Podcasting & RSS 2.0: FeedBurner no more

Posted by Daniel Stout on Mon 28 Aug 2006 at 6:29 AM

Well, we’ve completely broken away from using FeedBurner for our RSS feeds here. The last remaining feed, Manufactured Podcasts, I brought back in house recently. The thing is that I knew FeedBurner had offered some capabilities for enhancing the RSS feed for podcasting. My goal was to do that myself without needing to use a service. I’m using the template-driven Movable Type, which worked perfectly for my aims. First, I took a look at the Apple iTunes podcast technical specs page. This had all the information I needed to get our podcast RSS feed burning brightly.

Once I had the details in hand, I set about tweaking the template for the RSS feed. We’re already using templates that I had heavily tweaked for my needs. The feeds even already had the enclosure tags necessary for podcasting. All in all, it was a fairly easy tweak. I wondered then why so many people use FeedBurner when it’s easy to do yourself. Here’s a look at our edited template:

<$MTHTTPContentType type=”application/rss+xml”$><?xml version=”1.0” encoding=”<$MTPublishCharset$>”?>
<rss version=”2.0” xmlns:dc=”http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/” xmlns:geo=”http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#” xmlns:itunes=”http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd”>
<channel>
<title><$MTBlogName remove_html=”1” encode_xml=”1”$></title>
<link><$MTBlogURL$></link>
<itunes:author>Dan Stout and Faust Gertz</itunes:author>
<itunes:summary>Podcasts on poetry, cocktails, music and more from the Manufactured Environments studios.</itunes:summary>
<itunes:subtitle><$MTBlogDescription remove_html=”1” encode_xml=”1”$></itunes:subtitle>
<description><$MTBlogDescription remove_html=”1” encode_xml=”1”$></description>
<language><$MTBlogLanguage ietf=”1”$></language>
<copyright>Copyright &#xA9; <$MTDate format=”%Y”$> Dan Stout</copyright>
<lastBuildDate><MTEntries lastn=”1”><$MTEntryDate format_name=”rfc822”$></MTEntries></lastBuildDate>
<generator>http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=<$MTVersion$></generator>
<docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
<itunes:owner>
<itunes:name>Dan Stout</itunes:name>
<itunes:email>stoutdan@gmail.com</itunes:email>
</itunes:owner>
<itunes:image href=”http://manufacturedenvironments.com/media/manufacturedpodcasts.jpg” />
<itunes:category text=”Arts” />
<itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
<itunes:keywords>manufactured, environments, podcasts, poetry, poems, recitation, cocktails, stout, dan, daniel, faust, gertz</itunes:keywords>
<ttl>30</ttl>
<managingEditor>stoutdan@gmail.com</managingEditor>
<webMaster>stoutdan@gmail.com</webMaster>
<image>
<title><$MTBlogName encode_xml=”1”$></title>
<url>http://manufacturedenvironments.com/media/rss.jpg</url>
<link><$MTBlogURL$></link>
<width>88</width>
<height>31</height>
</image>
<geo:lat>41.658210</geo:lat>
<geo:long>-91.471313</geo:long>

<MTEntries lastn=”15”>
<item>
<title><$MTEntryTitle remove_html=”1” encode_xml=”1”$></title>
<description>
<$MTEntryBody encode_xml=”1”$>
<MTEntryIfExtended><$MTEntryMore encode_xml=”1”$></MTEntryIfExtended>
<MTEntryIfTagged><![CDATA[<p class=”technorati”>Tags: <MTEntryTags glue=” “><a href=”http://manufacturedenvironments.com/podcasts/tag/<$MTTagName encode_url=”1”$>” rel=”tag”><$MTTagName$></a></MTEntryTags></p>]]></MTEntryIfTagged>
</description>
<link><$MTEntryPermalink encode_xml=”1”$></link>
<guid isPermaLink=”true”><$MTEntryPermalink encode_xml=”1”$></guid>
<category><$MTEntryCategory remove_html=”1” encode_xml=”1”$></category>
<pubDate><$MTEntryDate format_name=”rfc822”$></pubDate>
<$MTEntryEnclosures mime_exclude=”image”$>
<dc:creator><$MTEntryAuthor$></dc:creator>
<itunes:author><$MTEntryAuthor$></itunes:author>
<MTEntryIfTagged><itunes:keywords><MTEntryTags glue=”, “><$MTTagName$></MTEntryTags></itunes:keywords></MTEntryIfTagged>
</item>
</MTEntries>
</channel>
</rss>

Tags: apple · feedburner · feeds · itunes · movable type · podcasting · rss

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