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Not another one... Podcast disappeared from iTunes

I've spent a little time digging through the answered questions here, hoping for an obvious solution. I've not found one yet, so I'm posting in the hopes it's a simple fix.

I started a podcast a few months ago on my vBulletin based forum using their integrated podcast enclosure ability. I submitted my podcast to iTunes and the episodes showed up and everything was fine for about 2 months. Then they suddenly dissappeared. I tried to do all I could to get them to reappear with no luck. None of my settings had changed, and I'd made no recent additions to my forum that should have caused a conflict either.

With no solution in sight, I tried setting up a feedburner link and changed the podcast url. This worked! At least sort of worked. The episodes once again showed up in itunes, but feedburner won't relay the individual episode information correctly. This was hardly ideal, so I reverted the link and now the episodes are gone again. This leads me to believe in may be RSS related somehow. Although I'm not sure exactly what is causing it, or how to fix it. As I said, it was working, then stopped. Nothing has changed on the vBulletin side of things. I'm not sure if I'm overlooking something obvious, but could use a little insight just the same.

Below is my iTunes store link.

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/losias-technologies-losias.net/id532913002

Here is the url I submitted to the store.

http://www.losias.net/external.php?forumids=31

And finally, the subforum on my site where the links are located.

http://www.losias.net/forumdisplay.php/31-Losias-net-Podcast-Links

One more thing that may be relavent, here is a pic of how the enclosure for vB is created.

Thanks for any help you can give me!

Craig

Posted on Aug 4, 2012 10:24 AM

6 replies

Aug 4, 2012 10:37 AM in response to craigbru

Your feed has several episodes, but none of them has the 'enclosure' tag containing the episode media file URL which is necessary for iTunes to see the episode. iTunes does not display episodes which have no playable media, hence none of the episodes show.

craigbru Author

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Aug 4, 2012 10:45 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

That's what I suspected. What I don't understand is why it would have worked to begin with. I don't believe there is anything I can do from the vBulletin side of things to make it appear. I'm using their provided method. I guess I can always post a question over on their forums, but I'm not anticipating much of a response. Doing a search for anything podcast related brings up very few posts, and most have gone unanswered.

Thanks for the help so far Roger. Just for curiosity's sake, is there a feedburner alternative that may be able to pull episode information correctly?

Aug 4, 2012 11:03 AM in response to craigbru

I don't know anything about vBulletin but it sounds as if it thinks you want to create a weblog rather than a podcast - indeed the page you link to is really a forum. If you were using it originally and it worked there may be a way to do this, but I had a quick look round the site and there's no indication of a podcast RSS feed. There may be one hiding somewhere...

You might do better to start over with a podcast creation service that knows what it's doing, though you will have to work out how to transfer iTunes to the new feed. Libsyn seem a possibility; there are several others.

craigbru Author

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Aug 4, 2012 11:16 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Thanks Roger. I just posted a question over at vB, we'll see if they can provide any help. I do know that they've had iTunes support for a few years now. Either no one is using it, or everyone that is, hasn't had an issued. I'm thinking it may be the former. There looks to be good documentation on setting things up, but not much for troubleshooting issues.

Here are the vB docs. They may not be helpful, but I thought I would include them just the same.

https://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/main/forum_podcast_settings

https://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/podcasting

I'll look at Libsyn. I was hoping not to go to 3rd party since I 'should' have all I need to do it myself.

Aug 4, 2012 11:22 AM in response to craigbru

They do say that enclosure tags will be provided: I should think that what has happened is that you've made some change somewhere which has resulted in the RSS feed not being formed properly, but this is something you will have to research for yourself there.

craigbru Author

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Aug 4, 2012 11:26 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Well, I guess I'll see what vB says then. I'll update with any response I get from them. Hopefully that could be helpful to to others. Thanks.

Not another one... Podcast disappeared from iTunes