Maximum word/character count in description
Just wanted to ask if anyone knows if there is a limit to the number of character/words for the podcast description that appears in iTunes.
FeedValidator will flag as an error any tag with more than 255 characters, however iTunes doesn't seem to care about this.
The 'Description' on the iTunes Store page is carried in the 'itunes:summary' tag (or in its absence iTunes uses the 'description' tag' and if it's more than about three lines there will be a 'see more' link to display the rest.
Both in the Store and when subscribing the 'description' column for each episode is in the 'itunes:subtitle' tag for the episode and this is truncated to fit the line space available, so you should keep it short. Clicking the 'i' button at the right of this in both cases displays the 'itunes:summary' tag for the episode and this is shown intact - I'm not aware of any limitation, certainly many podcasts have quite long contents here.
Note that none of these should contain html codes or links; iTunes does not render these but displays them, which looks very messy. Stick to plain text and paragraph returns.
This page shows where the various tags are displayed in iTunes:
http://www.wilmut.webspace.virginmedia.com/notes/itunestags.html