I’ve updated the Incoherent Ramblings podcast RSS feed php script, with a hacked version courtesy of Geek Speak Radio.
This may be of particular interest to Podcasters who use Wordpress. :)
With the advent of iTunes with podcast support - Apple have added a number of supported RSS tags to provide greater detail in for podcasts, including such things as support for show details, show notes, links, mp3 details etc.. These build on the existing enclosure and basic meta tags that have been in use for some time now..
From the above website - here’s a rough guide of what has been added:
Channel:
- iTunes:subtitle (line 31) Is taken from WP Options-Tagline.
- iTunes:summary (line 32) Includes the WP Options-Weblog Title
- iTunes:author (line 33) Is hardcoded in the PHP file.*
- iTunes:owner (line 34-36)Uses the admin email for the owner email address.
- iTunes:category (line 38-40)This is the category section.
*I’m considering adjusting this to pull the data from wordpress
Items:
- iTunes:subtitle (line 50) This is taken from the WP Write Post-Excerpt field.
- iTunes:summary (line 51) The RSS version of the content of the post.
- iTunes:author (line 52) The first name of the WP User that posted.
The upshot, is that the podcast feed now benefits from a number of additional items that will improve podcast metadata in iTune’s latest podcast savvy version. I’ve tested the feed in iTunes, as well as Doppler and iPodder.
If you find the feed is now broken in your podcast client, please attempt a manual update, if pain persists, I would appreciate any feedback you may be able to provide..
This upgrade initially caused massive headaches with feedburner. The original feed (a dedicated Wordpress feed that feedburner uses) worked massively well directly added to iTunes.
The same was not true for feedburner. It munched the feed and as a result iTunes had been rejecting the feed for the last 3 hours, even after countless resets and combing through the feedburner generated feed looking for oddities. Feedburner does add an ‘Atom’ tag even though the original feed is sans-atom.
Which I might add, annoys me greatly as I don’t have any atom feed options enabled.
As is sometimes the case - the issue has magically fixed itself. The only thought that occurs may have been a temporary banning/blocking of the feed by feedburner, or the cached copy (feedburner appears to ‘cache’ the feed for a certain number of minutes I’ve observed) was mangled and resetting the feed didn’t update correctly.
Over the next few days I will be gently massaging the podcast RSS xml feed to extract the best possible tags and data to boost the iTunes podcast experience.
Again if the feed is now broken in your client, please do trigger a manual update.. if at that point the feed is still b0rked, please add a comment and I’ll attempt to isolate the cause.
≡ This is a journal entry relating to the topics of hacks, podcast, wordpress.
Brendan Borlase is a Systems and Network Administrator living in Adelaide, Australia, having lived, worked and breathed Information Technology for over 12 years. Learn more.
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Jul 6th, 2005 at 1:47 pm
Published my first even AMATEUR podcast on iTunes on July 2. By July 5 it was up and running. Since I use FEEDBURNER for my RSS feeds, after their update to include iTunes’ metadata .. I found my podcast is no longer working correctly.
I then updated the SMARTCAST option to include the iTunes metadata, thinking this is what I needed to do. After doing so the podcast is still not working correctly. It can no longer be found under a general search but rather, listed under the category that was specified. When I click on the INFO or try to subscribe it says that ‘it is unavailable in the US store’. I am suspecting that this is just an UPDATE issue with iTunes server. I hope that is the case.
Got any advice, feedback or suggestions?
Jul 7th, 2005 at 3:26 am
Feedburner only checks the feed every half hour. As a result any local changes can take up to half an hour to update. I’ve also found that Feedburner feeds occasionally break (even when the source XML feed is fine) only to recover some time later.
I’ve got a number of the iTunes extensions actually added to my local feed so I don’t need Feedburner to add the iTunes metatdata.
After recent experiences I’d rather not have to rely on Feedburner.