Failed validation: "Can’t download episodes from your feed."

The difficulty is that the php script checks what type of user is accessing the page and edits the rss output accordingly, so I can't check what the iTunes validator sees. But thanks for pointing me in the right direction, I've now been able to sort it out.

Here's the solution, in case someone else had a similar problem.

Given that iTunes is accessing the rss feed, the 'stats' flag should have been set to false ($stats = FALSE;). This means that the 2nd condition should have been triggered in the 'if' loop (if (!$stats)), but it wasn't for some reason. I edited this to if ($stats == 'FALSE'), I think that this should have the same outcome but it actually solved the issue.

Hopefully all's good now. Have submitted and just waiting for approval.

Thanks again.

Thanks again for continued support.

So I've had a look at the php file which creates the rss (wordpress plugin - now unsupported). I know that this is probably outside the scope of this forum, but If you have time I'd massively appreciate your opinion.

It seems as though the php code (see below) already tries to take account for iTunes wanting the absolute path for the file. I've tested the three '$media_name=' conditions below and the results I get are (in order):

1. http://www.cwmpawd.org/pregethau/?show&url=Ioan%209%281-40%29%20RJ.mp3
2. http://www.cwmpawd.org/wp-content/uploads/sermons/Ioan%209%281-40%29%20RJ.mp3
3. http://www.cwmpawd.org/pregethau/?show&file_name=Ioan%209%281-40%29%20RJ.mp3

I take it that iTunes expects condition 2, but is actually getting condition 3? I don't want to hard code or force condition 2 in case any other podcast services are expecting 1 or 3. Any suggestions why iTunes isn't seeing what it's expecting?

Thanks in advance

// Convert filename to URL, perhaps with stats
// Stats have to be turned off for iTunes compatibility
function sb_podcast_file_url($media_name, $media_type) {
 $user_agent = isset($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']) ? $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] : '';
 if (stripos($user_agent, 'itunes') !== FALSE || stripos($user_agent, 'FeedBurner') !== FALSE || stripos($user_agent, 'AppleCoreMedia') !== FALSE)
  $stats = FALSE;
 else
  $stats = TRUE;
 if ($media_type == 'URLs') {
  if ($stats)
   $media_name=sb_display_url().sb_query_char().'show&url='.rawurlencode($media_name);
 } else {
  if (!$stats)
   $media_name=trailingslashit(site_url()).ltrim(sb_get_option('upload_dir'), '/').rawurlencode($media_name);
  else
   $media_name=sb_display_url().sb_query_char().'show&file_name='.rawurlencode($media_name);
 }
 return sb_xml_entity_encode($media_name);
}

Regarding the filename formatting... I know :-( unfortunately I'm not the one responsible for this.

Thanks for your response.

Ah, I suspected that could be the cause.

As far as I can see there are two download links:

http://www.cwmpawd.org/pregethau/?download&file_name=Datguddiad%2018%281%29%20-%2019%2810%29%20EJ.mp3

http://www.cwmpawd.org/wp-content/uploads/sermons/Datguddiad%2018%281%29%20-%2019%2810%29%20EJ.mp3

Do you know which I should use?