Q: Searching for my Podcast

what is the title of your show?

what is the iTunes store URL for your show?

Rob W

Finding it by name is all you can expect to do. Searching just on the category in the iTunes Store is most unlikely to throw up your podcast. There are thousands of podcasts out there, and it would be quite impossible to display on one page the entire list for any category. What you see are 'featured' podcasts, chosen by Apple as being special. Note that there is no way you can influence the selection other than making your podcast really special. (Bribery won't work .)

Note you are using the squarespace feed - which is not recommend - squarespace feeds are not very good - and yours is not validating.

http://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thehangardeck.com%2F episodes%3Fformat%3Drss

You are much better off going with your libsyn feed.  Having a valid feed is important for your show to consistently show and update in iTunes.

Rob W

You won't be able to submit the feed as such as the podcast has already been accepted. You need to follow the procedure for changing the Store to use a new feed URL, as described in detail here:

http://wilmut.uk/move

You may well not be able to add the tag or a 301 redirect to Squarespace, so your only option will be to use Podcasts Connect as described in this page. Note that this won't redirect any subscribers.

I would suggest hosting your own feed.

It is worthwhile to learn how to code your own feed. It's very simple, and you have more control over services like Feedburner, Square Space or libsyn, which are notorious for their lack of support for podcast feeds.

This article is worth reading:

https://help.apple.com/itc/podcasts_connect/#/itcb54353390

Jesse - it is true feedburner and squarespace feeds are a mess and lack support.

But it is 100% false and wrong to say the same about libsyn feeds.  Libsyn feeds are THE MOST RELIABLE feeds in iTunes. It is the feeds used by many of the big shows in iTunes such as Joe Rogan, The Nerdist, Welcome to the Night Vale, all The NFL Network shows, Dave Ramsey, and many many more of the top 200 shows.

There is no more reliable feed than the libsyn feed. PERIOD!!!!

To suggest otherwise shows a lack of understanding of the libsyn feeds.  And libsyn has a support team that will quickly help with any issues if they should come up.

One thing you don't want to do is host the feed on your own site - if your show gets popular it can easily bring down your own site.

Regards,

Rob W

libsyn

Hi Robert, thanks for your reply. You're right that I haven't looked into libsyn for quite a long time, and I apologize if I pooled it in with those other services without enough current knowledge. If libsyn is working well and has support, great! I will definitely not advise against it, and may even revisit as a possibility.

As for self hosting, I have been hosting a podcast on its own domain since October 2006 with no problems. Not sure what defines "popular", so specifically: last month 250 GB downloads, 2.6 million hits to web site, and 40,000-50,000 individual feed subscribers in any given 24-hour period. Since episode 1, these stats have fluctuated between 100-1000 GB downloads per month, 1-4 million hits per month, and 15,000-50,000 feed subscribers. I'm guessing this level of popularity is above average, but below some of the specific names you mentioned. Nothing has ever brought down my site — thankfully I don't even know what "bring down your own site" means!

A few times I have considered moving it, and did once move it to Feedburner, which was horrible (the extra stats were nice, but not essential). I do share some of the bandwidth and subscriber load with Soundcloud (adding maybe another 7,500 subscribers to the above stats.), but my web host has been great. The only issue was once they moved my site to a different server and I had trouble updating. I switched my FTP settings to the new server, and everything was fine. That happened once, in ten years. For these reasons, and for the control that I have over my own feed, and knowing that my feed will never become obsoleted or lose support, I stand by hosting my own feed and suggest that it's a great option for podcasters.

Jesse - many podcasts have had their websites shut down by their web hosts for excessive bandwidth or CPU usage.  So even when a web host said it was unlimited on bandwidth - some of those hosts have the CPU usage limit in the fine print.  We help shows move over every week that have had their websites shut down because of this issue - and it does not take much with some hosts.

With Libsyn you do get full control over your feed - and can even bring in your own custom URL for your feed.  One of mine is:

http://www.kcstartup411.com/rss

In addition to that Libsyn allows for full redirects of the feed and the addition of the iTunes new feed tag by the end users and we will put in a permanent redirect upon request.  In over 11 1/2 years no one has ever lost control of their audience that used a libsyn feed.  We highly value the importance of the feed and that is why we offer all that support and control for the feed.

Per hand coding - You are one of the lucky few that can do that.  I wrote a tutorial on this back in 2004 - one of the first if not the first for podcasting. 

http://www.podcast411.com/howto_1.html

But most people are not technical enough to do this - and you have to be very very careful when hand coding the feed to not mess it up.  I made more mistakes when hand coding my feed - then I ever have had since switching to libsyn feeds.  The libsyn feeds make it so anyone can have a reliable feed with no technical knowledge whatsoever and not even need a prior website.

Regards,

Rob W

libsyn

Hangardeck - under advanced settings for the Libsyn Classic Feed - you had added in a redirect to your website.  I removed the redirect and your feed is validating fine.

http://thehangardeckpodcast.libsyn.com/rss

Which you can check at -  http://podba.se/validate/

You can use that feed now.

Rob W

libsyn

If you just submitted the old one and don't have any subscribers / reviews - then just go with the new one.

Rob W