Moving iTunes Podcast Video files from MobileMe to Another Hosting Site

As long as you follow the procedure exactly the process will be completely seamless: subscribers won't even notice any difference unless they specifically check the feed URL.

Firstly, you need to move all the video files to the new hosting service, leaving the old ones in place: then you need to amend the feed so that the new URLs show in the 'enclosure' tags (these must be full URLs including the server name). Do not amend any 'guid' tags, even if they contain the old URLs.

Upload the feed, and check it by subscribing manually from the 'Advanced' menu. As long as it all works, you are ready to proceed.

In order to move iTunes to a new feed you need to add the following tag to the top section of the old feed, between the 'channel' tag and the first 'item' tag.

<itunes:new-feed-url>NEW URL FOR YOUR FEED</itunes:new-feed-url>

iTunes will normally pick this up quite quickly but you should leave it there for subscribers for at least 2 weeks - when they next check their iTunes application will transfer its attention to the new feed, and indeed this is the only way of retaining your subscribers. Be very careful when typing in the new URL because if you make an error and redirect iTunes to a non-existent URL you will not be able to retrieve the situation and your podcast will cease to function.

To check what iTunes is up to, click 'Subscribe Free' in the Store page for your podcast. Go to the Podcasts section in the sidebar: you should see your podcast listed in the main pane. Control-click (Mac) or right-click (Windows) the line for the entire podcast (not an episode) and choose 'Copy Podcast URL'. When you paste into a text program you will see which feed iTunes is working from.

Once iTunes has picked up the new feed - as I say this normally happens quite quickly, but that's not guaranteed - you can add new episodes exactly as you did before. Make sure you are updating the new feed, not the old one.

Hi Roger,

I am also changing my feed from MobileMe to Podbean. I have begun uploading my podcasts to Podbean and continue to keep them on MobileMe. I have read the instructions that Apple provides about changing the feed, however, I do not understand how to access the HTML portion of MobileMe so that I can put in the proper coding.

I currently upload all my podcasts directly from GarageBand to iWeb and then publish them to MobileMe. The feed that iTunes currently has, I believe, is from my MobileMe URL.

I have tried to contact iTunes Support and have been referred twice to their instructions, which I have read, but just don't really understand how to accomplish. I have also spoken to my Apple One To One instructor and he was not well versed in this area. So I am hoping that you can help me out.

I know that I have a good amount of time before MobileMe expires in June, but I want to give my subscribers a chance to continue with the new feed. My podcast is Jackie's Quilting Chronicles... if this helps.

I would appreciate any knowledge or help that you can offer me in accessing the part of the HTML that I would need for iTunes to pick up the new feed.

Thank you! Jackie

Slightly messy process, I'm afraid.

• Set up a new version of your podcast on a different server, with both the feed and the media files, amending iWeb's settings to publish to the new server.
• Go to your iDisk and locate the old feed file. Download it.
• Open the feed in TextEdit in plain text mode, not Rich Text which is often the default.
• Add the following line just below the 'channel' tag near the top of the feed:

<itunes:new-feed-url>URL OF THE NEW FEED</itunes:new-feed-url>

• The URL must include the http://. Be very careful not to mistype anything or you won't be able to retrieve the situation.
• Upload the amended feed to your iDisk, replacing the original.
• DO NOT publish any amendments from iWeb to your iDisk.
• Leave the amended feed there for a couple of weeks for the benefit of subscribers; iTunes should update fairly quickly.

To check what iTunes is up to, click 'Subscribe Free' in the Store page for your podcast. Go to the Podcasts section in the sidebar: you should see your podcast listed in the main pane. Control-click (Mac) or right-click (Windows) the line for the entire podcast (not an episode) and choose 'Copy Podcast URL'. When you paste into a text program you will see which feed iTunes is working from.

Hi Roger,

Thank you for the quick reply! However, I have chosen to directly upload from GarageBand to podbean.

I will totally bypass iWeb once I have all my podcasts on podbean. Will I still need to proceed with the initial steps that you haven provided if I no longer use iWeb?

Thanks

Jackie

The procedure is exactly the same, because you have to amend the old feed. It makes no difference if you're using a different method to create the new one. Just ignore the reference to iWeb in the very first step.

Thank you, Roger for all your help! I will give this a go and see how it works. I must finish added my podcasts to Podbean first.

If the GUID tags are different from what they were before iTunes will see the episodes as new and subscribers will get them downloaded again. This is why it's better to keep them as they were, but depending on how your podcast creation process works if you can't then it's not a disaster.

Your example showing how to add the redirection tag is correct.

HI Roger, All is transferred to Podbean, but one quick question... What does a 'channel' tag look like when I find the old feed and does it say channel or something else? Thanks!

This page shows you how to use the new-feed-url tag:

http://www.wilmut.webspace.virginmedia.com/notes/itunes/tag/newfeed.html

This is very helpful, but now I am having one more little problem. I have been trying to find the feed on iDisk and am having trouble locating. Where should I be looking? I go into Finder, click on iDisk, then I go to web, then sites, then I see an option that says feed.xml. When I double click on this it opens in Safari but does not look like what I should have. And I am not sure that is actually downloading it anyway. Any suggestions?

If you are using Podbean I would assume that they are hosting the feed: you will need to look at their Help for information on its URL. Or, if you actually have it running in the Tunes Store, simply subscribe, then control-click the podcast name in the 'Podcasts' section of iTunes and choose 'Copy Podcast URL'.

(ignore)

Nope, actually I am following your instructions that you posted back to me on Nov 26. In it you say to go to iDisk and iDisk and locate my iWeb old feed then download. This is what I am trying to do, but then come up with what I described in my response dated today (above). The feed.xml doesn't look like what it should look like as in the link you provided to me earlier. So I am not sure what to do?

This is definitely proving to be a little more difficult and involved than I thought. I truly appreciated all the help that you are giving me!! Thank you!