BloggingAmigos

In my last post I talked about podcasting and I figured I’d continue. RSS feeds are something that are important to me. If you’re creating content for the internet, having an RSS feed that has accurate, up-to-date information, and is something you’re comfortable with is very important. You might remember the main reason I didn’t like podPress is because of what it did to my RSS feed.

Since I have a Joomla installation for my podcast website, I needed something to create an RSS feed for iTunes. A co-worker of mine suggested Podcast RSS Buddy. This is a cheap, somewhat easy to use program that includes five free uses, then it costs about $20 to purchase a license. This program is made for iTunes so it has the proper fields all ready for you to fill in. Having this feature is one step up from just using the auto-generated feed from your blog.

I used this tool for almost 15 months until I decided it was time to move on to something more complicated. If you’re not very tech savvy, this is a program I think would work well for you. I like to tweak things and sometimes start all over and rebuild something I’ve created. This is where I ran into some problems.

When I formatted my computer and re-installed the software, everything worked fine until I tried to import my feed. When I imported the feed, that Podcast RSS Buddy made, it couldn’t find several of my items, put several items out of order, and some of the data wasn’t correct. There also appears to be no way to re-order items within the feed. Another problem I ran into was that changing or updating the podcast information would sometimes make some of my episodes disappear. After I fixed the missing episodes, my updated podcast information would be gone. To be fair, the program is still a work in progress so there are some bugs to still be worked out.

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Built-in fields for iTunes
• Cheap (with 5 free uses)

Cons:

• Data doesn’t transfer well between machines
• Import function does not always work
• Some bugs still present in software

If you’re wanting to just try something, I would suggest giving this program a whirl. You get five free uses. If you’re planning to be creating a podcast feed long-term, I would suggest maybe looking for another program to fit your needs.