Podcasts, iTunes, SmartCast, and K2’s broken RSS2 feed

Posted by stuart as , , , , , ,

Well, I’m well on my way with the podcasting project, and I’ve learned some interesting things along the way.

It seems that this kind of work is much harder when the client a) Doesn’t understand the technology,and b) Doesn’t know what they want.

I was given a brief pretty much like this: “I have a podcast, make it go in iTunes and the other podcast directories.”

Sheesh!

Having never had anything to do with podcasts before (other than listening to them), I really had no idea where to start. So after a lot of reading, I came up with this:

1. All based on a WordPress Blog
2. Run the RSS feed through FeedBurner’s “SmartCast” to make it compatible with pretty much everything
3. Give the client a secure upload page to upload their mp3’s to the server
4. Use The “PodPress” WordPress plugin to facilitate the proper iTunes tags, mp3 enclosures etc.
5. Provide the client with written instructions on how to do pretty much everything with WordPress.
6. Charge a freaking fortune to host the whole shebang.

So, it’s all good, right? Wrong. It would appear that the WordPress theme I chose for the job, the ever popular K2, breaks WordPress’ RSS2.0 feed, which is required for podcasting. So after a day of buggerizing around (I wouldn’t know a piece of PHP code from a swarm of ecstacy munching pygmies), I eventually found the problem in the wp-rss2.php file, and fixed it.

So I now have a working podcast feed, what next?

Client wants podcast listed in iTunes. OK, no prob, I just go there and fill in a form, and they list my podcast, right?

Wrong again, stupid!

I need to give apple my VISA card details to open an account there to list my podcast. Hmmm, not too happy about that, but as apple pretty much have the market cornered with iTunes for podcasting, I really have no choice.

So I’ve now done that, my “application” has been succesful, and we’re rockin’!

We’re up to the K2 theme tweaking stage now, as we have all the functionality working as we want it.

Looks like we might make our target of a fully functioning podcasting platform up and running in a week.