Author Topic: Switched Hosts, iTunes Removed Podcast  (Read 229 times)

Aaron Clow

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Switched Hosts, iTunes Removed Podcast
« on: September 23, 2018, 05:36:01 pm »
Hi, hoping someone there's someone here who might have experienced this might be able to give me some guidance.

I have a podcast that's been active for almost three years, and I had reviews and ratings on iTunes. It's not listed now, but this was the address:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mindfog-a-fallout-4-diary/id1065322804?mt=2

My web host had a massive issue caused by an administrator and has been down for 48 hours. They anticipate getting everyone back online in the next 48 hours. In the meantime, Apple removed my podcast (understandably). In an attempt to fix this, I moved my site to a new host and restored it from a local backup. I believe all the Blubrry settings are still the same as I used a Wordpress plugin to do the backup and restore.

My podcast feed is https://www.mindfog.com/feed/podcast/

At some point it looked like my "new Apple feed" was somehow set to https://www.mindfog.com/feed/ - maybe when I switched to SSL. The RSS feed doesn't validate, but I think that's because it's looking for an http:// and not an https://. Other Apple feed validators say it's OK. I have the plugin configured to enhance all feeds, so maybe this is not an issue. I made sure everything in Blubrry is set to this: https://www.mindfog.com/feed/podcast/

If I go into Apple's podcast connect and do a refresh, it looks like the DNS is still picking up part of another site, even after 24 hours or so. The artwork is right, but it says my feed doesn't work, but I think it's picking up from that other site (the common SSL certificate that I think is on my old shared server, which I can't do anything about). So when I try to do the right feed, Apple says "can't read feed." Again, I think this is a DNS issue on Apple's part.

Is this something that once the DNS resolves and I refresh properly - assuming that *is* the issue - that Apple will restore my podcast at my old URL so my subscribers will still be subscribed? I'm pretty depressed that three years of building a modest audience could be down the drain now. I know I should probably use someone like blubrry to host my files, but I can't afford the $80 a month, and I only have about 1000 subscribers, so it's not a lot of traffic, but to lose them and have to start over would be rough.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2018, 05:39:41 pm by Aaron Clow »

Aaron Clow

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Re: Switched Hosts, iTunes Removed Podcast
« Reply #1 on: September 23, 2018, 09:41:15 pm »
It looks like after Apple's DNS cache expired, I was able to refresh the feed from podcast connect and it finally picked up my podcast again and restored my reviews, ratings, and iTunes URL.

Does anyone know if I need to keep the "iTunes New Feed URL" filled in for any length of time? At some point, do I remove the URL in there and leave it blank?

There is a link in the plugin that says "More information regarding the iTunes New Feed URL is available here," but it goes to a non-existent page on the Apple site:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/whatson/podcasts/specs.html#changing

Shawn Thorpe

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Re: Switched Hosts, iTunes Removed Podcast
« Reply #2 on: September 24, 2018, 12:49:27 pm »
Your Apple Podcasts listing is currently working off of this podcast RSS feed:
https://www.mindfog.com/feed/podcast/

If this is your current feed URL, you can remove the iTunes New Feed setting. Also, thanks for the heads-up on the bad link in the plugin. I'll let the dev team know about that.