Submitting a podcast to iTunes

Jul 13 2007

Published by Mike Temple at 5:08 pm under Podcasting, iTunes, mp3

Well it would look like delayed intelligence has raised its head again.

Have you ever read instructions and they have made no sense at all? Yet when you work out how to do it, they somehow translate themselves into a new, friendly language.

Well that’s just what has been happening with this podcast thing.

Now I’m sure there’s no-one else out there who wonders what to do with a podcast when you’ve put it onto your edublog site - well I’ve been trying to sort this out for perhaps a year or so now. I know it’s simple and I should have asked, but everywhere I went - forums, blogs, podcasts, the universe, it seemed that this was a bit tricky.

I knew you could host a podcast on a blog

You can then submit it to iTunes

You can then let others see it on iTunes

Step 2 had me beat.

Until I read this Podcaster Tech Specs article on the …. - I know it sounds silly - but it’s on the iTunes website - yes I had looked all over this but didn’t find this info - or maybe I just didn’t SEE it!

So here are the instructions in my words - hopefully others will understand because it still took me some time to decode the iTunes instructions

Make a podcast (contact me if you are stuck here)
Upload it to your edublogs blog
Adding an mp3 player to a post -ideal for podcasting
You are now ready to move to iTunes
download iTunes 7 if you haven’t got it already
Go get your RSS feed for your blog
to do this, right click on the RSS logo on your site
click on Copy shortcut or copy link location - whichever one turns up
this will copy the “feed” for iTunes to work with note steps
James has been great and has sent me some further instructions
The main thing is that the feed address you get from your RSS button on your edublog is not right for podcasting.
So it needs some change to the end of the address
Just replace the end bit which says /feed/ with /wp-rss2.php
Now when you do stage 9, it works.
I thought I’d hit a brick wall but found out that there’s a delay in iTunes picking up the feed
ALSO, you need to make sure that there is an mp3 in the last 10 posts on your blog or your feed won’t pick this up
To alter the number of posts it will “see”, go to the admin dashboard
Go into Options>Reading
Change the RSS bit to a bigger number - I set mine to 50
The feed will now pick up the last 50 posts
In the Advanced menu, select Subscribe to Podcast.
Enter your feed URL (paste it in) in the text box and click OK.
Next to the new podcast subscription, you should see an orange circle, which indicates that iTunes is downloading your most recent episode
Double-click on the episode to play it in iTunes.
If you can successfully play the episode, then your feed is working and you can submit your podcast to iTunes.
However, if the orange circle is replaced by an “i” in a black circle, iTunes encountered a problem with your feed or episode.
You should troubleshoot your episode and feed before submitting it.
Please do not submit your feed until you can successfully subscribe using the Advanced menu.
If you can successfully subscribe to your feed using the Advanced menu in iTunes, you’re ready to submit your feed:
The next bit needs you to sign up for an iTunes account
You will need to add your credit card details to identify you
Launch iTunes.
In the left navigation column, under iTunes Store, click on the Podcasts link to go to the Podcasts page.
In the left column of the Podcasts page, in the For Podcaster’s box at the bottom, click on the Submit a Podcast
That’s as far as I have got as I need to read a bit more to try and find out about adding tags and pictures to my feed
This involved using www.feedburner.com to change the RSS feed code to include your picture and description of the podcast - so far, I’ve had no luck with this
Back to step 16