less effort to get buy off from the collective of developers.

I thnk there are ways to get around formatting the pubDate element used for the build of the feed ultimately created by the News module, and don't think it would require any validation of that element, exactly.  What my thinking is to just worry about displaying an alternate built pubDate if it doesn't validate, much like the way Atom feeds that don't have that element.  You merely fashion one that works.  You could use the additional Dublin Core namespace to build an acceptable RSS v2.0 feed using the dc:date element, which uses the universal date format, in place of the pubDate element.  Just thinking about it out loud.  I'm still going over the source, so apologies if I'm simplifying.

I appreciate the work done on this new version, and can very much understand the level of work put into it.  So, hopefully, I can help when my time permits.

Cheers,