WordPress iTunes Feed Apostrophes

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  possiblyunsafe · Member · Mar 17, 2015 at 11:25 pm

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  Hi, it looks like WordPress is doing weird encoding of single quotes/apostrophes. Every one gets turned into ' or ’

  Itunes doesn’t decode these characters so the feed looks like garbage. Is there any way to disable this encoding?

  Thanks

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  thatrobyn · Member · Mar 18, 2015 at 5:38 pm

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  Hey there!

  The only apostrophes I am seeing in your last post are in the body of the post. When I looked at the corresponding iTunes podcast, I am seeing your apostrophes appear correctly in the text:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_PxW2G_ukY

  Could you explain further where I can view this issue? Thanks much.

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  possiblyunsafe · Member · Mar 19, 2015 at 5:54 am

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  I ended up removing the apostrophes from the beginning of the post just in case Apple denied adding it to the podcast directory.

  I guess the easiest way to show the issue is to try subscribing to this feed on iTunes:
  http://possiblyunsafe.com/category/podcast/feed/
  (Here’s a link to a screenshot)
  Notice the description field. This is the same text as the YT video that you linked.

  Maybe iTunes fixes the special characters once you’re in the directory, but direct RSS subscriptions still definitely have an issue.

  Thanks!

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  thatrobyn · Member · Mar 19, 2015 at 11:21 pm

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  I just wanted to let you know that I’m talking to staff about this issue! You are not forgotten :)

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  possiblyunsafe · Member · Mar 20, 2015 at 3:04 am

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  Thanks Robyn!

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  possiblyunsafe · Member · Mar 20, 2015 at 3:06 am

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  I just noticed that my initial question was confusing because the forums automatically converted the code back into apostrophes. You can see it in the screenshot, but they are &#8217 ;s.

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  thatrobyn · Member · Mar 21, 2015 at 11:35 pm

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  Excellent! Thanks for this added information…I’ll pass it along to our iTunes gurus and see what they say!

  Talk soon :)

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  dustinhartzler · Staff · Mar 23, 2015 at 6:56 pm

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  Hey there!

  While I’m not technically an iTunes guru, I’d definitely recommend that you follow the steps here and submit your RSS feed to Feedburner, then Feedburner to iTunes. This will ultimately give you the most control of your feed and it’s how I personally have my podcast set up:

  Create a Podcast

  Hope this helps!

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  possiblyunsafe · Member · Mar 23, 2015 at 8:37 pm

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  Thanks Dustin. That’s how I have it setup for my official iTunes feed but going through feed burner still has the same apostrophe issue. If there is a setting for fixing the apostrophe encoding in Feedburner I’d love to know though.

  You can see that here, even with SmartCast enabled.
  http://feeds.feedburner.com/PUTest
  (iTunes Screenshot)

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  dustinhartzler · Staff · Mar 24, 2015 at 2:49 pm

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  I wonder if it has anything to do with the YouTube player at the top of the post.

  Could you try adding some different text (so we can see if it’s working) in the excerpt field? And then re-ping your feed, which can be found under the Troubleshootize tab.

  On my podcast feed, I use apostrophes and they come thru fine in iTunes.

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  possiblyunsafe · Member · Mar 25, 2015 at 4:07 am

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  I changed the text, pinged the feed, and even removed the Youtube video but still have the same issue.

  The apostrophe codes show up before even hitting feedburner
  (you can see them in the raw WordPress feed http://possiblyunsafe.com/category/podcast/feed/ )

  Do different themes handle text encoding differently?

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  dustinhartzler · Staff · Mar 26, 2015 at 1:26 pm

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  Hey there!

  The interesting thing is that the apostrophe is not displaying correctly in Feedburner feed, but not in iTunes.

  I’ve spent some time digging into what’s going on and I’m not finding anything that’s helpful.

  The good news is that we will be adding some functionality this week to add more granular control on what information is set for podcast episodes. If you can wait until tomorrow, I’ll provide an update on the new functionality :)

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  possiblyunsafe · Member · Apr 2, 2015 at 11:06 pm

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  Any update on the granular control? Thanks!

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  dustinhartzler · Staff · Apr 3, 2015 at 6:31 pm

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  We now have podcasting support inside of WordPress.com!

  You can find out more from your WordPress Dashboard under Settings > Media.

  This will allow you to have more control of your episodes, plus, things will be encoded properly for iTunes, which should resolve the apostrophe issue.

  Give it a try and let me know if you have any questions!

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  possiblyunsafe · Member · Apr 3, 2015 at 9:37 pm

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  Cool! I’m a non-stop problem-fest, but it looks like the Podcast Summary field is replacing all of the episode summaries in iTunes. Example feed:
  http://possiblyunsafe.com/category/podcast/feed
  Image

  Is this the intended behavior?

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  dustinhartzler · Staff · Apr 4, 2015 at 10:15 am

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  You can control each individual episode summary by creating a custom excerpt:
  https://en.support.wordpress.com/splitting-content/excerpts/