I have been searching for a solution with no luck since the Podcast app originally came out, and had just about given up all hope, until I found this thread. It's frustrating to see those crazy titles persist and yet be so helpless to do anything about it.

I would hate to think that the only way to fix this is to switch to another blogging platform. That would be a bummer, because I'm a huge WordPress fan and longtime user.

thanks

In our case, we draw from the image title as it is essentially the "cover" image.

I have, however, noted your suggestions for possible future enhancements.

... so it turns out that this is working as designed... it's pulling the title for images, not incorrectly naming the podcast.

It looks at the HTML for the post and looks for all the Images and then sets the title based on the tags that appear in the generated HTML giving priority to the title attribute over the alt attribute

If it pulls the title of an image as the post title, then each episode of the podcast is indeed being incorrectly named. I have a podcast setup form an independently hosted WordPress installation and the feed that it is outputting does not include any of the additional <media:title> tags.

Please see if it possible to clean up the XML outputted from WordPress.com, or at least include the option to output a "simple" feed without any unnecessary information such as gravatars and images.

Thanks,
Erik

Where can I add this code and add the info needed for my blog to show properly on itunes store???
Please it has been a year now since I changed the image and the description and till now can do nothing about it.

My blog’s url is : http://casa-egypt.com/
The itunes url is : https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mhtt-kasa-msr-casa-egypt-broadcast/id398177221?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Thanks is advance
Dina

Often doesn't the shows show up when subscribed. But always shows up in the iTunes Store. So the listeners must manually download them.

Sorry to be vague - I'm asking for additional clarification on this. I'll advise when I have more information - sorry for the delay!

Anyhow, i have now moved my site away from WordPress.com to a selfhosted site, and suprise suprise my podcast episodes are now working a treat --Hooray for me

Booooo! for wordpress.com - This really needs sorting and can see this getting a more and more popular issue, possibly an option to turn off your gravatar

I have set up a new test feed on Tumblr and so far the episode names are appearing correctly on the podcast app, and elsewhere. If this can't be sorted behind the scenes, then I suppose I'll have switch to Tumblr.

Why is the Gravatar details even in my rss feed, i get that it uses the images i post in my blog, but why my gravatar?

My podcast posts use to have imagens inside them and once I noticed what you just described I removed them all. And also as described by you now I get all my episodes named after my Gravatar user name, that is "vladcampos". Hera are my podcast episodes if you wish to take a look: http://vladcampos.com/category/podcast

What I don't get is why you are telling us this is the correct behaviour. It doesn't make any sens. If we are creating a podcast feed (audio/video) why is the system grabbing names from images?

It looks at the HTML for the post and looks for all the Images and then sets the title based on the tags that appear in the generated HTML giving priority to the title attribute over the alt attribute.

In the post here the IMG has an alt tag of ‘tpsuk’ and that is used.

The gravatar image gets your username as the title.

So you could go through and make sure that your images are named descriptively for the posts, or leave it as-is.

I hope that helps!

Any update on this problem yet?

I'll see what we can dig up on this.

I'll keep you in the loop!

Thanks for coming back to this one, regarding the different MP3 titles, this is correct and are links to where the MP3 files are held, however in every post in the feed, a few lines under the MP3 file name is a tag <Media:title type="html">

Example
<media:title type="html">tpsuk</media:title>

In-fact the above tag shows up twice per episode/Post in the feed

Now it seems that this tag is being used for every episode name of my podcast (All my epiosdes are called 'tpsuk') when i think it should be using the <title> tag

Example:
<title>082 TpSUK: Platinum Episode</title>

Below is an extract from my feed and i have made bold the mentioned tags

<enclosure url="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9506991/TpSUK/81-90/Episode84/084-MerryEffinChristmas.mp3" length="46655517" type="audio/mpeg"/>
<enclosure url="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9506991/TpSUK/81-90/Episode84/084-MerryEffinChristmas.mp3" length="46655517" type="audio/mpeg"/>
<media:thumbnail url="http://tpsuk.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/0051.jpg?w=147"/>
<media:content url="http://tpsuk.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/0051.jpg?w=147" medium="image">
<media:title type="html">tpsuk</media:title>
</media:content>
<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/d94c3b4e12447dcc4a2eaed3d06ec316?s=96&d=monsterid&r=PG" medium="image">
<media:title type="html">tpsuk</media:title>
</media:content>

When I check the feed, I see different MP3 titles. I do apologize if this isn't quite what you're referring to, and I welcome you to send me a screenshot that shows the error.

In the meantime, Outofthecanon, while I would rather you not leave us, of course, if you get a custom domain for your site you can move that custom domain and your listeners won't have to resubscribe. Of course, you'd have to get them used to coming to your new custom domain (your WordPress.com site would automatically redirect, but you'd want them to be used to the new domain so you can transfer them seamlessly first).

Does that make sense? And I appreciate any links to screenshots so I can investigate the issue further.

Cheers!

It's being pulled from our WordPress.com sites, so it would have to be changed here I guess. Apple aren't going to change how their app works for a few folk like us, are they? There must be some way for someone (an admin?) to make this small tweak to our WordPress code?

If that fails, I am testing a completely fresh (test) podcast through Tumblr to see if that has any problems. If that works, I suppose I'll have to migrate my blog and posts over there, and have listeners resubscribe.

Ahhh... wait. I think I might have cracked it. I can access the XML code through my Feedburner account... I can see the offending tag in all the lines of code.

I will now try amending the code on one of the episodes to see if it works. I will keep you guys updated...

Did you have any joy?, i don't think on WordPress.com we can edit our feed or on feedburner

Can this be Bumped for staff attention again please, these latest info provided by outofthecanon need looking at

I will now try amending the code on one of the episodes to see if it works. I will keep you guys updated...

They sent me an example of the code for my episode 7... in line 52 there is this tag: <media:title>.

She said if that tag was removed then the problem would be resolved.

But I can't figure out how to get to the XML code on WordPress. In fact, I suspect it's not allowed... am I right. It seems like an easy fix though, if I can access my XML code.

Any thoughts?

Sorry for the inconvenience.