Using Blogspot and Feedburner does not allow me to post an iTunes Summary

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Using Blogspot and Feedburner does not allow me to post an iTunes Summary

I do a podcast, and we post through Blogspot, and run the feed through Feedburner:

Podcast - Agreeing to Disagree: The Chuck and Brad Podcast
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/agreeingtodisagree
Blogspot: http://seniordiscountpodcast.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
I've done many hours of researching, and my problem is this:

Feedburner fills out almost all of iTunes' needs in terms of an XML file....however, it does not offer an "iTunes Summary" field, and therefore, all my podcast descriptions are incomplete.

Example:

This is our newest episode description -

"Episode 199 finds the boys joined by character artist Nick Kole. Before they dive into the interview, there are some Senior Discount updates and some updates from Brad's improv scene. After that, they discuss the below Web Couliers, before advancing to movie news concerning a sequel to "Neighbors," as well as a Holiday Horror Anthology including a short film directed by Kevin Smith. Whoa mama!

The chief topic of conversation during this episode, though, is Nick Kole. We learn about Nick's background as an artist, what drew him to character design and storytelling, what Viennese Christmas celebrations are like...everything you'd expect to hear. Nick talks about his work with the companion book to Disney's Maleficent, as well as his work in dragon/wizard design for 38 Studios and EA Games/Dawngate Chronicles. It's very fun conversation as we seek to get into the brain of this fantastic artist.

-Brad"

On iTunes, the description is -

"Episode 199 finds the boys joined by character artist Nick Kole. Before they dive into the interview, there are some Senior Discount updates and some updates from Brad's improv scene. After that..." then it just contains our general podcast description, as opposed to the specific episode description.

The research I've done, says that the "<itunes:summary>" tag is missing in Feedburner, so I'm trying to find a way to edit my podcast XML so I can include it - but I have no idea where to edit my XML. I've written HTML many times in the past, but I don't know where to add this tag in to fix my descriptions.
Thanks.

- Chuck

Posted on Feb 23, 2015 1:32 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 23, 2015 1:42 AM in response to chuckstaton

Looking at the latest episode, your feed has both 'itunes:subtitle' and 'itunes:summary' tags.

The 'Description' column in the iTunes Store page is populated from the 'itunes:subtitle' tag. This reads

'Episode 199 finds the boys joined by character artist Nick Kole. Before they dive into the interview, there are some Senior Discount updates and some updates from Brad's improv scene. After that, they discuss the below Web Couliers, before advancing to m'

Presumably you have exceeded the length allowed in Feedburner. The Store shows the first few words of this in the space available, and if you hover over it a tooltip appears containing the text as shown above.

The contents of the 'itunes:summary' tag appear when clicking the 'i' to the right of the subtitle, and this contains the text of that tag:

'Episode 199 finds the boys joined by character artist Nick Kole. Before they dive into the interview, there are some Senior Discount updates and some updates from Brad's improv scene. After that, they discuss the below Web Couliers, before advancing to movie news concerning a sequel to "Neighbors," as well as a Holiday Horror Anthology including a short film directed by Kevin Smith. Whoa mama! The chief topic of conversation during this episode, though, is Nick Kole. We learn about Nick's background as an artist, what drew him to character design and storytelling, what Viennese Christmas celebrations are like...everything you'd expect to hear. Nick talks about his work with the companion book to Disney's Maleficent, as well as his work in dragon/wizard design for 38 Studios and EA Games/Dawngate Chronicles. It's very fun conversation as we seek to get into the brain of this fantastic artist. -Brad Web Couliers: VIDEO: The Netflix 'Daredevil' Trailer VIDEO: Patton Oswalt discusses his new book '

The 'description' tag is not read by iTunes. Everything is behaving as normal; if you wish to modify either tag you can do so in Feedburner.

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Answer 2

chuckstaton Author

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Feb 23, 2015 1:55 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Okay, I see. However - I still don't know how to edit that.

The only editing I do per episode is post on Blogspot. I have no options to edit per episode on Feedburner.

From what I'm finding out, the problem is that in Feedburner you can select "Smartcast" which allows me to individually edit our title, artwork, description, in fields where I don't have to personally deal with XML:

So I think the smartest thing to do may be to turn off Smartcast - and then we're kind of back to my original question of how to find and edit my own XML feed to include all the iTunes tags I need (including the summary one, with a ridiculously short character limitation enforced by Smartcast).
Thank you very much for the help, by the way.

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Answer 3

Feb 23, 2015 2:44 AM in response to chuckstaton

I can't advise on how to use either Feedburner or Blogspot. If you use Smartcast it over-rides the equivalent tags (if present) in the original feed. What you show is for the overall podcast; I don't know whether or how you use Smartcast with individual episodes (though I would have thought it ought to be possible).

As to Blogspot, I can only refer you to their Help pages.

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Answer 4

chuckstaton Author

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Feb 24, 2015 3:58 PM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Thanks for the help.
"Smartcast" is an overall feature and unfortunately I can't change settings for individual episodes.

It looks like the solution is to turn off Smartcast and edit my podcasts XML myself to include the iTunes-necessary tags.
However, I still don't know how to retrieve my XML feed and make any changes to it myself. I'm dealing with that same problem. That's what I don't know how to do within Feedburner.

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Answer 5

Feb 24, 2015 11:00 PM in response to chuckstaton

You cannot directly access the feed with either Blogger or Feedburner, you have to work with their provided interface.

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Answer 6

chuckstaton Author

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Feb 25, 2015 11:25 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

I fixed the problem.The problem is, "Smartcast" turns on "Summarycast" - and that is what cuts off the description.

I turned off "Summarycast" and that fixed it. Thank you so much for your help!

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