how to podcast.
Start learning

A little help finding your next step

What are you working on?

A few good places to start.

Start hereWhat is a podcast?A plain-English definition: episodes, the RSS feed, subscriptions and how a podcast differs from a video or a radio show.Start hereA short history of podcastingFrom RSS enclosures in 2000 to iTunes support in 2005, the long quiet years, Serial and the video-podcast era.Start hereSeven reasons to create your own podcastWhy people start shows: expertise, community, a voice, teaching, business, creative practice and long-lived archives.PlanHow to podcast: the four PsThe whole process in four stages: plan, produce, publish and promote. Start here if you want the map before the steps.

Press Esc to close.

Tool

Podcast RSS feed checker

Paste your podcast’s RSS feed and check the tags that podcast apps rely on. The check runs in your browser; the feed isn’t sent anywhere.

    How to get your feed’s XML

    1. Find your RSS feed URL in your podcast host’s settings.
    2. Open it in a browser tab. Most browsers show the raw XML; if yours offers to subscribe instead, use “view page source”.
    3. Select all, copy, and paste it into the box above.

    What it checks

    • Show: title, description, language, link, artwork (itunes:image), category, explicit flag, author and owner email.
    • Episodes: each item’s title, a unique guid, a pubDate, and an enclosure with a URL, a length in bytes and an audio or video type.
    • Problems such as duplicate GUIDs, insecure http:// media links and feeds with no episodes.

    The feed format is defined by the RSS 2.0 specification, with the itunes: tags from Apple’s podcast requirements. Newer optional tags for transcripts, chapters and funding come from the open podcast namespace; this checker reports whether you use them.

    Read more about uploading your podcast and submitting the feed.