different Blubrry Program stats for category podcasting

Digging around on the old Blubrry forums, I think I have found some answers.

Hopefully these explanations will be added to the documentation or the plugin itself so users know exactly what these settings do.

Strict Category Podcasting
When this option is checked, you must specify which category (and thus which category feed) your episode should be associated with in the episode entry box. This allows you to select as many categories as you need for the WordPress post itself. So Powerpress will essentially ignore the WordPress post’s selected category/categories. And so, only the category selected in the episode entry box will be used for podcast measurement and subscription tools.

Podcast Only Category Feeds
[This is unrelated to my original question, but the documentation on exactly what this does is also scarce.]
Wordpress natively provides a category feed containing all the posts assigned to that category. When using Category Podcasting and adding podcasting support to a given category, the Powerpress podcast feed also contains all of the posts assigned to that category, whether they contain a podcast episode or not. This was not ideal, as iTunes does not like feeds with posts that do not contain media. With this option checked, the WordPress native category feed contains all of the posts as usual, while the Powerpress podcast feed removes any posts that do not contain media.
The end result is that this allows you to mix blog posts in your category while providing a podcast-only feed that only includes the episodes (optimal for iTunes).

And for my original question:

When you link your Blubrry account to the Powerpress installation (PowerPress >> Settings, Advanced Mode >> Services & Stats tab), you are essentially linking one single show (program) within your Blubrry account to that entire Powerpress installation.

If you are hosting multiple podcasts (using category podcasting) on that Powerpress installation, then linking to your Blubrry account and selecting one show (program) will cause all the stats from all the shows to appear under that one program in your Blubrry stats account. Obviously this is not ideal.

So, to track stats separately for different shows all hosted under one Powerpress installation (using category podcasting), do this:

If you’ve linked to your Blubrry account (you see the green checkmark on the PowerPress >> Settings, Advanced Mode >> Services & Stats tab, you must unlink it. Click the “Click here to Configure Blubrry Services” button. Enter your Blubrry credentials into the popup window and click the Remove button. This is necessary as it’ll ensure none of your shows accidentally get tracked under the wrong stats.

Go to PowerPress >> Category Podcasting and check the box next to Strict Categories and click the Save Changes button. [Note: I’m not sure this is definitely required to track stats separately for separate shows, since you can do the next step without enabling Strict Categories.]

Make sure the podcast is registered under your Blubrry stats account. If not, register it. (https://publish.blubrry.com/, click Add Another Podcast to Directory). Then make sure it is selected (https://publish.blubrry.com/changeprogram.php and select it). You might also need to enable basic statistics (Under Podcast Statistics, click Sign up for Free Basic Statistics). Then, under Podcast Statistics >> Getting Started, you will find your media redirect URL. It should be something like https://media.blubrry.com/nameofshow/.

Back in Powerpress, on the Category Podcasting page, click the desired category-based podcast to edit its settings. In the Other Settings tab, enter that media redirect URL in the box, and click the Save Changes button.

What is still not clear to me is whether anything should be in the Redirect URL 1 box on the PowerPress >> Settings, Advanced Mode >> Services & Stats tab, under the Media Statistics heading. I’m assuming at this point it can be left blank since you have entered the stats redirect individually for each category.

What is also not clear (it was discussed in the forum thread when the Strict Categories setting was introduced, but I’m not sure whether it was implemented), is whether the site-wide network podcast feed (that contains all the podcasts from all the categories in a single feed, as shown in the PowerPress >> Settings, Advanced Mode >> Feeds tab) is disabled when you enable Strict Categories. If so, I wish that checking the Strict Categories setting would gray-out this entire tab, since the settings are ignored anyway.

In fact, it would be great to have a “Single Podcast Mode” and “Category Podcasting Mode” like the simple and advanced modes. All of the settings for the single podcast mode (everything in the Services & Stats, Feeds, iTunes, Google Play, Artwork, and Destinations tabs) are ignored because they are set individually for each category enabled for category podcasting. (They are only applicable to the site-wide network feed, if that even exists when Strict Categories is enabled.) This is something that is definitely not clear to users. So it would be great if these tabs were grayed-out or disabled when Category Podcasting is enabled.

All category feed settings, including stats redirect URLs, are handled within the individual feeds’ settings pages.

When using Strict Category Podcasting, each post must also have its corresponding category selected within the Podcast Episode box.

If you’re not using the default podcast feed, you don’t need to worry about the settings in the main PowerPress settings area, including the Services & Statistics tab.

When NOT using Strict Category podcasting the main podcast settings apply in situations where PowerPress cannot determine the category for the episode. Strict Category podcasting fixes this, you always map 1 category to 1 podcast, all the confusing problems where you could have multiple podcast categories associated with a blog post go away.