Number of Episodes [Archive]

jacobroecker

Oct 1st, 2008, 10:32 AM

Is there a built in episode cap on podcasts? I'm trying to podcast the Book of Mormon--one chapter at a time and it seems that the feed readers are broke at a particular chapter.

Feed URL: http://roeckerfam.com/bom.xml

Firefox/flock's RSS readers stop at Alma 28 as well as Amarok. I'm running Linux so I don't know if iTunes is having the same problem or not.

Any information would be useful on this one.

Yotto

Oct 1st, 2008, 02:13 PM

I looked at your feed, and there seems to be an extra </item> tag at the bottom that is causing issues. I got a count of <item> tags vs </item> tags, and there are 165 of both. Therefore, there is also an extra <item> tag somewhere as well.

It is not right at the bottom or right at the top, and I'm not going to look through the other 165 episodes :) but if you find it and delete it (and that </item> at the bottom) I bet your feed will validate with no issue.

There IS a cap on iTunes, but I do not know what it is.

WyethDigital

Oct 1st, 2008, 02:35 PM

There IS a cap on iTunes, but I do not know what it is.

I believe the iTunes cap has more to do with RSS file size than a particular episode limit. I have 70 episodes in my feed that are also listed in the iTunes directory. The limit in my feed is imposed by my host and not iTunes.

I believe the file size limit for RSS 2.0 and mRSS (media RSS) is around 200 KB). That may be what iTunes uses as a limit. Or it could be less. It doesn't seem to be less than 70 :)

Anyway, if someone wants more episodes in their feed, the trick would seem to be to limit the size of your show descriptions, since those eat up a lot of space. Of course, a less descriptive podcast feed means less searchable information in directories, which wouldn't be good, either.

Eric

jacobroecker

Oct 1st, 2008, 03:48 PM

Ok there was an "extra" <item> tag. Actually there was just an unclosed episode. That's what was messing everything up.

It was a bit of a pain finding it and fixing it. Thanks folks--looks like I'm back in business.

Now if you're wanting to listen to the book you can!!! I'm excited. I've got 500 folks listening to the thing and I'd hate to let them down. Me included.

Ya'll rule!

-Jacob Roecker
Trailbrain (http://trailbrain.com/wiki)