The Feeds menu in PowerPress is where you’ll begin to add necessary information and tags for your podcast’s RSS feed. You’ll also find additional settings to optimize its speed and functionality.
When you go to the feeds menu in PowerPress settings, you will have several sub-menus on the white area of the sidebar. We will cover each of those sub-menus below.
Podcast Feeds
Enhance Feeds
These settings tell PowerPress which feeds should have podcasting capabilities. While we recommend the default set-up, there are additional options:
Enhance All Feeds (Recommended)
This is the default setting, which adds podcasting support to all feeds on your website.
Enhance Main Feed Only
Adds podcasting support to the default feed on your website.
Do Not Enhance Feeds
Feed settings below will only apply to your podcast channel feeds.
Do Not Allow Other Plugins to Modify Podcast Feeds
Because of all of the moving parts that make a WordPress website work, we suggest turning on this option to keep plugins from breaking your feed or modifying it in ways that would keep it from validating.
Accelerate Feeds
This option accelerates the generation of the feed by removing database queries that are not helpful for podcasting.
Feed Discovery
Include Podcast Feed Links in HTML Headers
Adds feed discovery links to your website’s headers, allowing web browsers and feed readers to auto-detect your podcast feeds.
RSS2 Image
Include RSS Image in Feeds
Adds your artwork image to your RSS feed to ensure it is used in all podcast apps and directories.
Emoji
Include Emoji in Feeds
Adds emoji support to podcast feeds. Emoji entered into blog post content will now appear within the content:encoded portion of your RSS podcast feeds. Content:encoded is displayed as the primary show notes when viewing episode notes in the iOS Podcasts app by Apple as well as the Google Podcasts app for Android. It requires WordPress 4.2 or newer with a database character set upgraded to utf8mb4.
When this option is off, WordPress replaces emoji characters with images. Images are not displayed in show notes in most podcast applications. With this option on emoji characters are included unmodified within the content:encoded field.
Confirmed podcasting applications that support Emoji:
- Apple Podcasts (iOS)
- Google Podcasts (Android)
- Downcast (Android)
- Overcast (iOS)
Please see the Full Emoji List hosted on unicode.org for available emoji characters.
When editing your blog posts from a mobile device, the emoji characters are built into your mobile device’s keyboard. For macOS, press ⌘-control-space. For Windows 10, right-click on the taskbar and then select the option Show touch keyboard button. A new icon will appear in the lower right corner of the taskbar near the date and time. Click the keyboard icon to open the onscreen keyboard to select emoji characters.
More information about emoji in WordPress is available on the WordPress Emoji page.
Feed Settings
More fine-tuned settings for your default podcast feed.
Your Podcast RSS feed:
We’ve added your default podcast RSS feed at the top of this section for easy reference. This is the feed URL you will use when submitting your podcast to any platform.
Feed Title
Set your podcast’s title here. Be sure to only add the title of your podcast and do not include the author/host-name or any keywords. Podcast directories consider extraneous information as SPAM and can remove your show listing.
Feed Description
Give potential listeners a peek at what your podcast is about. It’s best to keep the description short, maybe two or three descriptive sentences. ** If this is missing it can cause your show to be excluded from Spotify and other apps**
Feed Landing Page URL
This is a link to your specific landing page for your podcast if you have created one. Otherwise, it will default to your home page.
Podcast Mirror Feed URL
*** Be careful! If you do not know for sure, leave this blank. Most podcasters do not need this service
Use this option to mirror your podcast feed to provide fast, scalable subscriptions to your show using our free Podcast Mirror service. This option is not required. Service is FeedBurner compatible. Learn more at https://podcastmirror.com
Show the Most Recent
Note: Enable the Feed Episode Maximizer option to optimize your feed for more than 10 episodes.
By default, WordPress limits RSS feeds to 10 items in an RSS feed. In addition to enabling Feed Episode Maximizer (below), you can increase the number of items shown by increasing the number in the ‘field available.’
Apple Podcasts and many other platforms will limit the total number of items to 300, so we advise you to not go beyond that with this setting. When setting the field to over 100, you run the risk of your feed becoming too large for directories to pull — 512kb is the typical maximum size for feeds used in this way. Any episodes not included in your feed can still be accessed via your website.
Feed Lock
Feed Lock is one of the new Podcast Namespace tags (<podcast:locked>) that allows you to prevent your show from being imported into another podcast host without your permission. See: https://github.com/Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace/blob/main/docs/1.0.md for more info.
Feed Episode Maximizer
Maximize the number of episodes while maintaining an optimal feed size. This option allows you to put a much larger number into the episodes/posts per feed setting while keeping the feed byte size down. Only the latest 10 episodes will have all of the blog post meta information. Eleven or older episodes will be trimmed down to the bare essential tags required for some services.
Feed Language
Set the language for your podcast. If you don’t find a particular language available in the list, we encourage you to help us translate PowerPress. More information can be found here. [https://create.blubrry.com/resources/powerpress/powerpress-language/translate-powerpress/]
Copyright
Specify your copyright information.
Caching Debug Comments
Allow WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache to add HTML Comments to the bottom of your feeds. (Recommended unchecked)
There are known issues with feeds that have HTML comments at the bottom. NOTE: This setting should only be enabled for debugging purposes. If you’re not sure what this can do to your feed, please do not enable this setting.
Podcast Artwork
Apple Podcast Artwork
While it’s called Apple Podcast Artwork, this image is what will be used across all podcast platforms and directories that have your RSS feed.
The image dimensions must be at least 1400 x 1400 pixels in .JPG or .PNG format. It must not exceed 3000 x 3000 pixels, must use RGB color space, and the file size must be 0.5MB or smaller.
Click here for more details on Artwork in PowerPress
Apple Episode Image
Use the program Apple podcast image above as your Apple episode image
More and more podcasts are simply using the Apple image tag, but this allows the image you added above to be used on all platforms by ensuring the proper tags are used within your RSS feed.
RSS2 Image
This does the same thing as the option above, but adds the image to another image tag in your feed, just in case a platform does not use any of the Apple-created image tags.
Podcast SEO
Enable features to help with podcasting search engine optimization (SEO). The following options can assist your web and podcasting SEO strategies:
Episode Titles
Specify custom episode titles for podcast feeds. Enabling this will automatically prepend or append your podcast title to your episode titles. Keep in mind, some platforms such as Apple Podcasts will remove titles added with this option.
AudioObjects
More information coming soon.
VideoObjects
More information coming soon.
Basic Show Information
Location
Let listeners know where you host and produce your podcast. Also sets the <podcast:location> tag.
Episode Frequency
Let listeners know how often you release episodes.
Donate Link
If you’re looking to monetize your podcast, you can use this area to provide a link for faithful listeners to donate. You can use the service of your choice. Also sets the <podcast:funding> tag.
Rating Settings
A parental rating is used to display your content on Blubrry applications available on Internet-connected TV’s. The TV Parental Rating applies to both audio and video media.
If you plan on having your podcast distributed this way, be sure to update these settings appropriately.
Apple Settings
The following settings will affect the display of your podcast’s listing on Apple Podcasts, or when/how your podcast appears in Apple Search results. Some fields are used on other platforms as well, so it’s wise to fill out all fields.
Program Subtitle
This is a short description of your podcast or even a tagline you associate with the show. This should be no longer than one or two sentences.
Program Summary
Give a full-length description of your podcast. This can be a paragraph or two if needed. Your summary cannot exceed 4,000 characters in length and should not include HTML, except for hyperlinks.
Episode Summary
Optimize Apple Podcasts Summary from Blog Posts
Creates a friendlier view of your post/episode content.
Category/Category 2/Category 3
All podcasting platforms require category selection. The first category chosen will be the main one used when listing your podcast in most directories. The second and third categories will be additional categories where your podcast can be listed.
Author Name
This must be your name, your host’s name (if not you), or even the company that produces the show if it is a company-related podcast. Do not include keywords or any other text that could be considered as SPAM, otherwise podcast platforms can remove your podcast listing. Should not be exactly the same as the podcast title.
Author Email
Be sure the email you use here is one you check often. It is how you will be contacted by platforms you submit your RSS feed to for acceptance responses or to notify you about service problems or issues with your listing on their platform.
Explicit
Do your episodes include strong language or themes that aren’t appropriate for all audiences? You’ll need to specify how they should be categorized here. While this may not seem like an important setting to some, podcast apps and platforms can remove your show’s listing if it is not categorized correctly.
New Feed URL
This option works primarily for the Apple Podcasts directory only and should only be used if you are unable to implement an HTTP 301 redirect. A 301 redirect will route all podcast clients including Apple Podcasts to your new feed address.
Advanced Options
SETTINGS BELOW HAVE PERMANENT CONSEQUENCES.
Block
Prevent the entire podcast from appearing in the Apple Podcasts directory.
Complete
Indicate the completion of a podcast. Apple will no longer update your listing in the Apple Podcast directory.