Godaddy Hosting and RSS Feeds / Applications not working

By default, GoDaddy Windows shared hosting does not support rss applications. You have to edit / create a web.config in the top level of the hosted site with the following text.

<configuration>

                <system.webServer>

                                <staticContent> <mimeMap fileExtension=".rss" mimeType="application/rss+xml" /> <mimeMap fileExtension="rss" mimeType="application/rss+xml" /> </staticContent>

                </system.webServer>

</configuration>

The above adds the mime type for rss applications. In IIS6 you’d probably have to do this by accessing the IIS manager.

After hours of working through the feed, testing on different servers, and getting nowhere, I stumbled on an article for adding mime types by using the web.config file. I want to mention that calling tech support produced little results. All the rep kept telling me was that advanced tech support told him that rss extensions work on the server. When asked for further information, he repeated the previous statement. I tried asking to speak with advanced tech support but customer support does not allow direct communication. In addition, I attempted to ask about direction for configuring IIS7 to support RSS and he said it already does. In the end I thanked him for his patience but left the conversation feeling like I wasted a half hour.

On a lighter note, Feed Validator was a huge help in diagnosing some other issues with the feed (http://feedvalidator.sourceforge.net/ ). I ended up fixing a bunch of errors in the feed (few hundred) related to invalid date formats, missing tags, etc.

After finishing the validation, I pinged ITunes to manually update the added episodes from when the feed stopped working. Just add your Podcast ID number at the end of the following link. Took about five minutes for ITunes to update.

 https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast?id=

An update, Apple dropped the ping ability back in February. No more updating or checking feed by ping test. Annoying...