The podcast is having RSS trouble, here’s what’s going on: Basically RSS stands for really simple syndication, or at least that’s one of the things it stands for.. and RSS is central to how podcasts and blogs work. Basically the podcaster / blogger puts out an RSS feed, and the reader / audience subscribes to that RSS feed via a podcatcher / rss reader. What’s happening now is I’m trying to get the asymmetric biz cult rss to go into iTunes, but iTunes is telling me that there are no episodes on the Asymmetric Biz Cult RSS feed.. which, as it happens, isn’t true.. So why might this be?

The other issue is that I’m trying to host multiple podcasts via the same pod host. A pod host being a place where I put the files that come to you via the RSS feed… Is this all making sense? Ok.. so..

I’m hosting my podcast on libsyn. Libsyn seems to be the most popular podcast host going.. So all our files are up there. Libsyn creates an RSS feed that we then put in to feedburner. Feed burner is basically what we are using to keep statistics on our podcast subscribers, and what have you… On AsymmetricBizCult.Com we have a script that redirects the Asymmetricbizcult.com/podcastfeed.xml to the feed burner feed… and this is how our whole rss system is working…. and basically we are having RSS formating troubles.. which probably has to do with issues of libsyn.

Originally my plan was to create AsymmetricBizCult.com from scratch, to use as a work sample.. to help me get work in web design… But now I’m hearing that the best way to move forward is probably to host a blog on AsymmetricBizCult.com.. inside of which you can put these special plug ins.. that basically create an RSS feed.. and point back to your podcast’s media files, where ever they might be hosted…. Which requires me to somewhat radically re-conceptualize my job. Basically, if this is what I’m doing, then my job is just to design a custom CSS file.. which will control the look / visual design of the site / blog.. (and latter I’ll create a Flash front end to the whole thing)

To do this I’ll have to install the blog software on my Mac.. To do that I may have to install / upgrade my PHP module to version 5.. And then work with the software on my computer as a test server.. and maybe modify the blog engine to suit my needs… all this before I can get my RSS issues straightened out.

Well.. I want to get the ball rolling on this website / podcast as quickly as possible.. so what I’m going to do is monkey around with libsyn and feedburner to try and get the RSS suitable for iTunes.. from there we’ll keep putting out episodes.. while I work on version 2 of AsymmetricBizCult.com… and then once I go live with version 2… you may or may not find that your podcatcher re-downloads all the old episodes… So you may want to make sure that your podcatcher only downloads the most recent episodes from the feed.. so that I don’t hit you with redundant files.

So basically this episode of our podcast is just giving you a heads up as to what’s going on with our podcast. And with that, I want to thank you for your patience…

 

 ABC Episode 2.4: The RSS Problem [15:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 8:06 pm and is filed under Podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.