Author Topic: Couldn't get iTunes to work via Blubrry - Finally signed up using feedburner...  (Read 3100 times)

Angela

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But now what?

I registered for an account at Blubrry.com. I then filled out all the info under General Program Settings and uploaded my images under Branding. I then clicked on the link that says "Click the following link to Publish a Podcast on iTunes." But every time I did that the image that showed up on the iTunes submission form was the Wordpress with Blubrry icon instead of my logo, and much of the info was missing. After several hours of this, I finally went over to Google's Feedburner, set everything up and bingo - iTunes submission worked on the first try with all the appropriate data and the appropriate logo.

So, now that I am updating iTunes with Feedburner --- Here's the Ping results from within the WP Blubrry plugin: (Latest Update iTunes Listing Status: Successful iTunes notified on 9 October 2010 at 0:00 Feed pulled by iTunes: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpiritualLucidity) instead of through Blubrry (Recommended feed to submit to iTunes: http://spirituallucidity.com/feed/podcast/), here are my questions:

1) Why couldn't I get my Blubrry feed to work when submitting podcast to iTunes? By the way, I was initially never able to get my feed to validate.... I read in several forums that I had to revert to the Default links rather than Permalinks (not an option) but turns out, made no difference because even in testing the RSS would not validate either way... Without permalinks: http://spirituallucidity.com/?feed=podcast, With permalinks: http://spirituallucidity.com/feed/podcast/

After hours of troubleshooting… Turns out the feed is not recognized if the podcast is only on a STATIC page, it must be in a regular post. Once I copied the info from the static About Page and posted it as a regular blog post, changing nothing else, all of a sudden the feed validated fine (except the missing iTunes info warnings).

2)Now that Feedburner is providing the feed to iTunes and iTunes already has all the info for Title, Subtitle, 4000 character description, keywords, Categories, etc. do I just leave all that blank in the Blubrry plugin under iTunes Feed Settings? Do I just add my assigned iTunes URL and leave everything else blank?

3) When I create a new blog post and attach a new podcast to the post using the Blubrry plugin, what's the workflow? Does Feedburner get notified that a new podcast has been added and then Feedburner updates iTunes?

4) Does Blubrry cover statistics on Feedburner?

5) Also, I can't get my Blubrry stats to show in my WP Dashboard. "Wait a sec! This feature is only available to Blubrry Podcast Community members."

But when I go to Blubrry PowerPress Settings and try to login (Blubrry Services* None (Click here to configure Blubrry Services)) I get this error: Error: The requested URL returned error: 401.

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

~ Angela

mgdell

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Angela,

You should fill out all the blanks in powerpress including the itunes art and rss image (which will put those in your basic feed)

Also, you need to have at least one episode in the feed before itunes will take it and before it will validate an RSS2 feed. I don't know weather or not you had one in the feed.

As for as blubrry stats.   That's easy.. Go to blubrry.com and sign up for the free account..  List your podcast by hitting "add program" in the manage account area.  Then go to the "measure" area and setup stats.  Then you will be able to configure it in wordpress / powerpress.   Note: it will take a few hours to a couple of days before any stats will get registered (depending on how many downloads your podcasts get)

Feedburner stats and Blubrry stats are totally measuring different things.  Feedburner measures Subscribers to your feed.  Blubrry measures how many downloads your media files get regardless where they come from. (Plays in page, direct downloads, RSS downloads and so on)

Did I answer everything?  :)

Let me know.

-Mike
Blubrry Support

Angela

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Hi Mike,

Thank you so much for your quick response to my questions! I had quite a difficult time getting the feed situation straightened out for iTunes. Actually still working on it….

Now that I finally got the feed (http://spirituallucidity.com/feed/podcast/) to validate, I want to use http://spirituallucidity.com/feed/podcast/ for iTunes instead of http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpiritualLucidity.

Saw this in the Blubrry Forums:

"You can change what feed itunes takes by filling out the "new feed URL" in the itunes section of powerpress after you get your itunes URL from Apple.

Then you can also do a 301 redirect (search the forum here on how to do that) just to make sure. "

But now I see this may open a new can of worms. I went to Blubrry PowerPress Settings >> iTunes and clicked on the "New Feed URL" and copied and pasted http://spirituallucidity.com/feed/podcast/ in there and clicked Save. But every time I click Ping iTunes it's still the old feedburner URL.

I have added this line (RewriteRule http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpiritualLucidity http://spirituallucidity.com/feed/podcast/ [R=301,L]) to my .htaccess file, but am concerned about whether or not it's in the right place as there was already a lot of stuff in there….

I also couldn't quite figure out whether to use this: RewriteRule http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpiritualLucidity http://spirituallucidity.com/feed/podcast/ [R=301,L]

or this: Redirect permanent http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpiritualLucidity http://spirituallucidity.com/feed/podcast/

or this: Redirect  301 http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpiritualLucidity http://spirituallucidity.com/feed/podcast/

And what exactly is the difference if any….

Finally went with this: RewriteRule http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpiritualLucidity http://spirituallucidity.com/feed/podcast/ [R=301,L]

as that's the style that's already in the .htaccess file.

Saw this on the Apple iTunes support for podcasts

You should use the <itunes:new-feed-url> tag described in the iTunes RSS Tags section…

Ummmm…. WHERE? In an .xml file? Where is that? In rss-2.php? Is there any way to see and directly edit the xml file that Blubrry/PowerPress is creating?

Also, on my Podcast page in iTunes, the Podcast Description is showing up twice. Any ideas? I've Googled it, but not finding anything except Podcasts listed twice in iTunes (not my issue).

Finally, when opening my .mp3 in iTunes on my Desktop and entering in all the Meta Data, will this save when uploading the podcast to my blog and be carried over when uploading to the iTunes store?

I was successful in setting up my Blubrry Stats based on your help!

Thank you again!

~ Angela

Angela

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I should also mention that my image is 300 x 300 per Apple's stated requirements (http://spirituallucidity.com/wp-content/uploads/sl-icon-300.jpg). And when I click on preview in PowerPress and Feedburner, it displays exactly as it should, yet when subscribing to the podcasts through iTunes, no Album Art appears with the podcasts. On the Spiritual Lucidity page within the iTunes store, the image displays just fine. No image on downloaded podcasts in iTunes. When I right click on the podcast in iTunes and click on Get Album Art, I get a message that episodes with missing art will be reported to Apple, but nothing else happens beyond that.

Also, earlier this afternoon I had three episodes showing in the iTunes store, and now this evening only two…???

There should be four so far.

Any ideas?

I'm hesitant to upload anymore podcasts until all these technical issues are resolved.

Thank you.

Angela

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Still can't get 301 redirect to work. This is the info in the .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpiritualLucidity http://spirituallucidity.com/feed/podcast/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule feed://feeds.feedburner.com/SpiritualLucidity http://spirituallucidity.com/feed/podcast/ [R=301,L]

When I put http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpiritualLucidity into the browser it just redirects to feed://feeds.feedburner.com/SpiritualLucidity.... that's why I added the second line .... but even that won't redirect to http://spirituallucidity.com/feed/podcast.

Should I just leave my iTunes feed as Feedburner and forget trying to get Blubrry to work with iTunes?

angelo

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Angela,

Sorry for the delay, we've been at BlogWorld this past week.

When you rewrite from your server, the first parameter is the local address on the server you want to rewrite. It appears you are trying to rewrite a URL on FeedBurner's server (http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpiritualLucidity), which is not your server. In order to do any redirection, you would need to setup FeedBurner to do it. I'm not sure if you can, but there may be a way to redirect your FeedBurner feed to your blog's feed.

I would continue to use FeedBurner at this point. We don't recommend it for new podcasters since it adds another level of complexity for an already complicated array of attributes podcasting adds to feeds, but if you already have it working then you may as well use it. Just remember, you no longer need FeedBurner to add podcasting to your feed now that PowerPress is doing it for you directly based on your WordPress settings.

Angela

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Hi Angelo,

Thanks for your reply! =) Ooooohhhh BlogWorld! Sounds fun!!! Yes, the 301 Redirect was pretty confusing for me! I finally gave up on it. All I was trying to do was get iTunes to start using the PowerPress feed .../feed/podcast instead of the feedburner feed.... but I haven't had any luck with that. I did put the /feed/podcast URL in the "iTunes New Feed URL" section and now I'm just going to wait and hope iTunes picks it up. Is this so? Or should I remove that from the New Feed URL and just leave it... ?

I also removed / deactivated the feedburner SmartCast option as I think that was overwriting or causing duplication (Podcast Description appearing twice in iTunes for example - not in the browser, only in through the iTunes application on my desktop oddly enough)... It's still duplicated (again not in the browser version, but in the iTunes desktop application). I'm giving it some more time to see if it will clear up on its own. Any other suggestions?

And I finally figured out the Album Art issue for individual podcast episodes. After scouring the internet I found a forum that explained quite nicely the following: I was under the assumption that I only need to add the RSS2 Image under Feeds in PowerPress Settings and the iTunes Image under Itunes in the PowerPress Settings and iTunes would extrapolate all other images required, including those needed for the Album Art for each downloaded podcast episode. This is not so. Turns out the individual podcast episode Album Art is encoded with ID3 tags. However, it was unclear how to do that.

The forum I found explained that you simply import the podcast episode into iTunes. Right click on it, select Get Info. Make any and all desired changes there including adding the cover art. Then drag back out of iTunes to Desktop or desired folder and THEN upload to your server. WHEW!

Once I did that, the album art appeared as expected.

I'm posting all that here in case someone else runs into this issue! It took me several days of searching the internet to find all the pieces!

Thanks for your help! Slowly but surely it's all coming together!

I do like Blubrry and want to keep using it.

~ Angela

angelo

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Glad you're all sorted.

The album art in the media files slips past a lot of folks. Basically, the iTunes album art in PowerPress settings is for the entire series of episodes and is referenced at the top of your podcast's feed. The artwork in the media file is for that specific episode. With that knowledge, you could technically create a special "poster" image for each episode, or do what most all of us do and use your program's artwork for each episode.