After about 3 days of researching and plugging away at a solution, I finally figured out how to use WordPress functions in my CI Framework root with WP being the subfolder of the root. I found plenty of ways where WordPress is the root and CI is the subfolder, but I was not going to spend another day swapping everything around, change file paths and link paths. I decided to continue to research until something worked. I finally found my solution here:
I found that creating in the CI library or helpers subfolder solutions never worked for me. I had an awful time trying to get Magpie and SimplePie working, despite SimplePie having a way to parse RSS feeds with CI.
I also found that other sites claiming to have a “controller” function to parse RSS feeds never worked because their abilities to explain the solution skipped steps and caused much confusion. They didn’t explain thoroughly. They assumed much of the content and general understanding of the reader. It would be helpful if the author of such pages made a “step-by-step” tutorial, so that all the information of the solution was mapped out. It would be beneficial for people like myself who is new to CI and WordPress.