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Helpful answers
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Aug 17, 2016 9:54 AM in response to Scarlets Fanby Roger Wilmut1,It can take at least a couple of weeks for a podcast to be assessed and accepted - it requires human intervention, so it depends on how busy they are. At this stage it's probably just a question of waiting.
You might want to think about your feed - it h as long as SiteServer doesn't limit the numbas one podcast episode, and a lot of episodes without playable media, which won't show in iTunes. This isn't necessarily a problem as long as SiteServer doesn't limit the number of episodes in the feed, which can cause issues, but it's something better avoided. However it shouldn't impinge on your submission.
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Aug 17, 2016 10:49 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1by Scarlets Fan,I am not sure what you mean in this sentence
" it h as long as SiteServer doesn't limit the numbas one podcast episode, and a lot of episodes without playable media, which won't show in iTunes. "
Can you elaborate?
Thanks
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Aug 17, 2016 11:12 AM in response to Scarlets Fanby Roger Wilmut1,Sorry, that got a bit garbled
Some podcast creation services limit the number of episodes in the feed, then when the limit - usually 25 or 50 - is reached, older episodes are moved off it. So, for example if you have one episode with playable media and nine without, then repeating that continuously. If the number of episodes is limited to 50, then that means only five episode with media will be included and so only those will appear in iTunes. On the whole it's better not to mix episodes with and without if you can avoid it.
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Aug 17, 2016 11:38 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1by Scarlets Fan,Thank you for the clarification.
Volume of episodes not an issue here as I only hosted a couple of trial balloons.
I will wait for another then come back to the forum if I still have an issue
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Aug 19, 2016 9:55 AM in response to Scarlets Fanby Scarlets Fan,Oh for the days when you could talk to someone on the telephone!
I had a note from Apple telling me that my URL was unable to validated, and some accompanying links to validating sites. They also told me to try and subscribe to my podcasts via iTunes.
However, I did validate the site before submission—and sent them the screen grab as proof.
Nevertheless, I complied to their request and got the following results.
1. Subscribe via iTunes. It worked.
The tests to all of the recommended validators came back as 'valid.'
Any recommendations on what to do next?
Thanks
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Aug 19, 2016 10:25 AM in response to Scarlets Fanby Roger Wilmut1,The URL I have for your feed is http://theriotpoint.com/lab/?format=rss - please always include the feed URL, I had to type this out from the image earlier on. It validated for me at Podcasts Connect and said 'prepared for submission' so I should try it again there. Failing that, you should look at the FeedValidator Report:
http://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftheriotpoint.com%2Flab%2 F%3Fformat%3Drss
While passing it as valid it throws up a number of cases of minor errors and things that shouldn't be there, and one of these might be causing the problem - iframes for example - you should keep all these tags simple and in plain text, not include a lot of html.
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Aug 19, 2016 10:41 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1by Scarlets Fan,Thank you for checking and also reminding me to post the URL.
Q1: Can you post a link or tell me how you find the status of an application via Podcasts Connect?
Q2: I am able to subscribe to the podcast via iTunes directly. Is that not proof that the RSS feed is a valid?
Thanks for the recommendation on changing the minor errors. However I am not technical and everything I'm employing is off-the-shelf Squarespace.
I'll see if I can find a HTML programmer to make the adjustments
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Aug 19, 2016 10:57 AM in response to Scarlets Fanby Roger Wilmut1,Q1: go to http://podcastsconnect.apple.com - once it's loaded click the '+' sign at top left. Enter the feed URL in the field provided, and then click the 'Validate' button on the right. If it passes that it'sOK for submission.
Q2: It's a reasonable indication: it's not absolute proof. The iTunes Application isn't the same thing as the Store and occasionally something will upset one and not the other.
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Aug 23, 2016 1:28 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1by Scarlets Fan,This is my feed: http://theriotpoint.com/lab/?format=rss
The iTunes support team tell me that my podcasts are not visible in my feed.
However, I do see them in my subscription on my iTunes.
Any recommendations on what to do next?
Thanks
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Aug 23, 2016 1:53 AM in response to Scarlets Fanby Roger Wilmut1,Various tests throw up inconsistencies. Subscribing in iTunes works; entering the media file URL in a browser works as expected; but CastFeedValidator doesn't recognize the enclosure and testing the media file URL in Terminal throws up unexpected results which I can't explain.
So I can only suggest a couple of things to try to see whether they improve matters. Firstly, the Store checkers don't like test episodes, so I should delete your top entry. Secondly, you've used '+' instead of spaces in the URL; although '+' is supposed to be an acceptable character the official documentation on URLs says it is a 'sub-delim' character, whatever that means, and provides an explanation which is frankly incomprehensible. Given that, I should replace each '+' with a hyphen or underscore - we do know those characters are safe - in both the file name and the feed.
You have only three episodes in the feed containing playable media, and a very large number of episodes without. As long as the top episode in the feed has playable media this shouldn't be a problem (iTunes does not display episodes with no playable media); but on the whole I would advise against mixing episode types in this way. If you can, it would be better to submit a feed in which all the episodes have playable media.
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Aug 23, 2016 3:59 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1by Scarlets Fan,Thanks for the tip
I have been told my squarespace to use this feed instead
http://iwan-jenkins.squarespace.com/lab?format=rss
It works for me
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Aug 23, 2016 4:11 AM in response to Scarlets Fanby Roger Wilmut1,That feed produces the same result in CastFeedValidator, but both of them validate OK for me in PodcastsConnect. If the Squarespace feed works better for you I should go with that. I see you've removed the test episode in both - whether that's got anything to do with it I don't know, but let's hope you're now good to go.
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Aug 23, 2016 7:32 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1by Scarlets Fan,Okay, I think I now have this sorted.
Thank you Wilmut1 for your assistance, plus some support from SquareSpace
My feed works when I remove the thumbnail image. It seems that the thumbnail image inserts itself in front of the audio block in the RSS feed (is the way I understand it), and thus prevents the aggregator from getting to the audio file. Once I removed the thumbnail, the validators saw my podcast.
I have submitted to iTunes
Hopeful this works!

