Podcast no longer appearing in iTunes

[mbrandvold]

I have three podcasts that up until this past Wed were appearing just fine inside iTunes. Now all of a sudden the newest episodes are not appearing.

I can manually subscribe to them fine in my iTunes app and the most recent episodes appear and download.

When I validate the feeds they all return one error:

    line 2, column 0: Use of unknown namespace: http://www.rawvoice.com/rawvoiceRssModule/

The feeds are:
http://michaelbrandvold.com/blog/category/dropping-the-needle/feed/
http://michaelbrandvold.com/blog/category/rock-star-branding-podcast/feed/
http://michaelbrandvold.com/blog/feed/podcast/

The only thing I recall changing recently was turning off wp-cron and setting up a server level cron for every 15 minutes.

Any ideas as to what might be the issue?

Thank you for your assistance.

[angelo]

What's the URL of your listing on iTunes?

[mbrandvold]

Music Biz Weekly - http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/michael-brandvold-marketing/id400401604

Rock Star Branding - http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/michael-brandvold-marketing/id521316854

Each should have had a update for last week.

Thanks!

[angelo]

Looking these podcasts up on iTunes...

Music Biz Weekly - iTunes ID # 400401604 (Feed: http://michaelbrandvold.com/blog/?feed=podcast)
Rock Star Branding - iTunes ID # 521316854 (Feed: http://michaelbrandvold.com/blog/category/rock-star-branding-podcast/feed/)

Your feeds have junk added to the bottom of them. e.g.

Code: [Select]

<!-- Dynamic page generated in 1.563 seconds. -->
<!-- Cached page generated by WP-Super-Cache on 2012-05-29 06:01:24 -->
<!-- Compression = gzip -->
You don't know how many times we've had folks using caching plugins and these comments they add to the bottom cause this problem. You can search this forum and it comes up again and again. Yes you technically can (but shouldn't) be able to add HTML comments at the bottom of an RSS feed but for what ever reason Apple has problems with it.

Either stop using WP-Super-Cache and/or configure your caching plugin not to add comments at the bottom of feeds.

[mbrandvold]

Angelo,

Thank you for your assistance, I will look into the Cache plugin.

Do you have recommendations for a WP cache plugin that plays well with podcast feeds? I am quite sure my hosting company would not be pleased if I turned off cache completely?

[angelo]

If your web hosting company knew what they were doing you would not need to use a caching plugin. Caching plugins are really only benificial for shared hosting accounts where your paying less than $10/month, those hosting packages are so pathetic that the caching plugins is the only way to get anymore out of them.

You can search this forum for my recommendations server wise, but a good PHP accelerator like PHP-APC on a web server setup with compression, with a well tuned MySQL database and correctly setup hard drive will put you as cached/optimized as you can be. These caching plugins do caching during PHP execution, which is not the right way to address the problem.

The WP Super Cache plugin may still work fine, the thing is you need to get rid of those comments at the bottom of the feed. Snoop around the settings, maybe you can turn off those comments.

[CMP]

You can omit the cache plugin from caching the feed. Check in the settings and you can add the string "/feed/" so it is not added. Then clear your cache and refresh the page and you should see the code not there.

In the "WP Super Cache Settings" go down to where it says "Add here strings (not a filename) that forces a page not to be cached. For example, if your URLs include year and you dont want to cache last year posts, it’s enough to specify the year, i.e. ’/2004/’. WP-Cache will search if that string is part of the URI and if so, it will not cache that page." and then add part of the feed string.

I sort of disagree though with the need for NOT having a cache plugin. I have managed and been responsible for dozens of *very* large WordPress-based sites for very large companies over the last 6 years and worked on some of the best server dedicated resources. While PHP-APC on the server does work well (and you are correct about fully optimizing everything else), these WordPress plugins are very useful for everyone. I suggest you do retain their use, but instead just try my suggestion above to omit the feeds from being cached. That way you have the best of both worlds

[angelo]

CMP, good point, but I would have to say that if you want support for a caching plugin, go to that plugins' forums. If you want support here, we're going to tell you not to use it to demonstrate that the problem is not of our doing. It's not Bubrry's job to fix those other plugins problems. If the caching plugins didn't play this "lets leave an HTML comment <!-- xyz --> at the bottom of everything game" then we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place.

[unitedrant]

Actually, you can adjust WP Super Cache in the "advanced" tab to not cache certain file types or strings.... for example /feed/. So it's easy to get rid of the HTML "junk" in the podcast feed.

[angelo]

Awesome.

If you need feed performance, I'd suggest checking out "static feed", its a real solution for caching feeds as it avoids php from even executing. Only problem is if you have a plugin adding smething dymanic to your feed then you can't use it. But if that's the case you couldn't use a lot of feed apps including feedburner.