iTunes has problems with feed URL redirects
Published by on September 14th, 2006
Tech/geek post alert!
I’ve now moved my files across to the PodshowPDN (Podcast Distribution Network), which means that for free, I get unlimited hosting and bandwidth, very good stats (despite lacking geographical info) and benefits of audience growing on the social network stuff at Podshow.com - all for the price of a brief ad at the start of a show, sometimes.
The problem with that is my RSS feed URL has changed to the Podshow RSS (http://www.podshow.com/feeds/minortechnicality.xml). It’s notoriously difficult to persuade existing subscribers - those glorious lovelies who land 15k or so hits on my RSS feed a month - so rather than attempting to do that, or using tricks to get iTunes to re-register to another URL (by inserting some instructional tags), I thought I’d do a simple Apache server redirect within my .htaccess file:
Redirect /mt http://www.podshow.com/feeds/minortechnicality.xml This tells the server to instantly redirect all calls to http://neildixon.com/mt/ (my regular RSS URL) to the new Podshow URL. I thought all was well until someone mentioned that they could no longer access my podcasts viw iTunes. It seems that iTunes is less than happy being redirected from one location to another - it’s OK on the same server, but seemed to fall over being redirected to a different domain entirely.
The answer was, after a little thinking, fairly easy to solve: pull the contents of the RSS feed from the Podshow server and cache it here locally as if it were fed from the existing URL (pull it in, spit it out). This was easy to do in my case because my feed URL was a directory (containing an index.html file) as opposed to pointing directly to a file – which may not have been executable as a PHP script.
Using PHP Curl, I created a simple script to grab the feed from Podshow and push it straight out to from here (if you use this script, obviously you’ll need to add your remote RSS URL in the first line!):
< ?
curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_URL,'http://full.url.to/rss.xml');
curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,2);
curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
$buffer = curl_exec($curl_handle);
curl_close($curl_handle);
if (empty($buffer))
{
print "File not available.";
}
else
{
print $buffer;
}
?> This now sits in an index.php file inside the http://neildixon.com/mt/ directory. Each time that URL is called, the script buzzes over to Podshow, grabs the RSS feed contents there and spews them out again right here. Bingo! Valid feed in the right place for iTunes and past subscribers.
I will ultimately move everything across to Podshow, of course, but this fix enables me to ensure that existing subscribers do not get left out in the cold right away, and iTunes doesn’t get stuck with old feed contents.
[tags]rss, php, script, curl, podshow, redirect, itunes [/tags]
4 Responses to “iTunes has problems with feed URL redirects”
September 3rd, 2006 at 8:15 am
Set me up with the means to get my hands on gadgets and I’ll do a review podcast. For real.
September 3rd, 2006 at 3:12 pm
I think many people would say the same thing.
Make some phone calls, do some persuasion and your mailbox will be filled with goodies; it’s all a matter of talking to the companies who make the stuff… nowt stopping anyone from getting on and doing that
September 3rd, 2006 at 9:49 pm
I am desperate to hear from ANYONE with a rugby cast - absolutely no-one is doing anything!
I’ll definitely be blogging and talking about the world cup (Rugby) next year, but I’m not planning to do anything until then.
As for parenting - sounds a good ‘un if done properly.
September 4th, 2006 at 12:19 am
I have looked into a number of sport’s podcast’s and have to admit am not sure the audience is there, regarding sports podcast’s they tend to have a large US audience, meaning Cricket etc and other uk sports may not work.
Regarding Rugby if i understood the sport i may have started one.
September 4th, 2006 at 11:36 am
I wonder if part of the problem with sport podcast audiences in the UK is down to the competition and establishing credibility. Can an independent podcast comete with reliable, professional sources of sport info and opinion? I think it can if it attempts to add something new and unique to the mix.
I was chatting to Brad Gibson (MacFormat podcast) the other night and he suggested that a successful sport podcast may need to tap into an existing journalistic resource - say a dedicated sport magazine, or large fanzine/club - on top of which is placed a charismatic, knowledgible and, very importantly, contentious host to get everyone talking and voicing opinions. He may be on to something there.
September 4th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
The Old Firm Podcast, which is about two Glasgow football clubs, I’ve been working on (but have lapsed recently) was getting downloads of over 500 per episode with very little promotion or marketing, cross or otherwise, from me. I think the key is to be a niche as possible, zeroing into specific clubs rather than focusing so broadly across a whole sport.
September 4th, 2006 at 4:08 pm
I’m keen to participate in a tech/gadgets/TWIT style podcast. Any takers?
September 8th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
> I’m keen to participate in a tech/gadgets/TWIT style podcast. Any takers?
Any responses, Paul?
September 18th, 2006 at 4:05 am
Hey I just played your Podcast #16 - More Dumb Americans! Well I have been working my way backwards getting caught up on your past episodes. I am a New Yorker currently living in Flori-DA. Well I wish I could argue your point. I run into dumb folks daily. I have been to the UK and a few other places around the world and I think it boils down to people not taking the time to think, an important stage whatever your goal. People from New York I think for the most part are a bit sharper than the rest of the country but live life in awful hurry thus finding a backdoor to stupidity. I now being in FL, well we should all be aware that voting is not that difficult but we screwed that up pretty well. You push the frigging pin down in the whole or push the button. What worries me is if you can’t handle that how you decided who to vote for in the first place is troublesome. On a later episode you hit on language differences in our cultures. Interesting topic, I am sure you realize to have a fag has a very different meaning here. OK…I have typed enough. People in glass houses should not…blah blah blah .
I think I ran into a dumb guy in Dover, well no matter I love and hate many things about both countries. You have better beer but I can buy it here, what a world.
While I type this you are playing some killer blues, Very nice.
Hay, can I be a brit caster, I spent a week in london in 92:-)
Cheers,
Steve
September 18th, 2006 at 10:03 am
The trans-atlantic language thing gives us endless entertainment here at home. jEN is picking up more and more British pronounciations (some intentional) and I find myself using the odd American-esque words too. Weird.
> Hay, can I be a brit caster, I spent a week in london in 92:-)
Only for that week in ‘92. Time isn’t linear at Brtcaster, so it just may be possible.
September 19th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
neil, same here: with the german umlauts, i constantly have conversion problems for the RSS generation. But I saw that they are using CURL, which I have not yet tried to parse the stuff.
September 21st, 2006 at 11:08 am
Oh, don’t get me started on handling extended character sets!