Adding Podcast to Apple Podcasts Connect / Apple Podcast Directory

Podcasting
#1

Hi, I’ve just upgraded to the Premium tier of micro.blog and I’m loving it thus far. One thing I’m hoping to take advantage of is the microcast / podcast hosting, and I’m having a little trouble getting things set up. Here’s what I’ve done so far, and maybe someone can help me work out where I’m falling short?

  • I recorded ~10mins of audio, converted it to MP3, and uploaded it as a post via micro.blog on the web — it’s showing up just fine on my microblog, and the audio is totally playable
  • In the ‘Design’ section of my micro.blog dashboard I completed the ‘Podcast category’ & ‘Podcast author’ fields (incl. email), and uploaded a piece of 1400x1400 artwork to ‘Podcast cover art’
  • I installed the Plugin ‘Podcast title’ by @manton and added my title in the ‘Settings’
  • At podcastsconnect.apple.com I created an account with my Apple ID, then clicked the + and chose ‘New show’. I chose ‘Add a show with an RSS feed’ and added my feed URL (https://infinite.jetzt/podcast.xml)

After a while Podcasts Connect pulled in the show title, but that’s about it. There’s a broken / missing image icon where the artwork should be; the status of the show is listed as ‘Draft’, and there is a message saying ‘We’re still processing your show details. Check back later and then click Publish’. It’s been this way for several hours.

I’ve also tried adding the podcast feed URL into Pocket Casts directly, and I get a message saying ‘Unable to find a podcast at this URL’.

All of which leads me to believe that either a) I’ve messed something up; b) I’m misunderstanding something about timeframes for podcasts to propagate via RSS; or c) both!

Any and all help gratefully received.

PS. I would advise against listening to the audio if you find it; it’s just a test comprising 9 minutes of me rambling!

#2

You’ve done everything right. I checked and the “Podcast title” plug-in wasn’t compatible with the new version of Hugo we’re using for templates now… I’ve fixed the plug-in but it will be another 1-2 hours before Micro.blog picks up the changes. You should see the update available under Plug-ins.

Thanks for using Micro.blog! Let me know if that doesn’t fix it. The issue was basically not including any episodes in the podcast feed.

#4

OK, progress! I updated the Podcast Title plugin (thanks again), and re-uploaded the post with the audio to micro.blog. And… :drum: it worked! Well, sort of. By adding my .xml podcast feed into either an RSS reader, or Pocket Casts I now get the full post, and the listenable audio. It looks and functions perfectly in Pocket Casts.

However, still some problems in Apple Podcasts Connect. Many of the Show Details have now propagated, which is a step forward. However, a couple of important things seem to be missing: as you can see in the below screenshot, the artwork is still coming through broken / missing, and the ‘Description’ field is throwing an alert saying ‘This field is required, enter it in your RSS’

1144×874 9.55 KB

First, re. the art, a couple of things I’m wondering:

  • Do I need to ensure that I’m using a particular filetype? (Currently I’m using a .jpg)

  • The facility to upload artwork directly into Apple Podcasts Connect (not useable for podcasts via RSS, but potentially still instructive) insists that the image is 3000 x 3000 (ie. it told me the 1400 x 1400 I’m using was too small)

  • Conversely, the filesize is 834KB, do we think that’s causing an error by being too large?

Second, re. the missing ‘Description’: I see another thread here on the help forum, from about a year ago. It’s about ‘Copyright’ rather than ‘Description’ but seems potentially related. In the replies @manton is suggesting editing the podcast .xml feed by overriding that file in my custom theme. That feels like a possible solution here, but I’m going to need a little help figuring it out.

Thanks again for any assistance anyone’s able to offer.

UPDATE: I played around with uploading artwork with a more reasonable filesize, and that has now been pulled in by Apple Podcasts Connect. Plus, the test episode has appeared there also! So, in summary, I think I’m a ‘Description’ away from having this all hooked up correctly.

#5

I followed up on this via email, but just for completeness here: Micro.blog uses the “about me” text on your account for the podcast feed description. It’s also possible to customize that with a custom theme to override list.podcastxml.xml. Perhaps we should have a plug-in to make this easier, or add it to the title plug-in.

#6

This makes perfect sense – apologies for misunderstanding. I had left that field blank and made a bespoke /about page. I’ve now put something in there, and sure enough it has populated to Apple Podcasts Connect.

In an ideal world however, I would like to have a different description for the podcast than the text that appears under my profile on micro.blog, because they’re intended to have somewhat different uses.

A plugin, or addition to the Podcast Title plugin would be wonderful, but in the meantime: I am actually using a custom theme, and I think I’ve found the correct file to edit: layouts.list/podcastxml.xml under the Default Templates section? This is a little outside my comfort zone, but if you can tell me where to insert the description, that would be great:

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd">
  <channel>
    <title>{{ if eq  .Title  .Site.Title }}{{ .Site.Title }}{{ else }}{{ with .Title }}{{.}} on {{ end }}{{ .Site.Title }}{{ end }}</title>
    <link>{{ .Permalink }}</link>
    <description>{{ .Site.Params.itunes_description }}</description>
    <copyright>Copyright {{ .Date.Format "2006" }} {{ .Site.Params.itunes_author | htmlEscape }}</copyright>
	<itunes:image href="{{ .Site.Params.itunes_cover }}" />
	<itunes:category text="{{ .Site.Params.itunes_category | htmlEscape }}">
		<itunes:category text="{{ .Site.Params.itunes_subcategory | htmlEscape }}"></itunes:category>
	</itunes:category>
	<itunes:author>{{ .Site.Params.itunes_author | htmlEscape }}</itunes:author>
	<itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>		
	<itunes:owner>
		<itunes:name>{{ .Site.Params.itunes_author | htmlEscape }}</itunes:name>
		<itunes:email>{{ .Site.Params.itunes_email | htmlEscape }}</itunes:email>
	</itunes:owner>
    {{ with .Site.LanguageCode }}
    <language>{{.}}</language>
    {{ end }}
    <lastBuildDate>{{ .Date.Format "Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:04:05 -0700" | safeHTML }}</lastBuildDate>
	{{- $list := where .Site.Pages ".Params.audio" "!=" nil -}}
    {{ range $list }}
    <item>
      <title>{{ .Title | html }}</title>
      <link>{{ .Permalink }}</link>
      <pubDate>{{ .Date.Format "Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:04:05 -0700" | safeHTML }}</pubDate>
      {{ with .Site.Author.email }}<author>{{.}}{{ with $.Site.Author.name }} ({{.}}){{end}}</author>{{end}}
      <guid isPermaLink="true">{{ .Permalink }}</guid>
      <description>{{ .Content | html }}</description>
      <itunes:subtitle>{{ .Content | html }}</itunes:subtitle>
      <itunes:summary>{{ .Content | html }}</itunes:summary>
		{{ range first 1 .Params.audio }}
			<enclosure url="{{ . }}" type="audio/mpeg"></enclosure>
		{{ end }}
    </item>
    {{ end }}
  </channel>
</rss>

I’m guessing it’s between that first set of <description> tags, but I don’t want to break anything. Also, can it just be in plaintext?

#7

That’s right. So you might have for example:

​<description>My podcast description here.</description>
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