How can I minimize the content of my RSS feed to fit more items in Feedburner's 512k limit?

Question

Feedburner won't read your feed if it's over 512k. Our podcast (http://herdingcode.com) has been around for 3 years now, and returning all items puts us way over that limit. We've had new listeners request that we include them all, though, and I'm wondering if that's easily possible.

I'm thinking I could hack around with feed-rss2.php and add some conditional logic that puts full details for the most recent 75 shows and truncated descriptions for all the older shows. Has someone already done this, or got some tips on how to set it up?

Answer 1

Dunno if you have images in your feed, but those could be sucking up a bit of space: Reducing image size in RSS only

Here are the basics for setting WP to use a custom feed template: http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201103/controlling_and_customising_rss_feeds_in_wordpress/

Here are some tips in authoring the template itself: http://digwp.com/2009/09/easy-custom-feeds-in-wordpress/

As for your looping, try something like this for your "full" 75 most recent posts (inside your RSS structure of course):

<?php
query_posts('showposts=75');
$ids = array();
while (have_posts()) : the_post();
$ids[] = get_the_ID();
the_title();
the_content();
endwhile;
?>

Once that’s done, get all the rest, with just truncated info:

<?php
query_posts(array('post__not_in' => $ids));
while (have_posts()) : the_post();
the_title();
the_excerpt();
endwhile;
?>