Moving from wordpress.com to org – questions about feed

Since the URL will remain the same on the self-hosted site, everything should transfer over pretty smoothly. Just make sure you’ve got everything set up properly in PowerPress before you make the final switchover.

(I did run your feed thru a validator but it showed that the feed is still being generated by wordpress .com, so I’m assuming you haven’t officially switched over yet.)

EDIT: Once you do make the switchover to the self-hosted site, the PowerPress feed will likely have different GUIDs than your old wordpress .com feed. This may cause your old episodes to show up as new to current subscribers.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Shawn.

Thank you very much Shawn. That was quite helpful.

The URL-Transfer from WordPress.com to 1and1 took a while. Now that it’s finally completed, I’m trying to do the switch to www.remarpro.com.

To make the transfer as smooth as possible I tried to create the exact same RSS-Feed from our “old” WordPress.com page: https://qualitytimepod.com/category/folgen/feed/

I assumed it would work via the Category Podcasting option from the Powerpress plugin (our category is called folgen, means episodes). Therefore I added the Podcast Settings to the Category Feed folgen.

The result looks like this https://qualitytimepod.com/category/folgen/feed/podcast/

I’m still working at it locally so you will get to our current podcast tag when you click the link.

It’s almost the same Feed-URL besides the “podcast” in the end. I understand that “podcast” is the default option in Powerpress. But I can’t find a way to edit the Feed-URL (and delete the podcast) so it matches the old one: https://qualitytimepod.com/category/folgen/feed/

Is it important at all to keep the same Feed-URL or isn’t it that important for iTunes since we are keeping the same Domain qualitytimepod.com?

I hope again that’s understandable for everbody. Thanks for your help!

Sascha

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by legensuitupdary.

Go to PowerPress >> Settings, Advanced Mode >> Feeds and make sure that Enhance all Feeds is selected at the top of the page and click the Save Changes button if needed.

This’ll ensure that the podcast information is added to all related feeds, including the one at:
https://qualitytimepod.com/category/folgen/feed/
Once you get the self-hosted site up and running.

Thanks again Shawn!

The site is now up and running. I made sure to “Enhance all Feeds” in the Powerpress Settings.

If you click on https://qualitytimepod.com/category/folgen you’ll get to the episodes and under https://qualitytimepod.com/category/folgen/feed/ you can see the Feed information about the blog posts under the category “folgen”.

I don’t really understand the Enhance all Feeds option.

I can make all the necessary information about my podcast under the settings options from Powerpress (Feed settings, iTunes, description, artwork, etc). But it says that all Feed settings apply to feed: https://www.qualitytimepod.com/feed/podcast/ (the default channel/category).

When I add a new episode to the blog post via the shortcode [powerpress] it will be automatically added to the default podcast feed.

I can create new podcast categories and channels but i never get the right Feed-URL. For example a new category “folgen” is named https://www.qualitytimepod.com/category/folgen/feed/podcast/ or a podcast channel is named https://www.qualitytimepod.com/feed/folgen/.

Does the “Enhance all Feeds” feature means that I set up the Podcast(informationm iTunes description, Podcast Entry Boy) under settings (for default podcast) but they will also be applied to the right Feed https://qualitytimepod.com/category/folgen/feed/?

Sorry for bothering you again but I still have some problems with the setup. Thanks again for your help!

One Addition: I set up the Podcast in the powerpress settings under the assumption that will be applied to all Feeds. When I look up the https://qualitytimepod.com/category/folgen/feed/, I can see all my information.

Now I went to iTunes and try to Refresh the Feed. I got this message: Can’t read your feed. Bad http result code: 504.

Sorry for the third reply in a row.

I set up my Podcast information in the Powerpress settings and after a while our iTunes page was updated. Now it seems that nearly every information is correct https://itunes.apple.com/de/podcast/quality-time/id1139593055?mt=2&ls=1

There are still some hickups, for example a friend mentioned that episode nine is displayed twice in the iTunes Podcast app.

One thing that really bothers me: as you can see in iTunes the Title of our podcast is “folgen – Quality Time Podcast”. It should only be Quality Time Podcast.

In the RSS-Feed you cann see:
<channel>
<title>folgen – Quality Time Podcast</title>
<atom:link href=”https://www.qualitytimepod.com/category/folgen/feed/&#8221; rel=”self” type=”application/rss+xml” />

I can’t find a way to edit this title. I picked Quality Time Podcast as the title every time I got the chance to in the powerpress settings or wordpress settings in general. Is there a way to edit the title?

Thank you!

PowerPress by default creates unique podcast-only feeds that typically end in feed/podcast/. This is different from how wordpress .com operates. WordPress .com adds its podcast functionality to one specific feed on a site, while PowerPress podcasting features can be added to nearly any feed on a self-hosted WordPress site. The reason PowerPress prefers the feed/podcast/ URL is it gives the plugin more control over the feed. Regardless, when you select the Enhance all Feeds option, it adds podcast information to all feeds on the site.

The problem you’re having now with the “folgen -” showing up before your podcast title is probably due to your WordPress theme. Try this:
1.) Log into your WordPress site and hover over the PowerPress link in the left-hand sidebar. Click the Settings link in the popup menu. Switch to Advanced mode if you’re not already there.
2.) Click the Feeds tab. Check the box next to “Do not allow other plugins to modify podcast feeds” and click the Save Changes button.
3.) Load your podcast feed URL in a web browser (Google Chrome works well for this).
4.) Use the Edit >> Find command of the browser and search for <title>. This’ll show you the title tag of the feed. If it shows only the podcast title, then you should be fine. If it still shows “Podcast -” in front of the title, take a look at this page for more information on how to diagnose the problem:
https://create.blubrry.com/resources/powerpress/using-powerpress/diagnosing-feed-andor-player-issues-with-powerpress/
Keep in mind that it can take up to 24 hours for changes in your podcast RSS feed to be displayed in your iTunes Store listing.

If one of your listeners is seeing duplicate episodes on the iOS Podcasts app but you’re not seeing the duplicate episodes anywhere else, advise that person to delete their subscription from the app, kill the app, and then resubscribe to the feed.

Thanks Shawn for all your help and support.

I was afraid of trying a new Feed URL at first but we finally decided to use https://www.qualitytimepod.com/feed/podcast/. I think it’s the best solution for the long run. Plus the title problem was also solved with this change.

I set up a redirect 301 for the old Feed URL https://www.qualitytimepod.com/category/folgen/feed and we submitted the new URL to iTunes. Everything works perfect so far over there.

However we encountered some big problems with Android and Pocket Casts. Our podcast is not updating on any of the android apps.

I saw in the android app that our submitted feed was https://qualitytimepod.com/category/folgen/feed.

When I try to visit this Feed I get an error instead of a redirect to the new feed URL. Unfortunately I’m no expert but could the https instead of the http be the reason for our problems?

I really don’t know why we had the http-url submitted to iTunes and the https-url to Pocket Casts when we first started.

I have no idea if or how I can set up a redirect for https://qualitytimepod.com/category/folgen/feed. I wrote an email to the Pocket Casts support but haven’t received an answer yet. And we don’t want to submit the new Feed-URL to Pockets Casts because we are afraid that two podcasts with the same name will show up.

Sorry for all the problems. ?? I am happy that we switched to the self-hosted www.remarpro.com blog, but it’s really not easy to do it.

Thanks for your help.
Sascha

When I look at https://www.qualitytimepod.com/feed/podcast/ in Google Chrome, I get an error that says “This site can’t provide a secure connection.” When I look at https://www.qualitytimepod.com/feed/podcast/ it loads normally. I can’t say for sure if this is part of the problem, but you may want to check your encryption and make sure it’s working properly.

Your redirect from https://www.qualitytimepod.com/category/folgen/feed to https://www.qualitytimepod.com/feed/podcast/ seems to be working well. So, I can’t say for sure what the issue is with the Android apps. Regardless, if you’ve given them the https URL at any point and there’s an issue with the encryption, that could be the source of the problem.

Thanks Shawn.

It seems that our website was running on https while we were at wordpress.com. Now with 1and1 it’s only http. I tried all available tutorials about redirecting from https to http, e.g.

# Redirect HTTPS to HTTP
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto} =https
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

Nothing works so far. Therefore I am hoping that the Pocket Casts support is going to answer soon. I suppose there will be two Quality Time Podcast when we submit our new Feed-URL Pocket Casts.

Thanks again
Sascha

Hello @legensuitupdary,

You should be able to contact wordpress.com to get your SSL certificate files (3 files in pem format, your key, crt and a root crt). These files you can be setup with your new host. Do you recall where you bought your SSL certificate from?

One possible problem, if WordPress.com was using the LetsEncrypt SSL cert, then that would have been problematic since those certs are not supported by Apple iTunes. I believe WordPress.com started using them but not sure if they gave customers the option to buy their own certificates.

When you install a new certificate on your site, you will be able to redirect the secure site to the non secure site. Or better yet, keep the secure site. Secure sites are becoming required by Google, they now use it as a ranking signal for search results, having a secure site can help if you are posting content in a highly competitive space on the web. Not only that but browsers such as Chrome and Firefox are now showing sites that are not secure in a way that makes it sound like the site is insecure. This is a push to make the entire web secure.

Please read this page before buying a certificate in the future so you get one that is compatible with iTunes: https://create.blubrry.com/manual/your-web-site/secure-ssl-podcast-website/.

Hi @amandato,

wow…thanks for your answer!

We didn’t buy a SSL certificate specifically/intendedly. As total rookies we just bought the WordPress.com Premium Plan (https://wordpress.com/pricing/). T suppose there is a SSl certificate included?

After that I transfered the Domain to 1and1 where we apparently lost the certificate in the process. But as you said I will contact wordpress.com in orderto get the SSL certificate.

Thanks for your awesome support!

Hi @amandato,

wow…thanks for your answer!

We didn’t buy a SSL certificate specifically/intendedly. As total rookies we just bought the WordPress.com Premium Plan (https://wordpress.com/pricing/). T suppose there is a SSl certificate included?

After that I transfered the Domain to 1and1 where we apparently lost the certificate in the process. But as you said I will contact wordpress.com in orderto get the SSL certificate.

Thanks for your awesome support!

One other thought, if WordPress.com used LetsEncrypt, then there is no need to export as they only live 3 months at a time and those certs do not work with iTunes. If that’s the case, I would recommend getting a new certificate. Just make sure they are on the supported list on the link I previously shared.

Thanks for the praise! If you have a few minutes, we would greatly appreciate it if you left us a review. Thanks!

I know wordpress .com uses Let’s Encrypt by default so it’s likely that was the cert being used before the transfer.