hgetrost

Hi Angelo,

Our <itunes:summary> is always populated and is what is shown in Desktop iTunes. There is no issue there.

As described in my previous post the problem lies with the iTunes and other Apps which use the <description> tag for the Episode Notes, which in some cases is populated by either the blog content or the Facebook description.

If PowerPress doesn’t modify the <description> (a native WordPress) tag then perhaps we’ll have to look into creating a custom blog post excerpt to push populate this tag in the feed.

We already have the setting on the PowerPress > Feeds tab to not allow other plugins to modify podcast feeds set to true. It’s been set true since we started using Power Press.

If you have any other ideas please let me know.

Many thanks,

Heide

Hi Angelo,

Thanks for your response. In iTunes desktop the description is presenting correctly.

I’ve checked and the problem is also showing in other apps such as Overcast and more importantly the Apple Podcast app.

This is the app I have installed on my iPhone 6S:

https://dev.upliftconnect.com/support/PodcastApp_Apple1.jpeg
https://dev.upliftconnect.com/support/PodcastApp_Apple2.jpeg

Here’s the David Vago podcast:
https://dev.upliftconnect.com/support/PodcastApp_DavidVago.jpeg
The episode notes are populated by the <description> tag in the xml – ref my links from yesterday. Note this text is the Yoast SEO Facebook Description for this article: https://dev.upliftconnect.com/support/DavidVago_YoastSEOSettings.png

And not any of the Powerpress iTunes fields:
https://dev.upliftconnect.com/support/DavidVago_PowerpressSettings.png

Here’s the Mark Greene podcast:
https://dev.upliftconnect.com/support/PodcastApp_MarkGreene.jpeg
The episode notes are populated by the <description> tag in the xml – ref my links from yesterday. But for this one its taking the article content.

Where should the <description> tag be populating from? Its coming from the Facebook description, and its coming from the article content. I don’t think this has anything to do with caching. Before I report any support issues with you I clear both our Sucuri and Cloudflare caches and view in a private Safari browser. Also please check out the feed url on dev: https://dev.upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/podcast/ and search for Mark Greene … the same problem is there ie: the article content is turning up in the <description> tag. Our dev is not behind sucuri or cloudflare.

Here’s the podcast article for your reference: https://upliftconnect.com/mark-greene-solve-masculinity-crisis/

If you could please look at the detail in the XML and the screenshots I’ve sent you, you’ll see what I am talking about.

FYI I have raised a support query with cloudflare wrt to the content type for our feed. Its most likely a Sucuri thing. Thanks for that. We may look to switch to your suggested podcast mirror. Is there a cost for using this? And do we need to re-submit our feed to iTunes and others if we start using it?

Heide

Hi Shawn,

The problem is showing (for example) on the phone app called Casts. Ref the following two screen shots:

https://dev.upliftconnect.com/support/MarkGreene_IsIncorrect.png
https://dev.upliftconnect.com/support/MarkGreene_on_Casts.jpeg

Compared with a podcast that is displaying correctly:

https://dev.upliftconnect.com/support/DavidVago_IsCorrect.png

Seems when the <description> is populated with the article content an app like Casts then shows the article content and not the iTunes Summary.

When the <description> is populated with the social media description (is this what is should be doing?) the app then shows the iTunes Summary.

Somehow powerpress is populating the <description> from the article content for some podcasts but not the majority.

If you could please review.

Thanks,

Heide

Hi Shawn

We have more examples of this problem occurring.

When I put https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/podcast/ into three different feed validators they validate successfully. And our podcasts are turning up in iTunes.

On your troubleshooting page you recommend using firefox. When viewing the feed in firefox I believe there are no xml errors.

A duplicate copy of the website on our dev servers shows no errors so rules out plugins etc.

The malformed xml in chrome is possibly our firewall or cloudflare and not likely the cause (or related to) of episodes showing the article content in the description feed instead of the iTunes Summary defined under Podcast Episode. The content that Powerpress is generating before rendering in the browser seems to be incorrect.

Thank you.

Heide

I upgraded and the problem is still there.

Thank you

Hi Angelo,

We’ve determined that the <script> is being appended by a setting on our Cloudflare caching service that obfuscates email addresses.

So it wasn’t a plugin. So no need to respond to my previous posts except for this following question:

Q1. where is the setting “Feed Landing Page URL” located? I can’t seem to find it.

Many thanks for your time.

Note we now have a redirect active on our server from:

https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/podcast/
to
https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/

which now validates. We had to get something working.

For your ref please use the url https://pod.upliftconnect.com for the above examples (i see i already accidentally have that in the third already)

Hi Angelo,

Thanks for your response. I have had that setting under PowerPress settings > feeds tab > Include RSS Image in feeds set the whole time.

What I have found is that it is not applied. If you run the two URLS in this validator you’ll see what I mean:

Base podcast for our website (Special Podcast only Feed):
https://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=https://upliftconnect.com/feed/podcast/
shows the <script> after the rss

Category based podcast url:
https://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/podcast/
shows the <script> after the rss

For this url however the <script> is not present
https://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=https://pod.upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/

Do you have any ideas?

I’ll do some more investigating on our test instance to see if the <script> is actually coming from a plugin. Meanwhile we’ll get our server guy to do a redirect to the third url, and/or ask iTunes to update our feed url this one while we work out whats going on.

Thanks for answering my questions. With ref to Q1. where is the setting “Feed Landing Page URL” located? I can’t seem to find it.

Many thanks,

Heide

Hi Angelo,

Thanks for your message and explanation of the new-feed-url and how that should be used.

Yes it certainly has been random and therefore difficult to establish the cause. Today I set up a seperate instance on our prod server pod.upliftconnect.com with the same content, plugins, server, firewall and caching as our prod website and the following url worked:

https://pod.upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/podcast/

I then changed wp-config on this instance to point to our prod website and that also worked! Then went back and reviewed prod feed: https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/podcast/ and it was working, and now still is!

FYI I had been seeing the following break in the XML which I think is definitely causing the issue with no closing </img> tag.

https://dev.upliftconnect.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Screen-Shot-2017-08-17-at-12.45.51-pm.png

When the xml is well formed it looks like

<itunes:subtitle>UPLIFT is a living invitation to discover what is…</itunes:subtitle>
<image>
<title>The UPLIFT Podcast</title>
<url>https://i1.sndcdn.com/avatars-000290706378-rrkhlq-original.jpg</url&gt;
<link>https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/</link&gt;
</image>
<itunes:category text=”Society & Culture”>

This is the RSS2 image. I have now updated it to the correct image (the soundcloud avatar was incorrect).

Q1. How does this <link> to our podcasts listing page get populated within the <image> tag? https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/ ?
I can’t find a setting for this in powerpress

You’ll note in the broken xml this looks like:

“https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/

”

Which might have been causing our problem? ie: breaking the xml?

Q2. Is the RSS2 image important? I think if this problem comes back I will try clear this from our feed settings. Am assuming its used for feeds other than iTunes such as Stitcher etc?

I had asked our server admin to create a redirect on our ubuntu server, as .htaccess is not present for WP on ubuntu. Have asked him to hold off for now to see if this “fix” I’ve somehow orchestrated holds.

Also asked iTunes support to refresh our feed, last refresh has been stuck on 23rd August and unable to update our feed URL on Podcasts Connect. Our two latest podcasts are unpublished ??

Thanks for your time once again.

Heide

You’ll see the error is back ??
I updated our iTunes image and refreshed the cache and we’re now seeing the same problem.
I’ve put in a redirect to https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/ in the <itunes:new-feed-url> tag under the Powerpress iTunes tab, so when our feed gets refreshed it should pick up this redirect. This is a temporary fix (hopefully) while we work out what is going on!

Hi Shawn

Thanks for your response. We have found it was our server caching that was casuing the problem. Once all the caching was cleared our feed is now back to normal at:

https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/podcast/

FYI wrt your comment: I’m not sure how or why you wound up using this as a feed:
https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/podcast/

This is the default construct of a feed generated as a category podcast. And now we have cleared the cache its working. So its a valid feed url from powerpress.

Thanks again for your help.

Kind regards,

Heide

Hi Shawn

Under Settings, Advanced Mode>> Feeds >> Podcast Feeds we have https://upliftconnect.com/feed/podcast/

But the feed we have submitted to iTunes is a Category Podcasting feed. So under Category Podcasting >> Podcasts (which is our category) >> Feed the Feed URL is https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/podcast/ which is the one iTunes is syncing with.

Yesterday I update our iTunes image just to see if that changes anything. And the error on our Podcasts Connect page cleared … whether that is related or not am unsure. The latest podcast is now also showing.

However, we still have the problem of https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/podcast/ coming up as text and not RSS due to the broken image tag … I agree this needs to be fixed. The iTunes description is not showing correctly in our iTunes page, which may be related?

The https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/podcast/ url used to show as RSS and worked fine until about a week ago.

Thanks

Ok so I can’t upload images here. So here’s a link showing a correctly formed <image> tag from one of the above urls that work:

https://dev.upliftconnect.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Screen-Shot-2017-08-17-at-12.46.08-pm.png

and following is a link showing a broken <image> tag from the following url: https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/podcast/

https://dev.upliftconnect.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Screen-Shot-2017-08-17-at-12.45.51-pm.png

Also I have updated the itunes image for the category Podcasts under the Artwork tab from

https://upliftconnect.com/wp-content/uploads/powerpress/avatars-000290706378-rrkhlq-original-009.jpg

to

https://upliftconnect.com/wp-content/uploads/powerpress/iTunesProfile.jpg

And the update is only showing in the following feed url:

https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/

but not this one:

https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/podcast/

which is our iTunes feed url.

If you could please look into this with urgency, our next podcast is due to go out tomorrow and is with a high profile individual so its important its published and promoted well.

Please let me know if there is anything I can provide or do.

Thank you so much.

Hi Shawn

Thanks for the feedback and suggestion.

We already have that option set true.

Its strange how these urls work:

https://upliftconnect.com/feed/feed/
https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/

and the ones with /podcast at the end do not ie:

https://upliftconnect.com/channel/podcasts/feed/podcast/
https://upliftconnect.com/feed/podcast/

I have isolated the broken xml and have screen shots which I can send/attach hopefully once this post is submitted?

Thanks

Heide