Podcast Feed Should Be Back To Normal
Due to some issues I had been having with PodPress I recently switched to PowerPress in hopes that a new RSS generating plug-in would solve them. Unfortunately I have found that it currently has to many issues to be worth the switch. The biggest of which was the fact that it was only allowing the last 10 or so episodes to be included in the feed.
I switched back to the still-broken PodPress last night. We’ve lost the in-post audio player again, but all of the shows are back in the feed and showing up properly in iTunes.
PowerPress, I love the simplicity of your plug-in but I’ve got to be able to manage how many of my shows display in my feed. I need my show descriptions to show up in iTunes. I need my show’s image to be displayed in iTunes. I need the feed to ONLY show my podcasts… not just a copy of my blog’s feed. I don’t want every audio file I post added to my feed. Work that out, and I’ll be back. Especially if PodPress doesn’t get updated soon.
You can adjust how many posts are included inn yoru feed in Wordpress. Your limit of 10 episodes in your feed is due to the fact that you have 100 blog posts with only 10 of them with podcasts attched to them. If you double that to 200, you may have 20 podcasts. The roadmap for Powerpress will include an option in the future for a podcast only feed that only includes posts with enclosures, which will solve the problem you are having.
The latest update of Powerpress (released yesterday) includes an option to add a to each item in your feed. Keep in mind that this just takes your and removes the HTML. Also note that iTunes will use your if the is not present. To enable , either uncomment the define found on line 36 in the powerpress.php or copy/paste the following innto your wp-config.php file.
define(‘POWERPRESS_ITEM_SUMMARY’, true);
As far as adding every audio file to your post, if you don’t want the audio file in your feed, don’t add it as a podcast with the Powerpress plugin. You will need to use another plugin such as the WP Audio Player 2.0 in order to display the audio within a post if you decide to go that route. This would not be a function of Powerpress.
Getting new images to display in iTunes is a real pain. What we did with Powerpress is add an upload image option which creates a new file name for each newly uploaded iTunes image. We came up with this logic to trick iTunes into re-caching the image. Otherwise, if your itunes image url never changes, iTunes will never re-cache it. This is a hack that we did in order to make sure your image gets re-cached in iTunes. Also keep in mind that iTunes can take upwards to a week to re-download your latest iTunes image.
“As far as adding every audio file to your post, if you don’t want the audio file in your feed, don’t add it as a podcast with the Powerpress plugin.”
I didn’t my friend. Since powerpress is sending all of my posts out on my podcast feed, I’m guessing that Feedburner created enclosures for the audio files I linked to in other posts.
As for the plug-in, that’s exactly what I’m using. I understand the purpose and limitations of Powerpress.
I’m not opposed to Powerpress… I actually prefer it’s ease of use and the ‘lite’ feel of it. I just think it needs more time and work before it’s a valid PodPress replacement.