7.1 appears to break "iTunes Summary Field"

[Aaron Clow]

This is the second thread about this topic that seems to have gone cold. Is there any way we could get a follow up from the devs? Thanks.

[angelo]

Hello Aaron,

I don't know why I forgot this, but the iOS podcast app uses the content:encoded before the iTunes:Summary. The content:encoded is your blog post content. They use this because the iOS app can display some (not much) HTML tags, such as the <p>, <ul> and <a> tags. I am looking for our page on the subject but I believe Mike Dell documented this last spring for folks who have been confused by it.

Show description in iTunes Desktop: <itunes:summary> used. If not present, the <description> is used.

Show description in iOS podcast app (before iOS 11 release in Fall of 2017): <content:encoded> is used. if not present, <itunes:summary> is used. If not present, the <description> is used.

Show description (shown below the fold when looking at the episode) in iOS podcast app iOS 11+ (to be released Fall, 2017): <content:encoded> is used. if not present, <itunes:summary> is used. If not present, the <description> is used.

Show summary (shown near the top, just below the episode title) in iOS podcast app iOS 11+ (to be released Fall, 2017): <itunes:summary> is used. If not present, the <description> is used.

Show summary and description relationship in iOS podcast app iOS 11+: Text matching is used, if the first 20 words of the summary match the first 20 words of the full description, then when the user scrolls down the text will align with itself (hard to explain). If the text is slightly different, then the summary will be displayed separately. The summary is cut off if more than a few words, we do not yet know what is an optimal length at this time.

iOS11 information is subject to change as the current versions are "beta" and may be changed before released.

As far as other apps are concerned, we need the developers to respond how they handle the various RSS tags to be 100% certain.


Thanks,
Angelo

[Aaron Clow]

Hi Angelo,

Thank you very much for the explanation.

I'm puzzled why, when I look at the podcast feed, there is no <content:encoded> in my generated feed then. It is just <description> that seems to be the issue.

<itunes:subtitle>, <googleplay:description> and <itunes:summary> all contain the values I would like to have shown in any description field.

Is there a way to mirror <itunes:subtitle> or <itunes:summary> to the <description> output as generated by Blubrry? Because some app developers are obviously using the <description> value in my feed.

If there was a checkbox or something in Blubrry where the generated <description> could be overridden, I think that would solve our issues? Or am I still not understanding this?

My feed is at http://www.mindfog.com/feed/podcast if you need to take a look. Thanks.

[Shawn Thorpe]

I forwarded your post on to the dev team and they responded with this:

"We suspect that their app got an update and it was previously pulling the itunes summary but is now pulling the description instead. The app might have done this because of the new ios tags: https://create.blubrry.com/manual/syndicating-your-podcast-rss-feeds/submit-podcast-itunes/new-settings-ios-11/

One thing you can do is to enter the content of his itunes summary in the Wordpress Excerpt box as well. This way, wordpress will use that excerpt as his description in his feed and the app should use that content instead."

Please let me know if that's helpful.

[Aaron Clow]

YES! Thank you!! That worked!

I didn't even realize there was a Wordpress Excerpt field. When I went to look it up online, it said since Wordpress 3.1 that option is hidden under Screen Options if it hasn't been used.

Again, thank you so much.

[Shawn Thorpe]

Excellent! Glad we were able to get you on the right track.

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