Strange Issue With Validating iTunes

  • I have been trying to solve this problem with my podcast for months now. The Feed validates & shows up on other platforms : Google Play, Stitcher, etc. iTunes cannot validate when I try to submit.
    Back story, I had the podcast in iTunes & failed to update the show for a few months. iTunes support basically said that since I hadn’t updated the feed, Apple removed the show from their platform.

    Now, after going through podcast support with Apple, they said everything should be fine to submit my feed again. However, the feed will not validate with iTunes Podcast Connect Dashboard. I opened another ticket with them and they sent this info:
    ‘ There seem to be other issues. When requesting information from your website via browser, your website displays.

    When requesting information from your website via our server, we receive a HTTP 500 Server Error:

    curl –head -A “iMacAppStore/1.0.1 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6.7; en) AppleWebKit/533.20.25″ -L
    https://www.casanova.audio/

    HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

    Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2017 21:00:15 GMT

    Server: Apache

    X-Powered-By: PHP/5.5.9-1ubuntu4.4

    Location: https://casanova.audio/

    Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

    HTTP/1.0 500 Internal Server Error

    Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2017 21:00:16 GMT

    Server: Apache

    X-Powered-By: PHP/5.5.9-1ubuntu4.4

    Link: <https://casanova.audio/wp-json/&gt;; rel=”https://api.w.org/&#8221;

    Connection: close

    Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

    ——

    I recommend resolving the issues with your web host, then testing your feed here:
    https://web-sniffer.net/
    Select the “HEAD” option, as noted in the screenshot.

    Thank you,

    Charles

    ___

    Apple Podcasts

    I am so confused as to why this problem only affects with showing up in iTunes store. Unfortunately, that is where our primary listening base aggregate from. Anyone who can help point out to where the issue may lie, please drop a comment.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Plugin Support Shawn

    (@shawnogordo)

    You should forward the above information to your web hosting provider and see what they say. It’s possible that the web hosting provider is blocking requests from Apple’s servers, for some reason.

    Thread Starter casanovaaudio

    (@casanovaaudio)

    @shawnogordo
    I have tried that as well. I host my wordpress site on a Digital Ocean Droplet Server. They explained to me that essentially I ‘self-host’ my own site through WP, & that they cannot be responsible. I am thinking about leaving them for this problem, but I do not want to leave WP. However, I will definitely make a jump if someone could effectively isolate the iTunes issue. :/

    Plugin Support Shawn

    (@shawnogordo)

    I will ask the lead developer of PowerPress to look at your post to see if he has any insights into the situation.

    Plugin Author Angelo Mandato

    (@amandato)

    Hello @casanovaaudio,

    If your web host is preventing HTTP HEAD requests (I just tested and confirmed this is the case), then yes it may be time to change web hosting companies unfortunately. Blocking HEAD requests is an old school (very old school) way to try to block unwanted traffic. The problem though is that HEAD requests should not be blocked in some cases like this. Technically they are not only acceptable, it is one of the most efficient ways for podcast directories like iTunes to detect if there are changes with your podcast without using a lot of bandwidth.

    We are working on a solution to circumvent this problem but it is not ready yet. If you are interested in the solution we are working on, please let me know I may be able to get you into the beta program.

    One thing you can do is setup FeedBurner to host your podcast feed (it would essentially be copy of your current feed but hosted by Google) and then submit the FeedBurner feed to the podcast directories. FeedBurner has a lot of obsolete options built-into it unfortunately, that is why I am not eager to suggest it as a solution. If you setup FeedBurner simply to re-host your podcast feed (do not enable any of the obsolete features like SmartCast), then it should work as a temporary solution.

    Thanks,
    Angelo

    Plugin Support Shawn

    (@shawnogordo)

    On a slightly related note, I had someone recently tell me that the Bulletproof Security plugin was blocking head requests on their WordPress site, and that once they turned the plugin off, the head requests worked as expected. If you’re using that particular plugin, you might want to turn it off and see if anything changes.

    The BPS plugin has built-in troubleshooting capability – all security features can be turned On or Off individually for accurate troubleshooting to isolate the exact security feature causing a problem > https://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/read-me-first-free/#bps-free-general-troubleshooting. While someone can also completely remove the BPS plugin for troubleshooting, it is much simpler just to click “Turn Off/On”, “Activate/Deactivate X”, etc.

    By default the BPS plugin blocks nuisance HEAD Requests (typically made by bad bots sending nuisance or garbage or probe/recon HEAD Requests all day long, every day, all year long… til the end of time). To allow all HEAD Requests see this forum topic > https://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/broken-link-checker-plugin-403-error/#post-2017

    BPS has a Setup Wizard feature called AutoFix where we can add plugin and theme detection and automatic “fixes” for plugins and themes. We will add PowerPress Podcasting plugin by Blubrry to Setup Wizard AutoFix.

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by AITpro.
    • This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by AITpro.
    • This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by AITpro.
Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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