Localized solution for local audience
I have decided to team up with a friend, Hiro Nakano, to make my podcast more frequent and exciting. Hiro is about the most interesting and smartest guy I know and I am really excited about it.
However there is something that has bothering me for a quite a while. I use WordPress for creating the blog, and use FeedBurner to enhance my feed. But both of those are created in US for US audience. Our podcast is created in US but our audience is in Japan. It really wasn’t that much of a big deal, but biggest problem that I noticed is iTunes store’s podcast description is in English. That is a major disadvantage for people who search in the store in Japanese. And majority of the subscription is coming from iTunes store.
So I localized the WordPress (detail below) and signed up with feedburner.jp to create localized feed. Sounds easy? Not really, here is my notes and to-dos.
- In order to localize wordpress, you need ja.mo file. I got it from here. put it in wp-includes/languages (I had to create that folder)
- Edit wp-config.php, define (’WPLANG’, ”); to define (’WPLANG’, ‘ja’);
- Good way to display Japanese date and time in php: Y年n月j日 l and g時i分
- Update theme. That took a long time… find message in english and changing them one by one…
- I neeed to update on of feedburner’s service, “Buzz Boost,” being used in my two web sites
- I need to find many feedburner.com links and replace them to feedburner.jp links
- After I am sure the links are swithed, I need to put address moved, please change your subscription… message - possibly sound file.
- Notify iTunes store? Is there a notification form for feed address change?
- What about Yahoo! Podcast, Odeo and other places I’ve listed the site? Oh boy.
Here is what I mean. I want http://feeds.feedburner.com/Japaneseballplayers to display this:
<itunes:category text=”Sports & Recreation”>
<itunes:category text=”Professional” />
</itunes:category>
<itunes:explicit>No</itunes:explicit>
<itunes:summary>メジャーリーグ野çƒã€ã‚¢ãƒ»ãƒªãƒ¼ã‚°æ±åœ°åŒºçƒå›£ã®ãƒœã‚¹ãƒˆãƒ³ãƒ»ãƒ¬ãƒƒãƒ‰ã‚½ãƒƒã‚¯ã‚¹ã€ãŠã‚ˆã³MLBã§æ´»èºã™ã‚‹æ—¥æœ¬äººé¸æ‰‹é”ã®æƒ…å ±ã‚’ãƒœã‚¹ãƒˆãƒ³ã®è—¤åŽŸãƒ€ã‚¤ã‚´ã¨ãƒ¯ã‚·ãƒ³ãƒˆãƒ³DCã®ä»²é‡Žåšæ–‡ãŒï¼ˆã»ã¼ï¼‰æ¯Žé€±ãŠé€ã‚Šã—ã¦ã„ã¾ã™</itunes: summary>
<itunes:subtitle>メジャーリーグ野çƒã€ã‚¢ãƒ»ãƒªãƒ¼ã‚°æ±åœ°åŒºçƒå›£ã®ãƒœã‚¹ãƒˆãƒ³ãƒ»ãƒ¬ãƒƒãƒ‰ã‚½ãƒƒã‚¯ã‚¹ã€ãŠã‚ˆã³MLB ã§æ´»èºã™ã‚‹æ—¥æœ¬äººé¸æ‰‹é”ã®æƒ…å ±ã‚’ãƒœã‚¹ãƒˆãƒ³ã®è—¤åŽŸãƒ€ã‚¤ã‚´ã¨ãƒ¯ã‚·ãƒ³ãƒˆãƒ³DCã®ä»²é‡Žåšæ–‡ãŒï¼ˆã»ã¼ï¼‰æ¯Žé€±ãŠé€ã‚Šã—ã¦ã„ã¾ã™</itunes: subtitle>
<itunes:author>Daigo Fujiwara and Hirofumi Nakano</itunes:author>
<itunes:owner>
<itunes:email>daigo@japaneseballplayers.com</itunes:email>
<itunes:name>Daigo Fujiwara and Hirofumi Nakano</itunes:name>
</itunes:owner>
<itunes:image href=”http://japaneseballplayers.com/images/jbp_radio.jpg” />
<itunes:keywords>MLB JapaneseBallPlayers com é‡Žçƒ ãƒ¡ã‚¸ãƒ£ãƒ¼ レッドソックス baseball redsox major league</itunes:keywords>
Instead, I get this:
<itunes:category text=”Sports & Recreation”>
<itunes:category text=”Professional” />
</itunes:category>
<itunes:explicit>
No
</itunes:explicit>
<itunes:summary>
?????????????????????????????????????MLB???????????????????????????????DC????????????????????
</itunes:summary>
<itunes:subtitle>
?????????????????????????????????????MLB???????????????????????????????DC????????????????????
</itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:author>
Daigo Fujiwara and Hirofumi Nakano
</itunes:author>
<itunes:owner>
<itunes:email>
daigo@japaneseballplayers.com
</itunes:email>
<itunes:name>
Daigo Fujiwara and Hirofumi Nakano
</itunes:name>
</itunes:owner>
<itunes:image href=”http://japaneseballplayers.com/images/jbp_radio.jpg” />
<itunes:keywords>
MLB JapaneseBallPlayers com ?? ???? ??????? baseball redsox major league
</itunes:keywords>

July 21st, 2006 at 07/21/2006 @ 11:48 am
I’ve written about the question marks in xml issue to FeedBurner, and they have replied to me! It is great to know that they care about what little guy like me have to say about their “free” service. That is a huge positive points towards FeedBurner in my book. Not only they are smart, they are NICE!
July 21st, 2006 at 07/21/2006 @ 12:13 pm
UPDATE: I was able to solve this problem by simply editing wp-rss2.php file to have itunes tag and ns: xmlns:itunes=”http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd” . I disabled SmartCast service and voilà , it’s fixed. I will revert all feedburner.jp refernce to feedburner.com.