Building a Podcast Feed
Published by J. Gregroy McVerry About Author on
Backstage Post on Building a Podcast Feed
My middle child Ben has really enjoyed having a As part of this journey Ben has started a few podcast series. One on dogbreeds and a second show explaining the backstory of each of hist stuffed animals
As a suprise for him learned how to create a podcast feed and submit it to Itunes, microcast.club, and PocketCast. I needed to learn as part of my WordPress migration plan. I stumbled a few times but I drove home listening to episode 2.
Building the Feed
I began by first building an RSS feed. I first grabbed the rss feed from Known for the audio post. I tried to create a tag in the post and then see if I could use that link on microcast.club. It did not work. I tried without the tag and it to did not work. I had just learned how to add an RSS feed to this site so I googled and copy and pasted an Itunes podcast feed. Actually I didn't specify ITunes it was just the first template I found so I said why not.
I created an xml file and then put it on Ben's domain. Folks in the #IndieWeb dev channel gave me a few parsers to try. The feed worked ion the parsers...almost. I then asked in #IndieWeb /Dev and online what I did wrong. After removing the slash the feed could parse..again almost
Building a Page.
The podcast episodes worked but the podcast page could not be recognized. Well I could add it to microcast.club and add the webring on Ben's profile but the podcast website was not found. Trying to go to https://dogzone.jgregorymcverry.com/stuffedworld.xml did not work. Trying to go to the page using the tag did not work. So I quickly threw up http://stuffedworld.dogzone.jgregorymcverry.com. No style or anything just a landing page. It worked! I could add the podcast every, except Apple
Doing Things the Apple Way
I could not get the Apple validator to work. The hardest issue to solve was the category. I could not get "toys" accepted. I thought I made a mistake in the syntax or the template had a mistake. I used spaces, not spaces, words, etc. Nothing worked. The validator said I had no category. After some more searching I found out that you have to use Apple's categories. Success!
Yet I could not pass all the tests. My image was wrong. I wish the one I used didn't have the red eye but I was moving quick and needed a picture. We will edit it later or do another shoot. Apple wants a 1400X14000 image. I first I thought any square image would do but those dimensions be the law of the land. So I hopped over to pixlr.com/editor cut out a square and then scaled it up to 1400x1400. I should start over rather than using a previously resized image but again, moving quick. After editing the image I passed the test and now we wait for approval.
I did get the show into pocketcast but could not discover it. I copied in the the link to the XML file and got to listen to Ben describe "The Twins"