[Plugin: Podcast Channels] Channel Podcasting and Feedburner

hmm, if you do want to use feedburner for multiple feeds on your site you can *probably* do it with .htaccess magic – all that the feedsmith plugin does is do a 302 redirect when:

!preg_match("/feedburner|feedvalidator/i", $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']))

so something like

RewriteCond %{HTTP_user_agent} feedburner [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_user_agent} feedvalidator
RewriteRule ^path/to/feed1/feed$	https://feedburner.com/feed_id_for_feed1 [R,L]

but i’m guessing of course that you would like to see this feature built into podcast-channels?

i’ve never really used feedburner before, so not considered this option. i will have a look at doing this. on the face of it, it seems like it might be straightforward – a new bit of metadata that is just a redirect URL for that channel’s feed.

not sure about over-riding the post’s author for the feed. Could you not alter the author of the posts, or would you want the author of the post to appear differently on the site, and in the feed?

it was indeed very easy to knock something up quickly. if you go to ‘other versions’ and try the development version i’ve added a “Feedburner URL” to the dropdown menu in each defined channel.

Let me know if it does the trick – like I say, never used Feedburner, but the code should do what feedsmith does.

If this works, I’ll add a field for the site defaults/home feed too if it makes sense. (though like the itunes:redirect field, channels would not inherit the home default)

Hi Alan,

Thanks a bunch for the response! I installed the dev version and set my feedburner URL for the channel. Cool! However, I don’t see any changes were made to .htaccess. Perms shouldn’t be the issue:

-rw-rw-r– 1 apache apache 205 Dec 27 18:57 .htaccess

Suggestions?

Again, my only reason for using Feedburner is to have stats for subscriptions and downloads. Maybe there are WordPress plugins that would do just as good a job?

My question about overriding itunes:author has to do with how to override that channel meta for each episode (item) in the feed, so that in iTunes, Artist can be different for each episode but the Author of the channel remains consistant. Even though I’ve done the ID3 tags the way I want them to appear in iTunes, when I test by subscribing to the podcast, the artist tag for the downloaded file is the same as the channel Author.

Thanks again for your help1

I got it working and then busted it again.

I found an enclosure in the custom fields for the post. I think this was put there by the Podcasting plugin which I have been experimenting with. I removed the custom field and then my feed links redirected to feedburner. But then (surprise) feedburner didn’t see any enclosures.

I upgraded to 2.7; doesn’t look like podcast-channels is compatible, as I can’t find the settings page in the new interface.

When subscribing to one of my category/channel feeds in iTunes I noticed that the category field was set to the Channel name. This could be interpreted as a convenience but is actually very limiting. The greatest benefit of your plugin is being able to control meta for multiple podcast channels. It would be very helpful if the category weren’t enforced that way.

Example: I want to have multiple podcast feeds hosted from one WP driven site. Let’s say my Categories (Channels) are called “Channel X”, “Channel Y”, and “Channel Z”. All three of these channels will play music. The category field for these channels should all be Music, not the Channel name…

To accomodate this it seems all that would be required is add a text field for Category, right?

What do you think?
Thanks…

blimey, slow down!. ok one at a time

the feedburner functionailty i built doesn’t require any htaccess changes

i think i get you with author thing now – you want to be have the option for the iTunes:Author data per post to be the post’s author instead of the category author. i think i can implement that – it seems an obvious option.

you need your enclosures to podcast – it’s easy to re-add. just edit the post and put a link to the media file in the post. the url alone will also work. (of course you can always manually add extra fields too – but that’s trickier)

the settings page is (as it says in the updated instructions) is under the Media section – i thought it made most sense there. No?

your last point i don’t follow, sorry. the iTunes categories are specified with the categories fields. eg in the screenshot https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/podcast-channels/screenshot-1.png the ‘Film’ category channel specifies iTunes categories of “Arts-Visual Arts” and “TV & Film”. perhaps you just missed that option? and iTunes is picking up the non-itunes category data in your posts?

i think i’ve just spotted that the feedburner URL function will create an invalid RSS feed — it adds a non-conformant element called feedburn_redirect which i’m guessing might foul things up. so i need to fix that in the development version. i’ll fix soon…

ok, done those – it’s in the dev version now. feed validates again, and i fixed another thing on the way that needs putting in the main version asap.

i’ll have a think about the best way of implementing ‘item author = post author’

i guess it should be a tickbox per channel – including the home page channel if used

Alan,

Happy New Year. I’m really grateful for your assistance!

OK one at a time ??

I just installed the development version. Still can’t find the settings in 2.7. Here’s a screenshot. Didn’t find it under the Media section or Settings section on the Media page.

Best,
Shannon

agh. i think i’m being thick there – i’ve been on the beta all this time, not a proper 2.7!

under ‘Media” in 2.7beta, the first page is called ‘Add New’ not library, so let me check that out…

yes, yet another slap to mine head.

I have committed the change in the development version again – though to save you the trouble you can just change line 131 in the main php file, from

add_submenu_page ('media-new.php', "Podcast Channels", ...

to

add_submenu_page ('upload.php', "Podcast Channels", ...

i really need this in the main download, so will make this version 0.23 asap

Sweet. Now I see the menu item. However, now I can’t save changes. Clicking ‘Save Channel Data’ returns a blank admin content area; that is, header and left nav sidebar are returned but rest of site is blank

From php.log:
[03-Jan-2009 12:03:58] PHP Fatal error: Cannot redeclare podcast_channels_audio_metadata_fields() (previously declared in /var/www/vhosts/redlightmusic.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/podcast-channels/podcast-channels.php:17) in /var/www/vhosts/redlightmusic.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/podcast-channels/podcast-channels.php on line 41

agh! i will quickly fix this – there will be a re-release. very poor checking by me there before i did that last release.

watch out for 0.24 in a bit

thank you very much for all this – as you can see i need feedback!

committed 0.24

the only difference is on line 177. change

echo ($wp_version<2.7)?"edit":"media-new";

to

echo ($wp_version<2.7)?"edit":"upload";

great. now changes save.

happy to help you with the feedback, especially because your plugin seems to be the only one going in same direction i am.

first thing i tested is the feedburner url redirect field. I’ve created a channel for this category. In the feedburner URL field I entered this URL. So I would expect that clicking on the WordPress generated feed URL would redirect to the Feedburner URL, but it doesn’t do that. I remember at one point when you first added this functionality I tested and it worked.

Recommendations?

this really isn’t the way to fix bugs is it! i’m not complaining though – keep em coming. I’m just frustrated with my own impatience, and the fact that i keep committing a new ‘stable’ version too quickly.

the bug fix is, on line 537, change

$podcast_channel_active['feedburn_redirect']

to

$podcast_channel_active['meta:feedburn_redirect']

at least this doesn’t stop the plugin working – just the feedburn functionality (which was kind of the point of all this) :-/

i’ll put it in the dev version, and i’ll wait a couple of days before tagging it up as version 0.25

installed the dev version. still doesn’t work ??
verified that all occurences of feedburn_redirect are meta:feedburn_redirect