Thanks Roger for responding twice. I appreciate your messages because they offer moral support, inform me that others have also experienced this problem.
Your wild guess was correct, although I discovered this mistake immediately myself. The first of the 20 times I hae tried to submit, I did in fact just copy the link which begins with itpc:// - but already on the second try, I used the correct format http://www.einarpetterson.org/Ars_et_Medicina/Podcast/rss.xml
I think I did read your old thread during my attempts at finding a solution. I did read several threads of same type. None of them provided an adequate explanation. I remember a few who wrote something like "After two weeks of submitting the rss feed, it suddenly was submitted one day - without me having changed anything." These type of threads taught me a lot. f.eks. to use Feed Validator which I have done; to try feed in iTunes which both you and I have done with a successful result. The threads also taught me that some mistakes which Feed Validator finds (like the ones you mention) are not critical, and therefore theoretically not necessary to correct. However, I might now correct all small errors just to see if that helps. I do not think it will, but we will see.
It might interest you, and other readers to hear GoDaddy´s response to my inquiries. They argue that the reason for this difficulty is some "filters" they use to protect their web-hosting users against excessive "external" traffic. (I think they might mean hacking attempts). They wrote that they had noticed much traffic on my server, and wished to protect me with these filters. I asked them to remove the filters so that I could submit podcasts to iTunes Store. They wrote back and suggested that the filters were meant to protect thousands of users, and that they could of course not remove them. (illogical with regard to first letter which implied that the filters were there only to protect me) They suggested that I buy a VDED or DED subscription on GoDaddy (viritual dedicated server or dedicated server subscription) which costs ca. 20-99 GBPounds a month!!! The logic behind their suggestion was apparently that one can get total control over one´s web-hosting service by upgrading the normal webhosting account to a virtual or dedicated server, and then, I guess, by removing the filters which according to them make submitting the podcasts to iTunes Store impossible. I find this suggestion to be a fairly transparent method of trying to solve simple technical difficulties by asking their customers to buy solutions they do not need. Such virutal/dedeicated server subscriptioins should not be necessary for simple users who just want to publish a few podcasts a year on iTunes Store. The last few letters they have written are "brush-off" letters, referring me to Apple or to community forums like this one. Apple support wrote a simple form letter just stating the obvious, and giving links to normal pages with information on podcasts. I have read all of them many times before. no help from them either.
So, my own problem now reminds me of the other threads about this phenomenon. As far as I can see, no one has yet really understood what causes the error message from iTunes Store submitting podcast page "We had difficulty reading this feed. Host parameter null"
If the cause of this is GoDaddy.coms filters (as they maintain), it would be logical to surmise that no user of GoDaddy.com would be able to successfully submit rss feeds to iTunes Store. I find this very, very difficult to believe. Are you - or any other readers of this thread - users of GoDaddy.com webhosting service who use iWeb to produce and publish podcasts? Has anyone out there successfully submitted feeds to iTunes Store? I imagine their are 100s of iWeb and GoDaddy users who have done this. If this is the case, the "filter" argument from GoDaddy is false.
What to do now? Here are my plans:
1) I will keep trying to submit like the other people did who describe this problem in their threads. Maybe one day, the feed will be accepted. This happened to several people who called the problem just a glitch.
2) I will make a new website with iWeb with one podcast with just one podcast entry - very simple. I will validate the Feed with Feed Validator, and correct any small errors which are reported. I will ensure that the rss feed complies with all rules on Apple´s websites. I will check it with iTunes, and it will of course work - as does the feeds of my sites which I am trying to submit. I will then try to submit this podcast to iTunes Store. I this feed does not work, maybe there is some filter which GoDaddy uses which makes the iTunes Store submission session time out every time. If this is the case, I will probably have to use another web hosting service who does not use filters which make it impossible to submit rss feeds to iTunes Store.
3) While doing nr. 1 and 2, I will do what everyone else has had to do - study all documentation on rss feeds and learn how to make all rss feeds made by iWeb (or any other program) 100% compliant with all rules. This will be a royal pain in the xxxx. Many (most) of us use programs like iWeb to avoid having to master all these rules and regulations, and code rss feeds manually. But, I see no other solution than to master this field so well, that one can exclude the possibility that there is something wrong with the rss feed I am trying to submit.
In 26 days, MobileMe will be discontinued and many people will be looking for new webhosting services. It might help some of them to know if GoDaddy.com is a webhosting company whose server settings make it impossible, or very difficult to publish their podcasts on iTunes Store. My problems (and your old problems - weren´t you also a GoDaddy user? I know several other threads about this problem were written by people who used GoDaddy.com webhosting services) might be relevant for other MobileMe and iWeb users who soon will be without a webhosting home.
If I do not manage to solve this problem, I suppose other people might also have same problem. In that case, it might be a good idea to warn them not to buy webhosting at GoDaddy, and also might be a good idea to find some other webhosting services which will not cause this type of problem. Of course, one could also argue that Apple and iTunes Store should perhaps do something also - so that the many users of webhosting services like GoDaddy will be able to submit podcasts more effectively.
Well, I do not yet really know what the problem is. So all this is just speculation. Maybe the problem is some little mistake in my rss feeds which causes this problem despite the fact that Feed Validator and also iTunes accept the feeds. I will document my attempts to solve this problem in this thread so that others may avoid making same mistakes I have made.
Thanks for your responses.
