deleting rss feed

Do you mean you simply deleted the feed file? Or did you actually contact the iTunes Store staff and ask them to remove the entire podcast?

If the former, all you need to do is re-upload the feed with whatever amendments you want. Subscribers will see it immediately and the Store will take 1-2 days to catch up (sometimes more).

When you want to add a new episode, you don't need to make a new separate feed. You simply add the episode to the existing feed and re-upload it.

Are you trying to add episodes to an existing podcast, or are you trying to create a completely new and different one?

If you want to create a completely separate podcast it needs to have a different title, and ideally the feed filename should be different, otherwise you will get the error you saw.

Your subscribe link presumably just contained the feed URL and so your own iTunes application downloaded it from your server - the Store is not involved (nor once people have subscribed from the Store page).

If you asked to have it removed then it won't be in the Store. You didn't need to do that - all you had to do was upload an amended feed. If it has indeed been removed then you will have to start from scratch and re-submit the whole thing just as before. As said, you need a different title and if possible a different filename for the feed.

The archive feed has no contents. Probably older episodes will get moved here once you have reached a certain numbere, but I don't know for certain.

The link on the web page leads to the feed URL you give, which contains the one episode. The feed is not available by searching in the Store so I assume it has indeed been removed.

So now you need to change the title slightly (you can always change it back once it's up and running) and then go through the submission process from scratch. In the meantime people can subscribe from your site, they just won't find you in the iTunes Store.

When you want to add more episodes, just add them in Podomatic the same way you made the present episode and they will be added to the feed. You don't need to remove previous episodes: the whole point of a podcast is to add episodes and keep the older ones available. Of course you can remove an episode if you want to for some reason, but as a general plan you should let them mount up.

I shouldn't start messing about with the 'itunes:block' tag - I can't see that it's relevant to what you're trying to do.

I'm afraid I can't advise on Podomatic. It's quite possible that the rss feed filename is fixed and can't be changed. Have you tried actually submitting it?

You may find it helpful to read my page, which walks you through the basics and also links to Apple's rather more detailed page:

http://rfwilmut.net/pc

It shows you what a basic feed looks like, but I'm not suggesting that you should actually handwrite your feed as you can easily bog down in inexplicable errors if you're not familiar with XML. There are various podcast creation services available, of which Libsyn is probably one of the most flexible, though it does come at a cost. You shyould certainly look at their Help or contact their Support, making it clear exactly what it is you want to do, and see whether they can advise.

But hasn't your podcast been removed from the Store? If it has, it's no longer checking the feed. Have you checked at the Store page URL you were given in the email when your podcast was accepted?

As the feed has been removed the Store has no connection whatever with it: nothing you do with the feed will ever be picked up. If you don't re-submit your podcast and get it accepted nothing will happen.

The submission problem is a bug in the process: if a podcast with the same name as one which was previously submitted and later removed is submitted you will get this error message, and the only workaround is to change the title.

Once a podcast has been accepted and has appeared in the Store you can add further episodes: you don't have to submit again.

When you add a new episode to your feed and upload it, it appears immediately for subscribers because their iTunes application reads the feed directly and the Store is not involved.

However because of the huge number of podcasts in the Store (thousands) the Store caches the feed and checks it for updates periodically. For this reason it usually takes 1-2 days for new episodes to appear in the Store: sometimes it can be less, and occasionally the whole process seems to get stuck and it can take several days.

You should check your feed by subscribing, either from the Store page or manually from the 'Advanced' menu in iTunes, to see that your new episodes are there. If not, then you have an error of some sort (such as a duplicated 'guid' tag). If all your episodes appear when subscribing then the Store should catch up after a bit.