Author Topic: Blubrry powerpress, feedburner, iTunes issue  (Read 8499 times)

sashok

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Blubrry powerpress, feedburner, iTunes issue
« on: March 25, 2009, 10:01:54 am »
So here's the deal:
My podcast feed is at http://technestreport.com/blog/feed/podcast/ and that's the way it's set up in PowerPress.  The show is listed on iTunes http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=303502722

Until a few days ago (as far as I can tell), the podcast feed was being updated just fine in relation to iTunes.  Then I discovered that iTunes is still sitting at episode #8 and I just published episode #11 yesterday.  So iTunes isn't getting the feed, I suppose.

Why is this?  I think I know why: I have the blog feed (since I blog *and* podcast) setup with FeedBurner using FeedSmith for WordPress plugin, which forwards my blog feed to the feedburner feed that's supposedly smarter than the default wordpress feed.  Once I discovered that iTunes wasn't being updated, I immediately went to my podcast feed and - to my surprise - was redirected to my FeedBurner feed - which is in fact still sitting at episode #8! 

A few minutes ago, I disabled the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin - which will not forward anything from my site to FeedBurner.  Will doing this update iTunes? 

For future reference, is it possible to use FeedBurner and PowerPress together in a way that Feedburner doesn't take over the podcast feed? 

And lastly - when I navigate to Power Press > custom feeds, I see that my podcast feed (the only one) shows an episode count of 9 in the summary in the top right hand corner.  This is incorrect, as clicking on the feed displays a clear 11 episodes.  Just thought I'd point that out.

Thanks for the help!  (As I'm sure Angelo will be answering this long ramble of a question)

angelo

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Re: Blubrry powerpress, feedburner, iTunes issue
« Reply #1 on: March 25, 2009, 01:25:01 pm »
The custom podcast feed should not have been redirected to FeedBurner via FeedSmith with PowerPress version 0.7.x. We added logic to disable FeedSmith from redirecting the custom podcast feeds. Can you tell me which version of the FeedSmith plugin you are using so I can test the problem?

Now that your feed is not redirecting to FeedBurner, you may want to do a test iTunes ping in PowerPress settings to let iTunes know that the feed updated. Once you do the ping, give iTunes a couple hours and it should then list your latest episodes.

It is up to you if FeedBurner takes over the podcast feed. If you do want FeedBurner to be your Podcast Feed, then you will want FeedBurner to be pulling that feed that it is burning. I'm guessing for some reason FeedBurner was unable to access your podcast feed and that is why it was unable to add the latest episodes to itself. Your best bet to diagnose this problem is to seek help from FeedBurner.com.

The difference in episode count may be caused by episodes created in a different plugin previously like PodPress. We're not calculating PodPress episodes. If this is the case for you, you can use the Import Episodes option under the 'Tools' section of the settings.

sashok

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Re: Blubrry powerpress, feedburner, iTunes issue
« Reply #2 on: March 25, 2009, 02:37:09 pm »
Thanks, Angelo.

I guess I forgot to mention, I was using FeedSmith 2.3.1 PowerPress 0.7.1

I pinged iTunes right before posting the original post, it came back successful and returned my iTunes podcast ID/ending numbers.

I don't want FeedBurner to be my podcast feed and supply the iTunes feed on the site as well as the PowerPress-generated feed (http://technestreport.com/blog/feed/podcast/).  I only want the blog feed to be burned by FeedBurner (and that's what I told it to pull/burn).

When the PowerPress generated podcast feed is opened in, say, Firefox, all 11 episodes are shown, as they should;

So I guess the rest of the episodes should show up in iTunes in a matter of a few hours. 

As a side note, my image has disappeared from iTunes as well.  I haven't changed any settings in PowerPress and clicking "preview" in PP displays the images perfectly.


angelo

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Re: Blubrry powerpress, feedburner, iTunes issue
« Reply #3 on: March 25, 2009, 03:42:34 pm »
When your image is not appearing in iTunes, is it not appearing when you search for your program in the directory or when you're listening/viewing a specific episode? If it is when your listening/viewing an episode, the feed image is not displayed, iTunes will use the mp3's ID3 coverart image. We have instructions on our sister podcastFAQ.com site that explains how to write the coverart image to your mp3s. http://www.podcastfaq.com/creating-podcast/audio/edit-id3-tags/

I'm working on the FeedSmith with the podcast feed issue now.That is a slightly newer version of the FeedSmith plugin than what I tested with so that may be where the issue is.

Thanks,
Angelo

sashok

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Re: Blubrry powerpress, feedburner, iTunes issue
« Reply #4 on: March 25, 2009, 03:51:27 pm »
It's not appearing in the iTunes Store/Podcast directory.

The iTunes episodes are still stuck at 8.  I updated them about 6 hours ago.  I wonder what I'm not doing/doing wrong.

The perfect storm, this is: this is the week where I launched TechNest Report podcast daily (M-F).  And it's not getting to anyone.   :'(

angelo

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Re: Blubrry powerpress, feedburner, iTunes issue
« Reply #5 on: March 25, 2009, 06:30:09 pm »
I just searched for your podcast in iTunes, clicked 'Subscribe' and it automatically downloaded your latest episode 11. I'm not sure why iTunes Store hasn't pulled the last 3 episodes, there may be an issue with iTunes. You may want to contact Apple to diagnose the problem, we don't have control of the Podcast Directory in the iTunes Store.

We do have a tip for accelerating the iTunes image from getting picked up in iTunes. The trick is to use the upload option within PowerPress to replace the existing image. PowerPress will never re-use the same file name, which means that the URL for the iTunes image will always be unique. When you use a different URL for your iTunes image, you essentially tell iTunes that you got a new image and it will cache it. Otherwise, iTunes can take up to a month to re-cache the image if it is using the same URL of the previous iTunes image.

sashok

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Re: Blubrry powerpress, feedburner, iTunes issue
« Reply #6 on: March 26, 2009, 12:42:07 am »
Got it.  Thanks, Angelo.

I guess I'll wait and see what happens with the iTunes store listing, even though the feed through iTunes delivers the latest episode.

I'll try re-uploading the image, but what would have caused the image to get knocked out?  I had it in iTunes Store/podcast directory already and it was just fine...

Thanks so much for your help!

angelo

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Re: Blubrry powerpress, feedburner, iTunes issue
« Reply #7 on: March 26, 2009, 01:00:03 am »
Perhaps the redirect to the feedburner feed prompted iTunes to re-cache the iTunes image and if the image was missing in the feedburner feed then it replaced it with the stock iTunes image. This is only a guess, only the engineers at Apple know for sure.

I spent a few hours testing the FeedSmith 2.3.1 plugin with Blubrry PowerPress 0.7.1, the podcast only feeds are not getting redirected even though the main feed and comment feed does get redirected to FeedBurner. My only explanation is there may have been a pocket of time where you were not using PowerPress (either using PodPress or no plugin at all) that caused this complication in the first place. If you re-enable the FeedSmith plugin and your podcast feed begins to redirect to FeedBurner again, please send me an Email so I can investigate further. cio [at] rawvoice.{dot}.com.

sashok

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Re: Blubrry powerpress, feedburner, iTunes issue
« Reply #8 on: March 26, 2009, 09:44:52 am »
Looks like whatever Apple had going on with not displaying the most recent episode in the iTunes Podcast directory was fixed and now displays the second most-recent one - which is better than 3 episodes behind! 

I uploaded the album art from within PowerPress.  The RSS2 image went through and is now displaying on the iTunes Pod Dir on the podcast page.

However, the iTunes image returned an error after being uploaded (I tried multiple times):
Invalid iTunes image Technest_Report_podcast.png

So I guess this is why the icon in iTunes that one sees before clicking through to the podcast page is still the default iTunes podcast icon. 

The image is 96kb and is 431x428

I am still having the FB plugin redirect the podcast plugin, so I'll email you. 

Thanks!

angelo

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Re: Blubrry powerpress, feedburner, iTunes issue
« Reply #9 on: March 26, 2009, 12:33:55 pm »
The image should be square and that's why you're getting the error from PowerPress. The notes should be their above the upload box but basically the image needs to be square and is suggested by iTunes to be either 600x600 or 300x300.

sashok

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Re: Blubrry powerpress, feedburner, iTunes issue
« Reply #10 on: March 26, 2009, 04:17:55 pm »
Got it.  Didn't realize it was an all-or-nothing type deal.  It worked before so I though the image couldn't be the problem.  Thanks for the help.

angelo

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Re: Blubrry powerpress, feedburner, iTunes issue
« Reply #11 on: March 26, 2009, 05:02:38 pm »
We're considering removing the image size check in the future. But the logic currently expects the image to be perfectly square.