Sorry, been busy and have not had time to check back in...
I made the assumption the skin was not in a subfolder... glad you got that corrected.
The UpdateRate on the webparser measure can be removed completely if you want, the default value is 600 (5 min). Setting it to anything lower is asking to get blocked by the website; hitting any site too often will look like an attack.
Also, a very low UpdateRate can cause the plugin to fail; multiple repeated calls of the webparser can cause problems. Re-starting Rainmeter usually corrects any errors.
I got just about everything working except I'm still trying to find a way to not have to manually refresh after it has used the local file ("It will be necessary to manually refresh the skin every once in a while, because it will use the local file once it fails to connect until you refresh."). Do you think adding an extra line like something below would work:
Because we are sending an update bang to the measure when the connection fails, adding OnUpdateAction to set the URL back to the internet feed on the webparser measure won't work.
You could add FinishAction=[!SetOption #CurrentSection# URL "#Live#"] to the webparser measure; this should set the URL back to the internet feed once the local file is successfully parsed.
You don't need to do an update after setting the option back to #Live#... the measure will use that on the next update of the webparser measure.
it worked! Now we've got the perfect RSS skin. Wow, I am amazed what wonderful and helpful people we have here. The Rainmeter community is a great place. Thank you so much eclectic-tech for the excellent help you offered me