Today we talk with Michael Dell who is on the tech support team and blubrry.com to discuss the pros and cons of Feedburner. People use feedburner to add the iTunes tags to their RSS feed, and you can do the same thing with PowerPress. Michael and I were having a discussion in email so we decided to turn on the microphones and turn it into a podcast.
Podcast Questions From the Audience
Ilene from Basic Blog Tips asks, “Why do podcasters state the number at the begining of an episode?”
Scott from The Photography Podcast asks, “What podcast directories should I be listed in?
PowerPress 3.0 Now with Meta Marks
What can you do with meta marks?
- Display an image in your audio podcast during playback, referring to the topic you are discussing in your show. The image can optionally have a web link for additional information.
- Display a video in your video during playback, making it easy to insert an advertisement. And yes, the video can have a complementing web link for more information.
- Display a text comment during playback of your media, great for leaving comments about the topic being discussed at the specified position and duration.
- Display a bookmark that allows users to jump to that position in your media.
- Insert an advertisement tag to indicate to services where an advertisement is placed in your media.
- Include a lower third advertisement for placement in your video during playback.
Full description of Mata Marks
At first crack, I can't get Meta Marks to work. They are working on some documentation on how to use it (only what it is). Not very useful at this point. I'm also having some issues with PowerPress and creating hyperlinks (it could be just me, but I'd wait to upgrade possibly).
Feedburner Vs PowerPress
Here is the break down.
iTunes Tags
Both Feedburner and PowerPress make it easy to add the iTunes information
Size of Feed Issues (512k)
This is neither a Feedburner or PowerPress issue. It is in RSS guildeline.
What if Feedburner went out of business? (very unlikely – UPDATE – VERY LIKELY)
You would hope that Google would provide a way to redirect your feedburner feed to your new solution. If they don't, you would need to (for example) resubmit your feed with a slightly new name. Once it was in iTunes you could change the name back. It's a pain in the butt
What if Blubrry or the lead developer of PowerPress go out of business?
There is a feature in PowerPress that lets you redirect iTunes to a new feed. In the event Angelo retires, blubrry would hire a new developer to continue to support PowerPress. As your fed is on your site there is also a solution called a 303 redirect (a bit technical) that your web host could implement to redirect people to your new feed.
What if My Web Host Goes Out of Business and I'm using PowerPress?
You would order new hosting, redirect your domain name, and as long as your new website was set up like your old one the RSS feed location would be the same. Kinf of like when all Best Buy stores were set up identical. You would go in and turn right to go to computer. If you're using feedburner, you simply login to feedburner and enter the new RSS feed location (which should be the same as the old one if you're moving from WordPress to wordpress).
UPDATE 08-19-14
Feedburner has not been upadted in years, and technically is out of date with iTunes specs (the one thing it was useful for). Both Libsyn.com and Blubrry.com state the #1 support issue is Feedburner issues. I do NOT recommend using Feedburner. This podcast now uses the feed directly from Libsyn.com to reduce the strain on my server, and (in a nutshell) to keep things simple. While powerpress will not mess up your feed, other plugins may cause your feed to become invalid. Yes, this means I have to post notes in two places but I like the stability.
Thanks Dave! I enjoyed being on the show and I’m glad you EDIT 🙂
-Mike
Hey Dave! Thanks for taking my question. As of right now I’m not numbering my show and I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to cause a major problem down the road. This is a great interview with Michael – it seems there is always something new to learn about feeds! The new version of the plugin sounds wonderful. Thanks again!
Right now after upgrading, I would recommend waiting. At least for me, its causing some issues on my website (If I make a link, when I save it, the post closes without saving).
Good discussion. But I think this missed some of the things that Feedburner can do that PowerPress can’t: like subscriber stats, easy redirections, email subscriptions, and more feed attachments.
However, I did just realize there’s a huge thing that can potentially be fixed more easily if someone isn’t using Feedburner. That is if a podcaster has sent a single RSS feed everywhere, and then they decide they want to split to a blog-and-podcast feed and a podcast-only feed. Some custom .htaccess coding could redirect just the popular podcatchers, but this would only work if subscribers are subscribed directly to the site feed where .htaccess stuff can be written.
I’ll have to test this more and blog about it later.
Daniel,
If you started on feedburner and know what it really does, then stick with it. As we said over and over, Google isn’t likely to pull the plug on it 🙂
With Blubrry Stats, you can figure out the real subscriber numbers by taking all the podcatcher downloads and using that number. Likely more accurate then feedburner (IMHO)..
If you use blubrry, nothing prevents you from also using feedburner. Just turn off the “Smart Cast” feature and fill out your itunes info on your own website instead of feedburner. Also, you should never use your MAIN wordpress feed for podcasting. You should use a feed that only has your podcast episodes attached. Powerpress does this for you with the podcast only and podcast channel feeds.
You also should NEVER put more then one enclosure per post in a feed. If you want more then one, use separate channels with separate feeds. If you put two in the same post on one feed iTunes will take the last attachment and other feed readers will take the first. It’s also not part of the RSS2 standard. 1 enclosure per post in a feed is the standard…
Enjoy!
-Mike
I’m coming back to this for notes for an upcoming episode I’m doing. I can’t remember what I meant by “more feed attachments.” 😛
I came across your podcast searching on important things to know for new podcast. By the way, its awesome. My question related to RSS feed, I wondering if I can maintain my podcast site through squarespace or do I have transfer my domain to wordpress. I am so confused
Squarespace has a podcasting option, but its not very good. they are great at making great website, but their podcasting technology is fragile. I recommend Libsyn.com for your podcast (use the coupon code sopfree to get a free month). Then you can embed a libsyn player on Your Squarespace website. see https://help.libsynsupport.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041220951-Migrate-a-Podcast-from-Squarespace-to-Libsyn