WP-iPodCatter: WordPress iTunes Podcast Directory Plugin

The WP-iPodCatter plugin help podcasters running WordPress create a valid feed for iTunes’ podcast directory and specify the itunes:duration and itunes:explicit tags on a per-episodes basis.

Download WP-iPodCatter 14 February 20067

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How To Use WP-iPodCatter

  1. Upload the contents of wp-content/plugins to your plugins folder and replacement rss file to your wordpress root.
  2. Activate the plugin.
  3. Set your iTunes tags in the Options -> WP-iPodCatter panel.

WP-iPodCatter is released under the GNU General Public License.

Version History
14 February 2007
Changed how databases are accessed to comply with a change in future WordPress versions.

06 November 2006
Added Zeug’s layout improvement

01 July 2006
Updated to reflect changes to iTunes directory categorization.

09 March 2006
This version is a patch graciously offered by Bruce Moyle, “The patch corrects the use of invalid characters in the itunes tags and also the subtitle length issue (which is still there in the latest version).”

1.6 (Released 23 January 2006)
– itunes:keywords now separated with commas
– itunes:subtitle now limited to 254 characters
– itunes:summary is now limited to 4000 characters, thanks Ashley

1.5.1 (Released 8 January 2006)
– Compatible with WordPress 2.0
– Solved a problem where keywords and durations wouldn’t be saved correctly
– Removed automatic duration detection and shipping without getid3 library cause it was giving me a headache

1.5 (Released 17 December 2005)
– Updated to support the revised iTunes Podcast Spec (deprecated support for itunes:category at the item level – blah!)
– Duplicate itunes:duration custom field bug solved (fingers-crossed)
– Fixed some issues with ampersands and other characters not escaping correctly
– Extra special thanks to Christian Wach for pulling this revision together. It wouldn’t exist without him. Chris, did I miss anything?

1.0 (Released 31 August 2005)
– All variables from the replacement wp-rss2.php file moved into the WP-iPodCatter section in WordPress admin Options tab.
– Updated wp-rss2.php file
– Support for itunes:block at an individual post level
– Support for Channel level category
– iTunes’ categories are now listed in the plugin
– Support for itunes subcategories
– Support for itunes:explicit at overall podcast level and individual post level
– Enter itunes:keywords manually or use wordpress categories
– Preview cover images within WordPress admin area.
– Turn your comments feed into a podcast using the replacement wp-commentsrss2.php file
– Automatically detects duration better

0.7.5 (Released 14 July 2005)
– Bug fix. “Works much better! ” – Chuck from ChuckChat

0.7 (Released 07 July 2005)
– Added support for itunes:duration tag, both manual entry and automatic detection.

0.5 (Released 06 July 2005)
– Hello World

85 thoughts on “WP-iPodCatter: WordPress iTunes Podcast Directory Plugin

  1. if you did duration and per-show explicit tags as well I’d love you long time!

    Would be nice to have text boxes for the other categories.

    But hey I’m not listed after 6 days so may never be anyway!

  2. when i use your plugin, i get a…

    Fatal error: Call to undefined function: str_ireplace() in /Websites/pms/php/blog/wp-content/plugins/wp-ipodcatter.php on line 81

    right after my enclosuer… help!

  3. str_ireplace is a php 5-only function. Try changing str_ireplace to str_replace (remove the ‘i’) and let me know if that works for you.

  4. yeah, i don’t know what happened, I moved your RSS file back in and everything worked fine…

    maybe i forgot to enable the plugin?

    i dunno…

  5. I’m getting this error when trying to submit my podcast to iTunes:

    Error parsing feed: Invalid XML: Error on line 96: XML document structures must start and end withing the same entity.

    Does it matter that I renamed wp-rss2.php to wp-itunes-rss2.php?

  6. Just installed the latest version on Friday, but even though I mark my posting a “NOT EXPLICIT”, the feed still shows Yes in the explicit field. Is this a bug that has been reported already..?

    Thanks,
    J.

  7. I’m running WP 1.5.

    I had to revert back to the stock WP wp-rss2.php: after installing the iPodCatter wp-rss2.php file, nobody’s reader — even the permissive NetNewsWire nor Firefox’s Feedview extension — could read the feed.

    🙁

    Maybe I’m not doing it right, I don’t know. … or maybe there’s something about WP 1.5 as opposed to later versions?

    Where should troubleshooting start?

    Anyway, I thank you for all the effort you have already put into iPodCatter, which is needed!

    A U S T I N ,

    Cinema Minima

  8. Hi Garrick,
    Are you still actively working on the plugin? If not, I’m planning to update the plugin as follows:

    1) Enable setting of “channel-level” parameters via the Admin’s ‘Options’ menu page.
    Each would get a text box, description, etc.
    This would include the title, copyright, block, category, subcategory, explicit, keywords, owner, subtitle, image and summary tags.

    The above tags are at the channel or “station” level.

    2) Enable setting of all the appropriate itunes tags at the “item” (“episode”) level as additional fields in the post forms (regular and advanced)

    author (artist) — use poster name as default but can be changed for when you’re posting on behalf of the artist

    block, category, subcategory, explicit, keywords
    — use values from the channel’s settings as defaults.

    duration (as is already implemented by WP-iPodCatter)

    subtitle — iTunes description of the episode

    image — image for just this episode. Different from the channel’s image. Default to channel’s image.

    summary — extended description of the episode.

    3) The iTunes RSS tags file http://phobos.apple.com/static/iTunesRSS.html
    implies that podcast channel has at most 1 category/subcategory. An episode can also have, at most, 1 category/subcategory.

    Does anyone know differently?

    Regards,

    Larry

  9. This is the line I keep geeting errors on. I am using the new version 1.0
    \ A view from the couch!

    shouldn’t the tag be

    I am new with this and love your itunes work because itune has been a buster for me. When this is working I will donate for your work.
    much thank
    John bennie

  10. I have been working on this for about 3 weeks and every time I replace the wp-rss2 file with the iTunes file, it breaks the whole rss feed for the site. I get an error for line 91 column 1. I even had a php coder at work look at the file and he can find nothing wrong, but the rss error continues. Any suggestions on resolving this?

  11. Garrick, I just found the post at WP forums about the getid3 file not being included and as soon as I located that and uploaded it to the site, everything started working great.
    Suggestion: put a link to the discussion over at WordPress on you site. It helped me a lot.
    Thanks for a great tool.

  12. Another error question: When I activate the plug-in I get

    Fatal error: Call to undefined function: is_plugin_page() in /usr/local/4admin/apache/vhosts/mombo.org/httpdocs/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wp-ipodcatter.php on line 11

    Any thoughts?

  13. is there some kind of documentation (except those relatively useless 3 lines above) on how to actually use this plugin?
    what do i have to do where to get a podcast up and running?
    yes, I have to put the mp3s somewhere, but what do i do then?

  14. I’m having issues with my feed when using this plugin. It isn’t validating for a couple of reasons, a couple of which would be solved if the plugin used my post summary instead of entire post for the [itunes:description].

    You can see my validator results here:

    http://tinyurl.com/bkzdx

    Thanks so much for this plugin, I can’t wait to get my feed working. 🙂

  15. I´m trying to use it to a videoblog, and works but there is a problem with the database. I have 15 or more itunes:duration items in my wordpress database without a value. Could it be a detect duration problem? Can I disable duration detection?

  16. Very much liking what you’ve done with this plugin so far.
    One request:
    We need the ability to vary the author/artist of the content on a per post basis – this needs to be independant of the user publishing the post.

    keep up the good work

    – james

  17. After installing your plugin, I still don’t have the WP-i
    in my options menu. Instead I’m getting this error message about the plugin.

    Fatal error: Call to undefined function: wp_ipodcatter_config() in /usr/www/users/rwilkins/blog/wp-content/plugins/wp-ipodcatter.php on line 11

    Line 11 is referencing this file but I don’t have a config file in any of the directories. Is that the problem?
    wp_ipodcatter_config

  18. So I setup wp-ipodcatter, but it doesn’t seem to work right. First, it tried to install its files to /wp-content/wp-plugins so I moved all those files to wp-content/plugins where it belongs. Then I activated the plugin and it showed up in the options menu. But changing the options for the plugin seems to have no effect whatsoever on the contents of the feed itself. what gives?

  19. while trying to add my feed to iTunes they responded with this message…any idea how I can fix it?

    Dear Podcast Creator,

    This is to inform you that your podcast has been removed from the iTunes Music Store because of a technical problem with your feed.

    If your problem can be resolved, you can fix it in your RSS feed, and then re-submit your podcast to the Music Store.

    Sincerely,

    The Music Store Team

  20. I had a couple problems with this, both related. It didn’t like ampersands & or # signs.

    #1 the category Arts & Culture was gagging with the message
    The XML page cannot be displayed
    Cannot view XML input using XSL style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the Refresh button, or try again later.
    Whitespace is not allowed at this location. Error processing resource ‘http://radio.bonsaitalk.com/feed/’. Line 23, Positi…

    Art & Culture
    ——————-^

    similar error on the Arts & Entertainment
    —————————^

    #2 Same thing was happening on the phrase, which appears in each of my podcasts. It didn’t like the # sign, so I tried   before it but it still gagged.

    Reference to undefined entity ‘nbsp’. Error processing resource ‘http://radio.bonsaitalk.com/feed/?a=11’. Line 75, Positio…

    Download Program #03
    ——————–^

    Regards,

    Matt

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  22. I’m having some trouble with getting keywords and duration to work. When I fill it out and then save, the information I’ve entered seems to get lost. This is in spite of having set the option to manual in the settings.

    Other than that, thanks for making this great plug-in and saving a ton of people a lot of very boring work. 🙂

  23. HAs any one tried upgrading to wordpress 2.0 who is using this plugin? It is not listed as a plug in that works and is not listed as one that doesw not work. Is this plugin needed in the same way with the 2.0 version of WP? I would love to know from someone who has tried it before I give it a shot.

  24. It seems to work (mostly). I set up a test blog with WordPress 2.0 and iPodCatter, the feed validated okay. Upon examining the feed, I noticed that dc:creator and itunes:author are empty. I have not found any other error. In fact, the newest version of iPodCatter definitely fixes some problems. The new wp-rss2.php in wp2.0 works a little different, so I’m assuming that a minor chance to that will be in order.

  25. Everything is good so far – the new update fixed a few things. However, there is still an issue with the description length – the posts with the episodes tend to be sort of long on the mixtape show site, so feedvalidator.org gives me errors saying that it is exceeding the 4000 word limit. Any workarounds or fixes for this? Otherwise good ish…thanks!

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  27. Just wondering if there is a way to add iTunes keywords for individual posts? My category is named “Music Podcasts” and it won’t validate because it says I need to use commas to seperate keywords. I would like to be able to put in customized keywords for each post.

  28. Noticed this: If your podcast’s file-format is m4a/mp4, it is not recognized and added to the rss file as an enclosure. I don’t know if that is hard to do or not, but I do know that the new Podcast-friendly version of GarageBand will use the .m4a and/or .mov file formats.

    BTW – I apologize if you have tried to reach me for Mac testing. My e-mail has been down. I’ve included another one with this comment.

  29. I’m using WP 2.0 and wp-ipodcatter and it’s working great except I’ve found myself in the unique situation where I’m using a single WP installation to serve a number of podcasts. I’m organizing each show in it’s own category and this works great for creating a unique RSS feed for each show, but I’m having problems because I want the itunes:subtitle and itunes: summary fields to be unique for each WP category. Instead they are being set by wp-ipodcatter off the WP install information and there’s no way I can customize them for each category, thus my unique feeds on iTunes are showing up with the general level description and not a description for each show.

    So suggestions.. would it be possible to allow wp-ipodcatter to have unique subtitles and summaries for each category, or allow a way I can manually override these for each post? I hate to have to do a separate WP install for each show but that’s the only way I can think of to fix this? I’ve even tried passing this feed through feedburner but they don’t allow editing of those itunes fields either.

    Thanks
    -Matt
    Geeky Volunteer for Community Radio WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, ME

  30. WordPress Mu Support? Hi Garrick, this looks like exactly the kind of tool we need at the university I work at. Only problem is we’re using WordPress MU. There’s a post in your forums saying you’ve got a version ready to upload. Does that fix it?

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