Setting up podcast with iTunes, changing web servers

[David Woll]

Hi Bill,

Our page is looking great. Love the theme, and a huge selling point was the built-in podcasting feature.

How do I set it up with iTunes? We had our podcast feed validated with iTunes with our old website, but we have changed web hosts with the new design (Epic).

How do I now edit my settings with iTunes and get our podcast on iTunes to point to the new webserver?

We have a feedburner account and url: http://feeds.feedburner.com/columbiaheightsassembly.

I don’t see an xml file anywhere…not that I would know what to do with it?

Can you point me in the right direction?

[Bill Robbins]

David,

Great question and this step can be a bit counter-intuitive. Here’s how to create your feed for iTunes.

1. Go to the pages section of your WordPress control panel and select “Add New.”
2. Create a new page that will serve as your podcast feed. You won’t want to add this page to your navigation, as it’s just used to create the XML feed (it’s not very pretty).
3. In the right hand column, there is a box labeled “page attributes.” In that box there is a drop-down menu for “templates.” Choose “Custom Feed” from the drop-down.
4. Publish your page.
5. Right below the page title in the editor is a button that says “View Page.” Right click it and copy the link to that page.
6. That URL you just copied is the new podcast feed URL for your site. Since you’re a Feedburner user, you can use that URL with their service for your podcast.

If you run into any trouble or questions let me know.

Have a great week,
Bill

[David Woll]

Thanks, Bill!

So just to make sure I understand, I need to create a page and use the template “Custom Feed.” But this is different than the actual page where our sermon audio archives are published?

David

[Bill Robbins]

You got it. This is a different page from the sermon audio archive that you’ve already set up.

We use a page template for this as it’s the easiest way to create a highly custom feed in WordPress, even though it is a rather unusual application.

Let me know if you need help,
Bill

[Isaac De Los Santos]

Hi, how do I increase the size of the files which wordpress will allow me to download. Because it will not currently allow me to upload an audio file larger than 10pm.

[Bill Robbins]

Isaac,

Thank you for your business first of all. The maximum allowed file size is set by your web host. There are some methods you can try to increase it yourself in this article at WP Beginner but I would suggest contacting your web host. If you ask them to increase the file size, they most likely will.

If you run into any trouble or have any questions, let me know,
Bill

[David Woll]

I had the same issue. The solution for me was to call my web host. They upped the file upload size limit to 100 MB. Then I use Filezilla to upload the files via FTP. Then I can grab the link and edit the podcast info.

[David Woll]

I’m still having trouble with my feed. Right now, it would be simpler for me to delete our old feed on iTunes and submit a new one with the new address.

I updated my Feedburner settings to point to the podcast feed page I created using the instructions earlier in this thread. That takes me here: http://columbiaheights.ipower.com/podcast-feed/

I’m running into these problems:
1. When I click on my Feedburner feed address, (http://feeds.feedburner.com/ColumbiaHeightsAssembly) I get an error message.
2. When I enter the podcast feed url directly into iTunes using their directions, I can’t download any episodes. They just don’t show up.

What am I missing?

iTunes: Testing Your Feed
1. Launch iTunes.
2. n the Advanced menu, select Subscribe to Podcast.
3. Enter your feed URL in the text box and click OK.

[Bill Robbins]

There’s also a plugin I recently discovered called Add From Server that lets you include files added via FTP to your WordPress media library. It’s a good option for people who’s hosts can’t/won’t increase the files size enough to cover their podcasts.

[Bill Robbins]

David,

For your feed, lets see if we can’t get you squared away.

I was working on a new theme demo the other day and when I checked the feed in iTunes, it only loaded the most recent episode. I was using the same audio file for all the messages which caused the trouble. Even though the episodes had unique names, iTunes didn’t display them due to the duplication. It also had the same issue when I had episodes without a audio file added.

Once I added a unique audio file to each episode, they all loaded.

We’ve also made a few tweaks to the feed page itself. You can update that page to the latest version. Here’s how:

1. Go to the theme editor and select podcast-feed-page.php
2. Replace all the content on the page with the code on this page.
3. Save your changes.

It seems like you’re working with an updated copy of our original release. Let me know if you don’t have a box next to your podcast file uploader that’s for the duration of the file. If you don’t see it, we’ll want to add that in as well.

Let me know how things go,
Bill

[David Woll]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for helping us get this squared away!

First and quickly, I do not see a box for the length of the mp3 in our Add Podcast screen.

Second, I replaced all the text in the Custom Feed Page Template (podcast-feed-page.php) file with the code in the link. Nothing different…yet. I tested it by going to iTunes.

I might be doing it wrong…

Here’s the address I’m using:
http://www.columbiaheights.org/podcast-feed/

When I go to that address in Chrome, I get prompted to download a file named “download” of an unspecified type.

When I paste that link into Firefox, I get this message with the option to subscribe.

This is a “feed” of frequently changing content on this site.
You can subscribe to this feed to receive updates when this content changes

I’m following the directions from iTunes, but maybe I’m missing a step. http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/specs.html#testing

Testing Your Feed.
When you have created your RSS feed and posted it to a server with a publicly addressable URL (i.e., not behind a firewall), you should test your feed to see if it works with iTunes:

Launch iTunes.
In the Advanced menu, select Subscribe to Podcast.
Enter your feed URL in the text box and click OK.

When I try pasting this address as a new Feedburner feed, I get this message:

The URL does not appear to reference a valid XML file. We encountered the following problem: Error on line 31: The entity name must immediately follow the ‘&’ in the entity reference.
Identify Feed Source
Back to My Feeds

The feed URL you entered is:

http://www.columbiaheights.org/podcast-feed/

We could not find a valid feed at that address. Here are some possible reasons this might have happened:

Is the feed valid? Confirm its validity now.

The feed your site already creates needs to be “valid enough” to work with FeedBurner. This post from the FeedBurner Help Center explains why technical validity matters.

Are you using the URL of the web page or the URL of the feed?

FeedBurner is usually able to “auto-discover” your feed from a web page, but in this case we didn’t find any related feeds. You may want to enter the URL of the feed directly.

Is the URL is misspelled or a copy+paste action didn’t work?

If that’s the case, please try again.

When I confirm the validity, I got this message…maybe it’s on to something?
Sorry

This feed does not validate.

line 31, column 33: XML parsing error: :31:33: not well-formed (invalid token) [help]

Hopefully this helps…

[Bill Robbins]

David,

I ran your feed through a feed validator at http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.columbiaheights.org%2Fpodcast-feed%2F and it came back with an error regarding the category.

What this indicates the problem is has to do with the & between Religion and Christianity. What happens after the second time the theme options page is saved, the & gets converted. From a HTML entity that looks like this:

to this:

&

Generally in the web you type the first to display the second. Try using that upper code for & and see if your feed doesn’t validate then. It’s also possible to hard code that into the feed if you’d like to.

At some point, I’ll put in a series of drop-downs for the menus.

Let me know if you still have trouble.

[David Woll]

That was it!!!!!!

That little amperstand was all that was standing between us and a working podcast. Thank you, Bill, for spotting that.

[Curt Hughes]

Bill,
I have read through this post and have tried all of the hints that you gave to David and I am still struggling with my feed. Feedburner says “Error on line 31: The entity name must immediately follow the ‘&’ in the entity reference.” I have tried to enter the & above in the themes options page and also in the category section of the .php file. I am not quite sure what I am missing. Any ideas?

My feed is coming from http://www.getalifechurch.com/messages-2

Thanks

[Bill Robbins]

Curt,

So sorry for the trouble. Let’s do this:

1. Go to the Appearance section of your WordPress control panel and select edit.
2. From the list of files on your right, choose podcast-feed-page.php and look for this spot:

   
   <itunes:category text="<?php echo of_get_option('podcast_subcategory'); ?>"/>
   

3. Replace that with this:

4. Save your changes.

That should hard code in your sub-category. If you have any trouble, let me know.

Thanks,
Bill

[Curt Hughes]

Thanks as always for the quick reply. It looks like I got it up and running. Just a quick question though. Is there a field for the description that comes up in itunes or a way to create one? Right now I just have blanks under that option in my podcast.
Thanks Again

[Bill Robbins]

Curt,

Good question. The description will be up to the first 55 words of the content on the podcast. It’ll pull that from the main content box.

If you have any trouble, let me know,
Bill

[Chris Barrowman]

Hi Bill
I’m having trouble getting podcast feed to validate in iTunes. I’ve done everything you say to do, set up podcast page as custom feed etc and copy the url (feed://www.crossnesschurch.com/podcast-feed/). When I enter this into iTunes it comes back with message:

Error parsing feed: Invalid XML: Error on line 39: The element type “link” must be terminated by the matching end-tag ““.

I thought it might be because I’m running a ‘Coming Soon’ plugin, so disabled this, and tried again – iTunes then said:

We had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed.

Not sure where I’m going wrong. Any ideas?

Thanks Chris

[Bill Robbins]

Chris,

Any chance you can turn off the “Coming Soon” plugin so I can take a look at the code for you?

Thanks,
Bill

[Chris Barrowman]

OK Bill, plugin off now. Thanks,
Chris

[Bill Robbins]

Chris,

Thank you for turning off the coming soon plugin. I saw a few things in the feed that you’ll need to change. The iTunes category and sub-category are missing from the feed. You’ll need to add those in. If you use Religion & Spirituality as the category, see the earlier post in this thread about that.

Also your podcast file has some spaces. Make sure that you don’t have any spaces in the file name or they will not be reachable by iTunes or most web browsers. I’d also suggest making the files all lowercase too.

If you still have any trouble, let me know,
Bill

[Chris Barrowman]

Hi Bill

OK I’ve added iTunes category and sub-category in your podcast form in theme options, and have changed file names to lower case and no spaces. iTunes now say:

Couldn’t locate hostname in your feed: webproxy-nk11-ext

I didn’t enter category code in podcast-feed-page.php as you described in previous post, as reckoned that was an older version of authentic?

Thanks for your help so far – any further help would be appreciated!

Chris

[Bill Robbins]

I took another quick look. It also looks like the folder that message is stored in also has a space in it. You’ll want to take that out.

Also the iTunes categories still aren’t posting in your feed. You’ll have to add a category and sub-category in your theme options for that to work too.

Sorry the feeds are so picky, but iTunes is very inflexible.

[Chris Barrowman]

Sorry to be daft, but I’ve added a category and sub-category in theme options – is there something else I’ve not done which is preventing the categories from posting in the feed?
Chris

[Bill Robbins]

Chris,

They’re still not showing up in the feed code. Any chance you could send a login to support@organizedthemes.com so I can take a look?

Thanks,
Bill

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