Testing RSS feeds inside Thunderbird

There is a nasty bug/feature in Thunderbird that can give you a headache.

In Thunderbird, you can add RSS account using

Thunderbird -> Account Settings -> Add Account -> Feed Account ...

and then, you can subscribe to a feed. However, there is a nasty feature that makes it hard to debug various types of feeds.

If you subscribe to the same source, using two different types RSS 2.0 and ATOM 1.0, only one of them will properly handle the feed. The one you have added as the first one. Second one will show only very recent entry.

You can overcome this issue by adding another Feed Account, e.g. RSS2.

Inside RSS you have to subscribe using one type of the feed (e.g. RSS 2.0), and inside second account – RSS2 – with the other one (e.g. ATOM 1.0). This way you can test both of them. Now, both feeds will present all entries, from both sources.