New Podcast Feed: My episodes are displaying in the wrong order

Question

New Podcast Feed: My episodes are displaying in the wrong order

I've created an RSS feed for sermons going back to January 2018.

I've given it the type of 'Serial' so that it's supposed to be in order.

Each item (sermon) also has the date of the sermon ast the pubDate e.g. Sun, 04 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0100 GMT.

But the feed is not showing in order.

Indeed, the order in the Podcasts app on my Mac, in the Podcasts app on my iPhone, and in Podcasts Connect (when I look at the episodes) are all different!

If I look at the rss feed itself, it is all in the order of newest first, oldest last - which is what I'm aiming for.

In in the apps it is all over the place.

I don't know if this is useful info, but in Podcasts Connect, the episodes display in the order of:

10 Aug 2021

Sermon Title | Sermon Date

Description

In other words, all episodes are marked 10 Aug 2021 (which was the date the RSS feed was submitted), followed by the other info (title, date, description) which are all correct.

Posted on Aug 11, 2021 2:30 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Roger Wilmut1

Level 10

131,188 points

Aug 11, 2021 5:12 AM in response to inspirelondon

I still can't get the URL to work (this is Podcasts on Catalina) - it opens the Podcasts app but displays only a selection of podcasts, not yours. Searching by title doesn't work. Attempting to subscribe by the feed URL shows no episodes.

There are some errors in the feed which may be relevant.

The podcasts is tagged as 'Serial'. Apple say:

'Specify serial when episodes are intended to be consumed in sequential order. Apple Podcasts will present the oldest episodes first and display the episode numbers (required) of each episode. If organized into seasons, the newest season will be presented first and <itunes:episode> numbers must be given for each episode'

You do not have 'itunes:episode' tags.

Each episode has an 'itunes:title' tag but not a 'title' tag. You do not have 'itunes:subtitle' or 'itunes:summary' tags. ('Summary' is not an acceptable tag: Podcasts should use the 'description' tag).

Date: this may be an issue. Your pubDates tags are formatted as here:

Sun, 08 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0100 GMT

It can't be both +0100 and GMT (they are contradictory) - it's one or the other. It's possible that this is invalidating the tags and causing the app to invent its own running order in the absence of the 'itunes:episode' tags. See https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/error/InvalidRFC2822Date.html

Information on tags here: https://help.apple.com/itc/podcasts_connect/#/itcb54353390

As I can't look at the behaviour on Podcasts app for reasons I can't explain this is all I can offer as advice.

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Answer 2

Aug 11, 2021 3:39 AM in response to inspirelondon

Something odd is going on: your Apple Podcasts URL doesn't work and searching for the show by title brings up no relevant result. Subscribing manually shows the image but claims that I have 'caught up' and shows no episodes.

I need to have a closer look at the feed but i'm afraid I don't have time right now: I'll try to do so later today.

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Answer 3

Aug 11, 2021 5:32 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Thank you. I've fixed it. It was the date issue. I had formatted the date in rfc822 and +0100 was automatically added. Once I took off GMT and changed the type back to Episodic it's all started to work.

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