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Podcast Episodes will not update on iOS devices

I have a podcast on iTunes. If you search for it or browse the current episodes show up. But since February no episodes will update on iOS devices such as iPhone or iPad.


The link to the podcast is here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/calvary-newberg-audio-podcast/id73329629?mt= 2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4


I have pinged the iTunes staff from that podcast but have gotten no reply.


Does anyone have any ideas? I have deleted the podcast from my iPhone and resubscribed but get no episodes at all and cannot load older episodes.

Posted on Apr 6, 2014 8:32 AM

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Posted on Apr 6, 2014 8:52 AM

Although the iTunes Store is showing episodes up to March 30, your feed does not work when subscribing and also comes up empty when accessed in FireFox. This means that you have introduced a fatal error which is rendering it unreadable.


FeedValidator flags the 'link' tag in your top episode:


<link>http://www.CalvaryNewberg.org/index.php?option=com_biblestudy&view=sermon&id=903 &amp;t=1</link>


presumably because of the ampersands ('&'). You can't have an ampersand by itself in XML because it signifies the beginning of a code sequence which is then never completed, thus wrecking the rest of the feed.


Its presence here is part of PHP coding, so I dont' know whether this is what's wrecking things - I can't see anything else dubious. You have the same link in every episode (or something similar). Has the feed ever worked when subscribing? or have you added these link tags recently? I wonder whether the Store (which is different programming from the iTunes application) isn't thrown by this but other areas are.


Anyway, your first move would be to remove them from every episode (they aren't doing any good within an episode tag anyway so you might as well remove them).


Then re-upload the feed and subscribe in iTunes from the 'Subscribe' button on your Store page and see whether the episodes now show.

3 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Apr 6, 2014 8:52 AM in response to tomfuller

Although the iTunes Store is showing episodes up to March 30, your feed does not work when subscribing and also comes up empty when accessed in FireFox. This means that you have introduced a fatal error which is rendering it unreadable.


FeedValidator flags the 'link' tag in your top episode:


<link>http://www.CalvaryNewberg.org/index.php?option=com_biblestudy&view=sermon&id=903 &amp;t=1</link>


presumably because of the ampersands ('&'). You can't have an ampersand by itself in XML because it signifies the beginning of a code sequence which is then never completed, thus wrecking the rest of the feed.


Its presence here is part of PHP coding, so I dont' know whether this is what's wrecking things - I can't see anything else dubious. You have the same link in every episode (or something similar). Has the feed ever worked when subscribing? or have you added these link tags recently? I wonder whether the Store (which is different programming from the iTunes application) isn't thrown by this but other areas are.


Anyway, your first move would be to remove them from every episode (they aren't doing any good within an episode tag anyway so you might as well remove them).


Then re-upload the feed and subscribe in iTunes from the 'Subscribe' button on your Store page and see whether the episodes now show.

Apr 6, 2014 3:21 PM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Roger - thank you SO MUCH for taking the time to research this. I figured that if the episodes showed up in iTunes that the feed must be okay - silly me!


The feed did not validate. I discovered the reason was that I had removed one of the proper escape sequences for an ampersand in the link.


When I added back in &amp; for every instance of & in the link, all went well.


Now the feed shows up in FireFox and basically validates in the W3 feed validator.


Thanks again.


Tom

Podcast Episodes will not update on iOS devices

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