Some nameless author over at Digital Podcast (I can't believe how many people don't have their names under their articles...weird) has written a little tutorial on shortening web addresses. This may seem arcane to some, but Mr. Nameless has a point when he says that podcast feed addresses should be short and memorable in order to pass around.
I think than 99.9999% of us would simply push our feeds through Feedburner and have an address like feeds.feedburner.com/mypodcastfeed, but for some reason that's not suitable for Mr. Nameless. In order to get a nice short URL, he uses a combination of Feedburner, Apache Rewrite rules, and a little good old fashioned javascript.
Personally, I don't see the point of all of this. If people ask for my podcast feed, I simply give them my main blog address and tell them that there are subscribe buttons on the page. I don't see a circumstance where I would be reading out some "really long URLs with lots of slashes and what not."
But I'm only one guy and maybe the rest of the world is different. if you're feeling a little intrepid and want to have the ultimate control over your feed url, the take a stroll over to Digital Podcast.
The name is Alex. And thanks for reading and commenting about the post. I'll add fixing the lack of my name on the posts to my long list of improvements to make.
The reason for not using the feedburner address is simple - I'd rather not have my feeds listed with a domain under someone else's control. It may be great now, but who knows how things will change as podcasting commercializes. That small bit of real estate in people's RSS reader or iTunes is nice to have.
I have seen to many people complain that they want to change their feed addresses and can't because they've given out a feed address and now they have to ask their listeners to change the feed address - a great way to see all your hard work of building a listener base wiped out.
As for my passion for short feed URLs, it comes from running a directory and seeing podcast feeds that are so long the owners can't even type them correctly when submitting them.
Welcome to podcasting :)
Best,
Alex
chief cook, bottle washer, programmer, help you fix your podcast, podcast news reporter, fan of short urls, etc, etc.
www.digitalpodcast.com
Thanks for stopping by. Since I've started writing Biz Podcasting full time, it's become startlingly clear to me that many people don't bother to put their names on their blogs or articles.
I think that Feedburner has been around long enough that they've proven themselves. They're reliable, mature, and understand podcasting. I don't share your fears that going through them will leave you high and dry. Further, your argument about having to change feed addresses is precisely one of the strengths of Feedburner. Give out your FB address once and do whatever the heck you'd like on the inside. No chance of wiping your listener base out and, with the promotional and statistical tools that FB provides, every chance to grow your listeners base exponentially.
I do agree that long urls are hard to type into directories, yes. However, as I said in my original post - people don't generally give out their feed url. They give out their base url which contains links to the feeds. People don't type urls into their podcatchers. They cut and paste them.
Thanks for the thoughts and thanks for the welcome. Not sure what the welcome is for since I've been podcasting for over a year, but I'll take it :)
The name is Alex. And thanks for reading and commenting about the post. I'll add fixing the lack of my name on the posts to my long list of improvements to make.
The reason for not using the feedburner address is simple - I'd rather not have my feeds listed with a domain under someone else's control. It may be great now, but who knows how things will change as podcasting commercializes. That small bit of real estate in people's RSS reader or iTunes is nice to have.
I have seen to many people complain that they want to change their feed addresses and can't because they've given out a feed address and now they have to ask their listeners to change the feed address - a great way to see all your hard work of building a listener base wiped out.
As for my passion for short feed URLs, it comes from running a directory and seeing podcast feeds that are so long the owners can't even type them correctly when submitting them.
Welcome to podcasting :)
Best,
Alex
chief cook, bottle washer, programmer, help you fix your podcast, podcast news reporter, fan of short urls, etc, etc.
www.digitalpodcast.com
Posted by: Akex Nesbitt | May 24, 2006 12:37 AM | Permalink to Comment