I’ve been making a podcast for a while. Back when I started, I researched how to build a podcast feed with Jekyll for a bit, but gave up and just installed a WordPress instance with Castos’ Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin.
I feel like this is extremely overblown on a technical level – I don’t even need a web audio player or a comment function and I certainly don’t need the pressure to keep my Wordpress installation and its plugins updated so I don’t get hacked (like other folks using Podlove, for example). So I’d like to try again to do this in a (much) more leaner way.
Do you have any recommendations or tips for creating a podcast feed that’s compatible with the usual podcatchers and the directory of Apple Podcasts?
A podcast feed is just a RSS feed with some extensions. RSS feeds are just XML, which is like HTML but with different elements and more stringent rules. You just need an enclosure element.
Yeah, that’s what I thought when I started out. Can’t be so hard, right? Especially when I can create an RSS feed without problems. Then I read about the requirements for Apple Podcasts and their extra tags I need to implement correctly. I didn’t manage to create a feed that would show up in their directory – which is a problem because other podcatchers rely on it for discovery – and couldn’t figure out what the problem was, so I suppose I’d need more handholding with it.
A lot of that is stuff you’d do for a regular RSS feed. The complex parts are the additional XML namespaces and the server configuration. The latter requires a sysadmin, and also requires that you be on a hosting provider that lets you mess with server configuration via .htaccess unless you’re on a VPS.
. I didn’t manage to create a feed that would show up in their directory – which is a problem because other podcatchers rely on it for discovery – and couldn’t figure out what the problem was, so I suppose I’d need more handholding with it.