There will be times when you need to change the URL of your podcast feed. The problem arises though, that you have submitted your feed to iTunes and other podcast directories using your old URL.
This problem can be resolved proactively by using a redirection service like feedburner to manage your RSS feed, allowing you to change your URL as you wish. This however is no good if you aren’t using feedburner from the start when you submitted your show.
So how do you resolve this problem? There are two steps in fixing it actually – one is to tell your existing podcast subscribers that the URL has moved, the second is to point your old feed to the new location. Both of these solutions assume that your domain names are still current and you still have hosting in both places.
A pre-requisite is that you can actually update your feed with manual entries (i.e. the ability to directly edit your RSS feed).
Telling your existing subscribers
There is a small line of code you need to add to your existing (old) RSS feed, to let your subscribers know that the show has moved. You should leave this code in place for at least two episodes of your show after it has been moved to the new location. The code is:
<itunes:new-feed-url>http://newlocation.com/example.rss</itunes:new-feed-url>Where http://newlocation.com/example.rss is the location of your new feed.
Telling new visitors to your old feed
This part is the trickier part, and it involves modifying your .htaccess file. The good news is that if you follow the instructions then it’s only as hard as editing a text file. In technical terms what we are doing is setting up a 301 redirect, which is an instruction to the web server to redirect all traffic to this particular file, to the new location.
What you need are: the address of your old feed, and the address of your new feed. You will also need FTP access to your web hosting space.
The first step is to download your exising .htaccess file which you will locate in the root (or top level folder) of your hosting directory.
Once downloaded, open the .htaccess file using a basic text editor like notepad.
On a blank line you need to add the following code:
Redirect 301 /podcast/oldfeed/rss.xml http://newdomain.com/feed/newfeed.xml
Notice in the example the first section only shows the path from the existing top level folder, so you exclude everything from http:// to the first /
You’ll also see that the second part of the redirect shows the full path of the new web address including http://
Once done, save the file and upload the file to the same location as you downloaded it from.
You can test that everything has worked, by typing your old feed URL, and what you should see is that it automatically redirects you to the new location.
If it doesn’t do this, check your code for errors.
Drop me a comment on the blog post if you hit any challenges, or have questions and I’ll see what I can do to help.
Hi James,
Thanks for this post, and I was wondering if you could help me with something. I would like to change the feed iTunes is using for my podcast, however I set everything up through Feedburner. Also, I publish everything through a Blogger blog.
So it’s basically:
Blogger->burned feedburner feed->itunes->hey, hooray magic!->oh no i want to change something->I’m stuck. :(
I originally started my podcast on the same blog as my written blog. I recently had some issues with the feed length that lead to some early episodes being dropped, and so now I’m thinking I just may as well get it on it’s own feed.
I’ve scoured feedburners help section, and Apple’s forum, and still haven’t been able to figure out how to change the feed, if you originally set everything up through Feedburner.
I know I need to add the tag you outline above, but it seems there’s no way for me to even access the XML file and edit this manually.
Do you have any idea how to change the feed that iTunes is using when said feed was originally set up in FeedFurner?
Andrew,
This is a great question – now I understand that you have your blogger RSS feed going to iTunes but via Feedburner. This is a brilliant scenario to have because this is exactly what Feedburner is made for.
The good news is you don’t need to follow any of the blog post instructions… just these steps:
Firstly, migrate your blog to the new platform, or manually create your new podcast feed
Next, take the new RSS feed URL and plug that into feedburner as your original feed.
This is how you do it…
Login to feedburner and select your feed. Choose edit details, and the modify your orignal feed. In this field, it should say something like blogger.com….rss.xml, you need to change this to the URL of your new RSS feed.
Once done, ping Feedburner, wait 10 minutes, then ping iTunes.
It will pick up the new feed via Feedburner and you will see the episodes change in iTunes. It may take a little while for iTunes to refresh, but it will eventually pick up your changed feed.
Here’s an interesting problem. My podcast feed was set up with itunes using posterous.com, a website/blog tool that doesn’t allow true html coding beyond some recognized embed codes. I want to change the location of my feed to a WordPress site I maintain so I have more control over the tags that populate the info in itunes.
I know I could just re-apply for a new podcast within itunes, but is there another way to change your feed setting if you are unable to send the http://newlocation.com/example.rss tag through the current feed.
I have tried to contact posterous a number of times about this to see if there is a way to slide this code through, but they have failed to get back to me.
You’re right, it is an interesting problem.
Thanks for contributing to the conversation. I’m not sure that I have great news for you.
My take is that setting up a podcast on a public service like Posterous is great until you want to move it. I can understand why you’re not getting much of a response from them regarding the change of feed, but I’m sure they don’t have the bandwidth to individually support individual requests. They would also probably not risk their service to allow this type of change.
I would always recommend that if you are using any public service to host your podcast, you use a service like Feedburner to manage your RSS feed.
I’m sorry I don’t have a quick and easy answer for you on this.
James
Thanks for explaining this, every site I have read assumes I know way more about code and my server than I do. I know NOTHING. I am hosting my website on Bluehost and I started out using the standard .com/feed/ and submitted it to iTunes. Now I have created a Feedburner account and installed the plugin, but I still need to tell iTunes that I have switched. I have understood your instructions, I just don’t know how to edit my RSS code. Where can i access it, within WordPress? On Bluehost? Also, here is my htaccess code, where do I add the 301 line?
—-
Thank you for your help!
Thane,
Thanks for the question – you’re thinking too deep about this problem and there’s no need to delve into the htaccess code. The easiest way to redirect is to use a plugin, try John Godley’s redirection plugin. Then you simply configure the plugin to redirect people who hit your feed, and point them to your feedburner…
So the configuration is old address: e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed
To the new address: e.g. feeds.feeburner.com/yoursiteonfeedburner
On bluehost WordPress installations it’s a matter of going to the Plugins tab and clicking add new and typing “redirection” in the search bar. When you find the plugin click install.
I hope this helps.
Cheers,
James
James, thanks for the informative post.
Quick question:
I have a client that wants to change his current podcast feed (from which iTunes is pulling) to a feedburner feed. Here’s the problem. He doesn’t want to disrupt his feed or lose listeners by putting the burden on them to re-subscribe.
I have dealt with this issue for other clients, but none of them cared whether listeners had to re-subscribe.
Is there a way to do this?
Thanks,
Jeff
Hi there,
I have a similar but slightly different issue. I set up our podcast feed, but that feed also has all of our blog posts. So I set up a new feed that just has the podcast posts. Now I have two feeds, the whole blog and the podcast. I want our rss subscribers to stay on the blog feed, and I want iTunes to change to the new feed.
I use blogger and feedburner, is there a way to just move the iTunes pointer?
thanks,
-marc
Jeff,
I can’t see the problem with your client issue. As long as the base RSS feed remains the same. All you do is give feedburner your RSS feed. Your previous listeners won’t be listening via feedburner, but nobody should lose their feed.
All feedburner is doing is creating an alias for your feed, and a way to change your feed… so if your feed is yoursite/feed/rss.xml and you’re using that same feed URL in feedburner. It’s all the same… it’s just that your new subscibers will be taking the feed via feedburner.
The problem will arise – however – if your base RSS feed changes.
Thanks for the question – and I hope this info helps.
Regards,
James
Mark, I think you should try reporting this to Apple via the Report A Problem option in the iTunes store for your Podcast, and see if they can fix it for you manually. Explain that the feed address for this podcast has changed… before you do that however, you may want to burn the feed using Feedburner, so next time it changes you can do this yourself, rather than needing Apple’s intervention.