Feeder Support
Support Forums
- Support Forum - for support questions.
- Feedback Forum - for general feedback and suggestions.
Email Support
If you can't find an answer in the FAQs or support forums, you can also email feeder@reinventedsoftware.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
These are some frequently asked questions about Feeder. You can also find comprehensive help files in the application by choosing Help > Feeder Help from the main menu.
For questions about sales and registration codes, see the General FAQ.
Publishing
Feeder only seems to upload one file at a time.
Podcasting
My podcast's artwork looks fine in Feeder, but doesn't appear in the iTunes Store.
I've updated my podcast but changes don't appear in the iTunes Store.
Where can I get help with my podcast in the iTunes Store?
Feeds in Other Applications
After deleting items in Feeder they still show up in Safari.
How can I get Safari or other browsers to auto-detect a feed?
Live Bookmarks for my feed fail to load in Firefox.
Misc
Feeder will not accept my registration code.
How can I move Feeder to a clean install of Mac OS X or a new Mac?
Answers
Feeder shows the message "Cannot cd to directory", "Server denied you to change to the given directory" or "No such file" when publishing.
Usually this happens because a path for the feed or server is incorrect. To fix this problem:
- Open the Servers window by choosing Servers from the Window menu.
- Select the server you are using to publish.
- Clear everything out of the Site Folder field.
- Click the Choose button next to the Site Folder field.
- Choose the folder where your web site's files are kept. This is usually called "public_html", "htdocs", "yourdomain.com" or similar.
- Close the Servers window.
The next thing to check is that your feed is set to upload to the correct directory.
- Select the feed in the sidebar.
- Choose Publish Settings from the File menu.
- Clear everything out of the Path field.
- Click the Choose button next to the Path field.
- Choose the folder where your want to store your feed.
- Click Save Changes.
You can then try publishing your feed again.
Feeder only seems to upload one file at a time to my FTP server.
If Feeder only seems to upload one file at a time to an FTP server, try the following.
- Open the Servers window by choosing Servers from the View menu.
- Select the server you are using to publish.
- Click the Options button.
- Uncheck Reuse Connections When Possible.
- Click Save.
- Close the Servers window.
- You can then try publishing your feed again.
My podcast's artwork looks fine in Feeder, but doesn't appear in the iTunes Store.
iTunes makes a copy of your podcast's image on different servers around the world to save you bandwidth. It can take up to a week for your podcast's artwork to appear in the iTunes Store.
To ensure everything is OK do this:
- Click on the artwork box in the iTunes section of the Info drawer.
- Choose Copy Image URL from the menu.
- Paste the URL into a web browser.
If the image appears in your browser, there is not problem. If it doesn't please get in touch.
I've updated my podcast but changes don't appear in the iTunes Store.
The iTunes Store check for updates to your podcast every 24 hours and it could take a couple of days for your changes to appear in the iTunes Store.
Feeder can notify iTunes when changes to your podcast are published, using a ping service. To set this up for your feed:
- Show the Info drawer if it is not already visible by clicking Info in the toolbar.
- Click Settings.
- Go down to the Ping Services section.
- Check "iTunes".
The next time you publish your feed, Feeder will "ping" iTunes to notify it of your changes.
Where can I get help with my podcast in the iTunes Store?
If you are having problems with your podcast in the iTunes Store and your feed is valid according to the FeedValidator, then you may be able to find answers on the Apple site:
After deleting items in Feeder they still show up in Safari.
Safari and some other RSS readers keep a copy of your items for a certain period of time. You can see this period in Safari's RSS preferences.
You can clear Safari's cache of items by clicking the Remove Now button and restarting Safari.
How can I get Safari or other browsers to auto-detect a feed?
Some web browsers (e.g. Safari, Firefox, OmniWeb) and RSS reader apps can auto-detect feeds on a site by checking for an alternate link with type "application/rss+xml" in the <head> section of your web page, similar to this:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="index.xml" />
Live Bookmarks for my feed fail to load in Firefox.
If your feed works in some RSS readers like NetNewsWire or Safari, but you see a "Live Bookmark feed failed to load" message in Firefox, this is because the items in your feed do not have links. Firefox needs a link to give the user somewhere to go when they select the Live Bookmark.
To add a link to your items, enter an http:// web address in the Article Link field for each item.
If you do not have a specific link for each item, use your site's URL.
Why does FeedValidator validate my feed but give the warning 'Your feed appears to be encoded as "utf-8", but your server is reporting "US-ASCII" '?
XML files such as the RSS files created by Feeder state the text encoding at the top of the file, like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
This is correct - XML files created by Feeder are encoded as UTF-8. However, when a newsreader or browser contacts your server to get a file, the server returns a MIME type, which the web server determines by checking the file's extension against a configuration file. If not found, the web server will default the type to something like "text/text", which suggests a default encoding of US-ASCII.
For RSS feeds created by Feeder, the correct MIME type to return is either "application/xml" for a file with a .xml extension, or "application/rss+xml" for a file with a .rss extension. Having either of these MIME types returned will tell the newsreader or web browser to determine the text encoding from the processing instruction in the file rather than the MIME type.
The solution to this problem is to configure your web server to return the correct MIME type. With Apache this can be done using AddType. Contact your system administrator if you are not able to change this yourself.
In practice, newsreader applications tend to ignore the MIME type when determining text encoding, preferring to check the processing instruction in the XML, if at all.
This is also discussed on FeedValidator's help pages.
Feeder will not accept my registration code.
If you are behind a firewall you may have trouble activating Feeder. Please get in touch for a workaround.
How can I move Feeder to a clean install of Mac OS X or a new Mac?
If you intend to perform a clean installation of Mac OS X or another Mac, here's how to move Feeder's files.
Feeder keeps all its files and preferences in two different locations:
- Data: ~/Library/Feeder
- Preferences: ~/Library/Preferences/com.reinvented.Feeder.plist
The tilde character ~ denotes your home directory.
Backup these files and folders before you perform the installation and restore them to the same locations once the installation is complete.