Author Topic: Changing website feed address with 301 redirect?  (Read 4335 times)

switters

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Changing website feed address with 301 redirect?
« on: August 07, 2011, 05:27:37 pm »
My current blog is http://thehealthyskeptic.org.  Podcast feed is http://thehealthyskeptic.org/feed/podcast.

In a couple of weeks, I'll be merging this site with another site I run, http://chriskresser.com.  I'll be doing a site-level 301 redirect so that all links with "thehealthyskeptic.org" in them will be redirected to "chriskresser.com".  i.e. "thehealthyskeptic.org/heartdisease" will become "chriskresser.com/heartdisease".

I am trying to understand how this will affect my podcast feed, especially as it relates to iTunes.  It's been a while since I set anything up, so I'm a little unclear on how this should/will work.

What changes will I have to make to ensure that iTunes continues to pick up my feed and non-iTunes users can continue to access the podcast feed?

mgdell

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Re: Changing website feed address with 301 redirect?
« Reply #1 on: August 08, 2011, 08:35:16 am »
What you will have to do is make sure you put a line in your .htacess file to do a 301 redirect from your old podcast feed to the new podcast feed.  Put this in before the site wide 301 redirect.  Also, on the new website, make sure you have filled out the itunes tab in powerpress with your itunes ID so that iTunes will pick up the fact that the new feed is the right one for your podcast listed at itunes.

-Mike

switters

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Re: Changing website feed address with 301 redirect?
« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2011, 02:44:50 pm »
Thanks.  Just to clarify, by iTunes ID you mean the iTunes subscription URL?

mgdell

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Re: Changing website feed address with 301 redirect?
« Reply #3 on: August 11, 2011, 09:36:43 am »
Yes, the itunes subscription URL is what I meant to say :)

-Mike

switters

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Re: Changing website feed address with 301 redirect?
« Reply #4 on: August 16, 2011, 11:07:53 am »
Question: I'm planning to do a root level 301 redirect when I make this transition, so that "http://oldaddress.com/page" will automatically forward to "http://newaddress.com/page".  Shouldn't this also handle the redirect of the podcast feed, since it's a directory within the root domain (i.e. http://myaddress.com/feed/podcast)?  Or do I need to do a separate 301 redirect specifically for the podcast feed?

mgdell

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Re: Changing website feed address with 301 redirect?
« Reply #5 on: August 17, 2011, 09:40:36 am »
Yes, I would think a site wide 301 should work.  I would also put in the itunes new feed URL setting in powerpress just to make sure itunes figures it out.

-Mike

switters

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Re: Changing website feed address with 301 redirect?
« Reply #6 on: August 27, 2011, 05:21:30 pm »
Okay, I'm pretty confused now.

I did change the domain of my site, and issued a site-level 301 redirect so that all links with http://olddomain.com/xxxx became http://newdomain/xxx

It worked very well, and the new feed address is active, however it is only picking up the latest episode of the podcast that was published after I made the switch.  Also, the old feed now shows two episodes of each show.

Any ideas?  Is there any way to get the old episodes to show up in the new feed?

angelo

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Re: Changing website feed address with 301 redirect?
« Reply #7 on: September 01, 2011, 12:22:51 am »
Can you reply with the actual feeds? The old feed that is correct, and the new feed with only 1 episode?

switters

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angelo

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Re: Changing website feed address with 301 redirect?
« Reply #9 on: September 01, 2011, 04:04:51 pm »
It's a straight redirect, your just swapping out the domain, the path portion remains the same. I guess what do you need clarification on?

switters

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Re: Changing website feed address with 301 redirect?
« Reply #10 on: September 01, 2011, 05:03:30 pm »
Is it expected, then, that there would be two feeds for people who were subscribed to http://thehealthyskeptic.org/feed/podcast?  For example, the podcast is still called The Healthy Skeptic Podcast.  In iTunes, I see two iterations of it.  One has only the most recent episode that was published after I made the switch to "http://chriskresser.com/feed/podcast".  It is not pulling any of the previous episodes that were published when I was using http://thehealthyskeptic.org/feed/podcast.  The other one is showing all of the old episodes from http://thehealthyskeptic.org/feed/podcast, but not the new episode from http://chriskresser.com/feed/podcast.

What I want is one instance of the feed that has both the old and new episodes.  That's what I thought would happen with the redirect.

angelo

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Re: Changing website feed address with 301 redirect?
« Reply #11 on: September 02, 2011, 12:27:13 pm »
Ahh ok I think i understand.

So you have a podcast already submitted to iTunes with feed A (http://thehealthyskeptic.org/feed/podcast) and you already have a podcast submitted to iTunes on feed B (http://chriskresser.com/feed/podcast), and you want to point feed A to B, but maintain 2 separate listings on iTunes? If that's what you want, then no, you cannot do that, as iTunes will have a problem with 2 listings using the same feed and title.

You could enable "Category Podcasting" in powerpress, create a special category on your new site, then use that category feed, you would need to make one special Rewrite rule to map (http://thehealthyskeptic.org/feed/podcast) to say, for example (http://chriskresser.com/category/thehealthyskeptic/feed).

Just a stab in the dark what your rewrite rules may look like on http://thehealthyskeptic.org:

Quote
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^feed/podcast http://chriskresser.com/category/thehealthyskeptic/feed [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://chriskresser.com/$1 [L]

The L in the last argument means that if this rule is interpreted, it is the last rule, skipping any more rules below it.

switters

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Re: Changing website feed address with 301 redirect?
« Reply #12 on: September 02, 2011, 12:54:01 pm »
Sorry I'm having trouble making myself clear.

I do not want two separate podcasts.  I want one podcast feed with ALL of the episodes I've published, both before and after I made the switch.  Right now in iTunes it appears that there are two separate feeds (the old one, and the new one).  The old one has the episodes before I switched domains, the new one has the single episode I've published since I switched.

See the screenshot below to show you what I mean.  The "old" feed has 14 episodes listed.  The  "new" feed has 1.


angelo

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Re: Changing website feed address with 301 redirect?
« Reply #13 on: September 02, 2011, 04:51:12 pm »
First off, iTunes does not allow you to have 2 listings with one feed, so if you submitted 2 different feeds to iTunes you need to maintain 2 separate podcasts, or let one die.

For reference, titles need to be unique as well, e.g. there's already a podcast titled "Geek News Central" in iTunes, so if you re-title your podcast feed to "Geek News Central" iTunes will not apply the title change, you will still have your old title in iTunes. (not that it applies in this case, but it also another reason why you can't have 2 listings with 1 feed, as the titles would collide)

Perhaps if you can reply with the URLs to your iTunes listings, I will use our resources to find out what feeds go to which programs, which will tell us more than just those 2 feed addresses you're giving us, which both have more than 1 episode in them. I have a feeling one of the 2 listings you pictured was subscribed to manually and goes to some other feed URL that only has 1 episode in it, or opposite of that.

Best way to find URLs to iTunes, search apple.com for your podcast, then reply with the URLs to those pages.

switters

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Re: Changing website feed address with 301 redirect?
« Reply #14 on: September 02, 2011, 10:47:27 pm »
The only feed I ever submitted to iTunes was the original feed, http://thehealthyskeptic.org/feed/podcast.  After I did the 301 redirect to http://chriskresser.com/feed/podcast, I didn't change anything in PowerPress or iTunes.  Should I have?

When I search for my name in the iTunes store, the following is displayed:



If I right-click on the show, and choose "copy link", here's the link that's copied: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/chris-kresser/id372257397

Then, when I click on the show, I actually see ALL of the episodes (including the one I recorded after the redirect):



I noticed immediately that the graphic is missing.  So I went to the PowerPress panel in Wordpress and sure enough, the link to the picture had disappeared somehow during the transition.  I put it back in there.

I "unsubscribed" to old feed in iTunes, and re-subscribed to the new feed.  Now it shows up as expected.

However, I still do have one question.

In the first graphic above, it says "Chris Kresser" for the name of the show, and "Chris Kresser" again for the description.

But in the second graphic (the main podcast screen), it says "Chris Kresser" for the name, and "Medicine for the 21st Century" for the description.  Why the discrepancy?  How can I change it?

Thanks a lot for your help.