Author Topic: 'BRRY WISDOM NEEDED - HTTP301 HTACESS & HOSTING MOVE  (Read 1613 times)

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'BRRY WISDOM NEEDED - HTTP301 HTACESS & HOSTING MOVE
« on: September 07, 2012, 02:14:44 pm »
Hi ... I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable can offer some advice – Will be much appreciated!

I'm just in the middle of relocating my site & podcast hosting from Godaddy to Bluehost, and am hoping I can bring along my podcast subscribers that follow my weekly 2-hour jazz radio show/podcast.

(... while my training is in Music, not Software Engineering, I do my best with all this podcast, RSS feed, website design stuff ...)

Currently enjoying a rich flavored experience of confusion and uncertainty regarding re-establishing my RSS feed and (re-)hooking up with iTunes Store.

(.. this was all prompted by iTunes Store dropping the listing of my show after several years carrying it, with Godaddy deemed to be the problem.)


301 & HTACCESS

As part of the move, I decided to ditch podPress and start using Blubrry plugin to maintain the RSS feed.

SO FAR:

  • all the main files (site & podcasts) have been copied from Godaddy to the BlueHost;
    The DNS have been re-pointed to BlueHost and the site is serving from there now;
    The podcasts are in a sub-folder off the root directory of the site;
    The WordPress installation was made into the podcasts sub-folder;
    Blubrry was installed;
    The old RSS feed was: http://www.jazzboulevard.ca/podcasts/?feed=podcast;
    There exists an iTunesID however the iTunes Store no longer lists the podcast since 3 months;
    Blubrry is suggesting a different feed to supply to iTunes based on the BlueHost servers;

NOW FOR THE CONFUSION:

  • I read the HTTP301 is supposed to be setup on Godaddy not BlueHost;
    However, I had to re-point the DNS to BlueHost to get the site serving from there;
    Since the RSS Feed refers to the domain, that's now BlueHost;
    I assume there's no point to try to do the 301 HTACCESS on the BlueHost files;
    And there are 2 HTACCESS files I see at Bluehost – one in the root directory of the site, and another in the podcasts sub-directory where the Wordpress installation was made.

So, how would you proceed? Is it just time to forget about the old RSS feed (that would be a shame since over the years I have subscribed the feed to numerous podcast portals).

Is it best to handle this as a brand new request to iTunes, or as just an update to an existing (albeit dropped) iTunes Store podcast? How to register it with iTunes?

Is there a way to keep the old RSS feed alive?


Finally, with Blubrry suggesting a new RSS feed of:

http://xx.xxx.xxx.xxx/~jazzboul/podcasts/feed/podcast/  ... I see a '~' symbol and wonder if that's problematic?

Oh well, like I said, a rich flavored experience of confusion and uncertainty ...

Again, any advise appreciated!

Cheers!




mgdell

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Re: 'BRRY WISDOM NEEDED - HTTP301 HTACESS & HOSTING MOVE
« Reply #1 on: September 10, 2012, 03:36:30 pm »
Since you didn't change the domain name, you can do a 301 from your old feed (even at bluehost) to the new feed.  See podcastfaq.com in the syndicating your podcast section.  It goes into how to do a 301 redirect.

As for your new powerpress feed, it should not have the ~ in it.  It should be something like this:  http://yourdomainname.com/podcasts/feed/podcast/ (using the example you gave where the the /podcasts/ folder was in the URL). So get your feed worked out before giving it to itunes again.  Your old subscribers will get the new feed once you put the 301 redirect weather or not you are "listed" on itunes.  (Good thing #1) :) I would just give itunes the new feed once you get that figured out.

Now, the problem with hosting your media files on Godaddy (or bluehost for that matter) is they are not designed to be media hosts.  While you can "get away" with it for a while, the problem is that when you have 100's of people trying to download your mp3 files at the same time, the shared hosting slows down or goes down.  This causes your website to run slow and your feed to go away at times.  This is what happened when iTunes pulled your listing (I'm guessing).   You really should consider a proper media host that is meant for that. Blubrry.com offers hosting for media files (store.blubrry.com) and it will eliminate that problem.

-Mike

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Re: 'BRRY WISDOM NEEDED - HTTP301 HTACESS & HOSTING MOVE
« Reply #2 on: September 14, 2012, 12:41:49 pm »
Thanks for the feedback Mike.

I read the info on 301s and there is a .htaccess in the root of my site where WP is installed.

Currently the .htaccess file contains the following:

# Use PHP5 Single php.ini as default
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5s .php

# BEGIN WordPress

# END WordPress



The old RSS feed that people are still subscribed to, changed 2 days ago.

This is the old feed:   http://jazzboulevard.ca/podcasts/?feed=podcast

This is the NEW feed:
http://jazzboulevard.ca/?feed=podcast   [it validates with feed validator].

So, am I correct that I should add these lines updating the current .htaccess file to create a 301 redirect from the old feed to the new one? EG:

# Use PHP5 Single php.ini as default
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5s .php

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^http://www.jazzboulevard.ca/podcasts/?feed=podcast http://www.jazzboulevard.ca/?feed=podcast [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress


Thanks ...





angelo

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Re: 'BRRY WISDOM NEEDED - HTTP301 HTACESS & HOSTING MOVE
« Reply #3 on: September 18, 2012, 09:43:33 am »
You can't match the query string (?a=b) portion of the URL in the RewriteRule lines. You need to add a line before the RewriteRule with a RewriteCond matching the query string first.