Earlier in the year I posted a tip for password protecting your feed. At the time there was a problem with iTunes where it would require the user name and password to be entered every time you tried to update a podcast, unless these were placed in the feed’s URL like so:

http://user:password@www.example.com/feed.xml

Thankfully, the problem has been fixed in iTunes 7.0 and this workaround is no longer required. I have updated the original post on this blog and the Feeder Tips feed to reflect this.

Thanks to Don McAllister of ScreenCastsOnline for letting me know.

Feeder 1.3.5 is now available and this includes support for the new iTunes podcast categories Apple introduced with iTunes 6.0.5 last week.

Feeder will upgrade any existing categories using the same mappings as FeedBurner, so all you need to do is publish your feed again. You may want to review the new categories to see if any of those fit your podcast better – you can do this in the iTunes section of the Info drawer.

Apple says it could take up to two weeks for changes to your categories to take effect in the iTunes Music Store, so bear that in mind when checking your changes. It also appears to be taking some time for the new categories to be populated, but I understand Apple is working on that.

FeedValidator has also been updated to support the new categories, so if FeedValidator says your feed is valid and you are having problems with the iTunes Music Store, your best course of action is to check Apple’s Producing Podcasts discussion forum, otherwise please get in touch.

Apple has reorganised their podcast categories with the release of iTunes 6.0.5 and podcasters listed in the iTunes Music Store will have received an email informing them of the new categories.

Expect a Feeder update soon to deal with these changes. Thanks. 😀

Podcasting in iTunes is one year old today. How the last year has flown! Feeder has been there since the beginning (and even before), it hasn’t always been a smooth ride but we got there in the end. It’s also interesting to see from the post I just linked to how much iTunes has changed in that short time.

Apple has a special page on iTunes to celebrate with a lot of the original podcasts on there. It’s great to see Feeder-using TWiT and the MacCast present and still going strong, along with a number of other really cool podcasts that show what the medium should be all about! 😀

A quick and easy way to password protect a feed is to set your web server to require HTTP authentication for the directory where the feed and any enclosure files reside. Here are some instructions on how to set up this authentication with Apache: Comprehensive guide to .htaccess

Authentication Support

All the best RSS readers support this authentication including NetNewsWire, NewsLife and NewsFire. As for podcatchers, iTunes and Juice Receiver support this but iPodderX (renamed Transistr) needs the URL tweaked – see the workaround below. Also there are the online services: NewsGator supports it, Bloglines needs the URL tweaked (again, see below) but Google Reader didn’t support it at the time of writing.

Feeder supports HTTP authentication for downloading, reloading and previewing feeds.

Workaround

iPodderX and Bloglines can’t read a normal URL that requires authentication. The workaround is to include the user name and password in the URL itself. For example:

http://user:password@www.example.com/feed.xml

This URL also works in the other RSS reader applications mentioned above.

Updated September 15, 2006 – iTunes 7.0 no longer requires the workaround mentioned above.