Hey all, ok, I'm sure you're not strangers with my iTunes feed issues. Well, here's an interesting new one that Mr. Rick Moyer pointed out for me. Seems my listing/feed in iTunes isn't working right. Now, after all that mess last Dec/Jan with my feed, I have two listings for my Tales From The Mouse House podcast in iTunes. The weird thing is they BOTH update when I upload a new podcast episode. Now, one listing has 23 ratings and feedback entries on it, while the other one, presumably the newer one, only has 8. The 23 ratings is the one broken (of course) and won't download the episodes any more. Get an error message. So...anyone familiar or have any ideas on how to fix this? Al
Send in a nuke, reset everything you've done and try again? ;)
King
Quote from: KingIsaacLinksr on November 28, 2011, 04:22:45 PM
Send in a nuke, reset everything you've done and try again? ;)
King
Been there, done that, bought the T-Shirt. Remember the podcast feed fiasco from last year? :) That's what started the whole crap-fest!! :)
Quote from: QuadShot on November 28, 2011, 08:38:35 PM
Quote from: KingIsaacLinksr on November 28, 2011, 04:22:45 PM
Send in a nuke, reset everything you've done and try again? ;)
King
Been there, done that, bought the T-Shirt. Remember the podcast feed fiasco from last year? :) That's what started the whole crap-fest!! :)
No one said you can't have too many nukes. :P
But yeah, remember it. Your the only podcaster I know of that has had this many issues with iTunes =\
King
That's cuz I'm old and not very tech savvy. I'm not a very good nerd, am I?
Quote from: KingIsaacLinksr on November 28, 2011, 08:49:23 PM
Quote from: QuadShot on November 28, 2011, 08:38:35 PM
Quote from: KingIsaacLinksr on November 28, 2011, 04:22:45 PM
Send in a nuke, reset everything you've done and try again? ;)
King
Been there, done that, bought the T-Shirt. Remember the podcast feed fiasco from last year? :) That's what started the whole crap-fest!! :)
No one said you can't have too many nukes. :P
But yeah, remember it. Your the only podcaster I know of that has had this many issues with iTunes =\
King
Didn't Jen and Angela have a ton of iTunes issues when they moved their feed? I've heard of many podcasters having issues with them.
Joe I believe you're right. And lately it does seem that more oddities are showing up. For example, I just noticed this morning that our other podcast, FastForward, is missing the cover art for the last episode...but I didn't nothing different when uploading. Hmmph. The odd thing with our Tales podcast is that each of the two listings has it's own iTunes ID number, but BOTH lead to the same feed it seems. My concern in just having one removed is that it may mess up subscriptions. Argh!
I am wondering if that ID Number issue might be causing some problems, part of me is thinking it is possible that it might still have been referencing the old site for the Image file, and possibly they finally shut down that site, and why the image no longer shows. Do you have the Podcast image hosted on your new site along with the feed?
For Jen and Angela, there had been some references in the podcast to a old URL that we were not expecting, once we discovered that, we were able to get it corrected and everything sorted out. With two iTunes listing I am wondering if the Legacy podbean one is still floating around, and now they have shut it down. I believe that you had the forwarder setup to point the new location, which should have update iTunes, so hopefully it did.
Update### - Had a look at your xml feed and it looked correct and it can see the image file for the podcast, so I have to think for some reason iTunes is not fully looking at this file even though it is picking up the episodes. I have to think maybe the two are conflicting, and the old broken one, maybe for some reason it is still referencing the old podbean site???? which looks like it is still up
Jeff, the image issue is actually with the Amazing Race FastForward. The double ID issue is with Tales From The Mouse House...:)
I think the podbean site is up still for the old Tales feed...I never launched the podcast into iTunes through that, but I did put the feed ID in there I think. Do you think that could be the issue? What happens if I take the podbean site down? I'd love to keep the listing with all the reviews/feedback in iTunes, but that's probably the one linked in podbean...
Update: I just looked at the podbean site and the forwarding link I had put in there to redirect is no longer there...
Quote from: QuadShot on November 29, 2011, 07:21:26 AM
Update: I just looked at the podbean site and the forwarding link I had put in there to redirect is no longer there...
This is the feed link listed in podbean: http://talesfromthemousehouse.podbean.com/feed (http://talesfromthemousehouse.podbean.com/feed)
and yes, the iTunes feed ID IS the old ID...I think we may be on to something here...now, how to fix this without losing the listing in iTunes with all our ratings and feedback. I'd hate to start over! I also want to take that podbean site down too.......
Yeah, that might be the issue, if the forwarding is gone. Though my understanding, is that when you put the forwarder link in there, that it will permamently update itunes. Maybe having the Itunes ID in the podbean feed my be playing with it as well a bit, maybe you need to remove it from the podbean feed. That is my guess on that, on why it did not update permamently
For the Amazing Race podcast, the logo the feed references if pretty big. I think Itunes might have some limitations on size, so you might want to try a smaller file and see if that helps.
Jeff is definitely right about the podcast logo size. 300 x 300 is the magic number for that (or smaller).
Quote from: jedijeff on November 29, 2011, 08:16:14 AM
Yeah, that might be the issue, if the forwarding is gone. Though my understanding, is that when you put the forwarder link in there, that it will permamently update itunes. Maybe having the Itunes ID in the podbean feed my be playing with it as well a bit, maybe you need to remove it from the podbean feed. That is my guess on that, on why it did not update permamently
For the Amazing Race podcast, the logo the feed references if pretty big. I think Itunes might have some limitations on size, so you might want to try a smaller file and see if that helps.
I'll tinker around with the podbean thing (although, I'm kind of hesitant to do that...got me in trouble last year!!) and I'll reduce the size of the FastForward logo. I may have uploaded the wrong one in the last episode. Thanks guys!
Here's the basic thing when dealing with iTunes and podcasts. Change as little as possible that will require iTunes to update anything. Apple makes great products but I think a monkey could do better keeping podcast listings up to date on their system. Use redirects to your feed, change anything you can on the outside to allow your initial feed and info you sent in to iTunes to still work. Even if you change hosts there are workarounds to still keep your old feed, etc. This is one of the reasons to avoid some of those "easy" to podcast sites to start with because they can lock you into something that becomes very hard to change later.
I almost thinking that since the re director got removed, that it somehow pushed some information back to itunes, though that still puzzles me as my understanding is that it should have been permanent as once you told iTunes to look at the new location that would be the only place it gets it's information. So if it is possible to turn off Podbean updating iTunes hopefully it will sort itself out. Having two entries in iTunes might be causing issues as well, I suspect most likely the older one was linked to podbean. Going forward, you might need to remove one, but then comes the issue of losing those comments and potentially the listeners who subscribed through the entry.
Rico is right about redirects. I wish I had when I set up mine, to use something like Feedburner, and then that way you can move the podcast around to different hosts, but the information registered with iTunes never changes. It would be real nice if iTunes would let a person go in and make some changes to their entry, but they want everything to come through the xml file, so makes it hard when situations like this come up.
I agree with you both. In retrospect, I shouldn't have gone the routes I did (creating the site/feed in iWeb, then going to podbean and adding it there..mess). I still have the iWeb site, but now host through DreamHost. I eventually want to ditch iWeb, but will need to figure out how to create a site that's dynamic like I have now. I also can't believe that Apple/iTunes has NO way of merging two listings! Hmph.