We’ve received a number of help tickets and tweets lately regarding FeedBurner and podcasting with PowerPress. It appears FeedBurner is having data reporting issues and many podcasters using the service are now looking to move their feeds away from FeedBurner. We feel it’s important to let you know that YOU DO NOT NEED FEEDBURNER TO PODCAST.
If you’re just starting out, we recommend that you avoid FeedBurner. You are better served hosting your feeds on your own website, this helps you keep your branding in the URL as well as gives you full control of your feed address. This approach protects you from the possibility of your feed going offline or the possibility of a feed service modifying your feed’s content with advertising.
Your feed is your intellectual property, it’s the primary means for your content to syndicate to your audience. Avoid handing your intellectual property to someone else.
For Already Established Podcasts Using FeedBurner: Don’t Move!
Do not migrate away from FeedBurner! FeedBurner will only redirect your feed for 30 days. We feel that when you make a feed URL change, the redirect should be in place indefinitely in order to prevent losing subscribers. A one-year window of feed redirection is the minimum we would recommend. Thirty days is not long enough to guarantee that most services and feed readers will detect and make the feed address change.
For Podcasts Just Starting Out: Don’t Use FeedBurner or other Feed Hosted Services!
In 2006, blogging applications such as WordPress and MovableType became mainstream with podcasting capability available via plugins, making FeedBurner’s SmartCast podcasting capabilities irrelevant. There is still a myth that you need to use FeedBurner in order to podcast. Don’t be sold on the myth, you don’t need FeedBurner, or any other feed hosted service for that matter.
Don’t Become Dependent on Other Services
This is where our company philosophy differs with other podcast service providers. Other providers have taken this opportunity to encourage their customers to migrate their FeedBurner feed to a feed provided by that service. The result puts the feed syndication responsibility from FeedBurner to that service, making you 100 percent dependent on that service from that point on. Remember, your feed is your intellectual property, don’t hand it over to someone else.
Support for FeedBurner or other Feed Hosted Services from Blubrry
If you use FeedBurner or some other thirrd party feed-hosting service for your podcast feed, the staff at Blubrry and the PowerPress Podcasting plugin will not be able to assist you with FeedBurner feed related issues in our normal support options. If you do need help with FeedBurner or other feed hosted service, you can hire us as consultants allowing us to work for you to resolve the issue(s). Learn more about our support options.
You can learn more about FeedBurner and podcasting here: Podcast Manual