We’re excited to show you around PowerPress 10.0+! Let’s start by taking a look at each tab.
Welcome
When you click on the PowerPress menu item on your WordPress site, you’ll land on the Welcome tab, which gives you an overview of your podcast’s performance. If you’ve connected your Blubrry Hosting or Statistics account, you’ll get a snapshot of your downloads over the past week. You’ll also get a look at how your show will appear to listeners on platforms such as Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
We even provide the four latest Podcast Insider episodes and blog posts.
Feeds
The Feeds tab in PowerPress is key in managing your podcast’s RSS feed settings. We’ve provided detailed explanations for each section, ensuring that you’re well equipped to understand and optimize your feed settings.
Enhance Feeds
The settings in this section allow you to specify which feeds on your website will have podcasting capabilities. By default, we recommend selecting the Enhance All Feeds option, which adds podcasting support to all your website feeds. However, you have the option to choose between Enhance Main Feed Only, which adds podcasting support only to your website’s default feed, and Do Not Enhance Feeds, which applies the feed settings solely to your podcast channel feeds.
Whatever your choice, the settings for each option are clearly defined to help you make an informed decision.
Podcast Feeds
This is where you’ll find the feeds on your site that are specifically set up for podcasting, making them suitable for submission to directories such as Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and more. You’ll see the default podcast feed, but you can enable advanced settings such as Podcast Channels, Category Podcasting, Post Type Podcasting and Taxonomy Podcasting for more options.
Note that it’s not recommended to submit your main site feed (e.g. “yourdomain/feed”) to podcast directories. These directories work best with feeds that only contain podcast episodes and not regular blog posts.
Do not allow other plugins to modify podcast feeds
To ensure your feed remains intact and doesn’t break or become invalidated, we recommend enabling this option. This will prevent other plugins from modifying your podcast feed, which can sometimes happen because of the complexity of WordPress websites.
Accelerate feeds
This option optimizes the way PowerPress builds the feed, so it populates faster.
Suppress Unused Item Tags
To ensure that your podcast meets the latest best practices, we offer this option to remove tags that may no longer be widely used. By selecting this option, you can easily remove the latest unused item tags from Apple, which include the itunes:* tags for subtitle, summary, author; and isClosedCaptioned from all of your podcast episodes.
Feed Discovery
Include podcast feed links in HTML headers
Enabling this option will add “feed discovery” links to your website’s headers, which can help browsers and feed-readers automatically detect your podcast feeds. This is a crucial step in making your podcast discoverable, especially on Google Podcasts. It’s worth noting that Google needs to index your podcast feed before adding it to their platform, so enabling this option can increase your chances of being found.
RSS2 Image
Include RSS Image in feeds
By enabling this option, your feed will contain your artwork image, helping your podcast stand out to potential listeners. Please make sure that the image you upload meets the minimum requirements of 1400 x 1400 pixels, with a file size of 0.5MB or lower.
Emoji
Include emoji in feeds
Enabling this option allows you to add emoji support to your podcast feeds. This means that any emoji characters you enter into your episode titles or descriptions will appear within the content:encoded portion of your podcast feeds. Please note that this feature requires WordPress 4.2 or newer with a database character set upgraded to utf8mb4.
Disabling this option means that WordPress will replace emoji characters with images, which might not be displayed in show notes in most podcast applications.
Confirmed podcasting apps that support emoji include Apple Podcasts (iOS), Google Podcasts (Android/iOS), Downcast (Android) and Overcast (iOS). To view the full list of available emoji characters, please visit the Full Emoji List hosted on unicode.org.
When editing your episode posts from a mobile device, 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. For more information about emojis in WordPress, please visit the WordPress Emoji page.
MP3 Tags
Write tags
Blubrry Hosting users can customize their MP3 ID3 tags before publishing episodes. ID3 tags contain important information (title, artist, album, year, etc.) about your podcast and an image for display during playback in most media players. Visit our Podcast Manual to learn more about ID3 tags and media metadata.
Feed Settings
Your podcast RSS feed:
Your default podcast RSS feed is conveniently located here for easy reference. You will need this feed URL when submitting your podcast to any platform.
Feed title
Set your podcast’s title here, but please avoid including any extraneous information such as author or host name, or any keywords. Adding such information is considered spam and can result in your show being removed from directories.
Feed description
Use this section to provide a brief overview of your podcast and entice potential listeners. A short description consisting of two or three sentences is ideal.
Podcast Mirror feed URL
If you wish to make your podcast feed accessible through our PodcastMirror service, use this option to mirror your feed. It’s not mandatory, but if you’re interested, visit https://podcastmirror.com to learn more. Our service is compatible with FeedBurner.
Show the most recent
By default, WordPress only displays 10 items in your RSS feed. But, if you need to show more, you can increase this number by adjusting the available field and enabling the Feed Episode Maximizer option (located below).
We recommend that you don’t exceed 300 items, as many platforms have set this as the limit. Additionally, setting the field to more than 100 can result in a feed that’s too large for directories to pull. Typically, the maximum feed size allowed is 512kb. However, please note that any episodes not included in your feed will still be accessible on your website.
Remember, at all times we want to ensure your feed is optimized for performance and accessibility. If you need assistance or have any questions, feel free to contact our support team.
Feed episode maximizer
This option maximizes the number of episodes that can be displayed while keeping your feed byte size optimal. With this option, you can set a higher number for the episodes/posts per feed setting, but only the latest 10 episodes will include all of the blog post meta information. 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 see your preferred language in the list, you’re welcome to help us translate PowerPress. For more information, please visit Translate PowerPress.
Copyright
Specify your copyright information.
Author email
Make sure to use an email address you check frequently. This is how you’ll be contacted by platforms to which you submit your RSS feed for acceptance, or in case of service problems, or issues with your listing. This is now an optional feature, which we recommend enabling when you’re submitting your podcast to various platforms.
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, and this setting should only be enabled for debugging purposes. If you’re unsure about the impact of enabling this setting, please leave it unchecked.
Podcast Artwork
Apple Podcasts artwork
Your podcast artwork is the first impression potential listeners will have of your show, so it’s important to make sure it looks great. This image will be used on all podcast platforms and directories. To ensure the best quality, make sure your artwork image meets the following requirements:
- The image dimensions must be at least 1400 x 1400 pixels in JPG or PNG format
- It must not exceed 3000 x 3000 pixels
- Use RGB color space
- The file size must be 0.5MB or smaller
By meeting these requirements, your artwork will look great and be compatible with all major podcast platforms.
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, <itunes:image>; 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 exact 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
Optimize your podcast for search engines with these features. The following options can help boost your web and podcast SEO strategies.
Episode Titles
Customize your episode titles for podcast feeds. Enabling this will automatically add your podcast title to your episode titles. Please note that some platforms like Apple Podcasts may remove titles added with this option.
AudioObjects
More information for this feature is coming soon.
Basic Show Information
Location
Let listeners know where you host and produce your podcast.
Episode Frequency
Let your listeners know how often they can expect new episodes from your podcast.
Donate Link
Provide a link for your faithful listeners to donate to your podcast. You can do this through the Value4Value feature. You can also create your own crowdfunding page with PayPal donate buttons or link to a service such as Patreon. Some podcast apps that support the podcast:funding tag may display your donation link.
Rating Settings
If you plan to distribute your podcast on Blubrry applications available on internet-connected TVs, it’s important to set your parental rating appropriately. The TV Parental Rating applies to both audio and video media.
Apple Settings
If you want your podcast to display properly on Apple Podcasts and in Apple Search results, it’s important to configure the following settings. Some fields are used on other platforms as well, so it’s best to fill out all fields.
Program Subtitle
This is a brief description of your podcast or a catchy tagline. Keep it short and sweet, no more than one or two sentences.
Program Summary
Provide a detailed description of your podcast. You can write a paragraph or two if necessary. Your summary should not exceed 4,000 characters and should not include HTML, except for hyperlinks. It’s recommended when enabling the option to wrap the summary values with <![CDATA[ … ]]> tags, as this ensures that the information displays correctly with podcast apps and directories.
Episode Summary
Optimize iTunes summary from blog posts
This feature creates a friendlier view of your post/episode content.
Category
Selecting a category is required for all podcasting platforms. The first category you choose will be the primary one used to list your podcast in most directories. The second and third categories will be additional categories where your podcast can be listed.
Author Name
Use your name, the host’s name (if it’s not you) or the company name if it’s a company-related podcast. Don’t include keywords or anything that could be seen as spam. Your podcast could be removed from the listing on some platforms for this reason.
Explicit
It is required that your podcast has a specified “Explicit” or “Clean” tag. Use the “Explicit” option if your content contains strong language and/or subject matter that would not appeal to all audiences. The “Clean” option would be used if your content can be listened to by anyone. One way to determine which option is right for your show is to ask yourself, “Can a family with young children listen to this podcast together?”
Feed Type
Setting the feed type to “Episodic” will display the most recent episode at the top of your show listing across apps. Setting it to “Serial” will display the first episode at the top, so listeners can start at the beginning.
New Feed URL
This option is primarily for the Apple Podcasts directory and should only be used if you cannot implement an HTTP 301 redirect. A 301 redirect will route all podcast clients, including Apple Podcasts, to your new feed address. We recommend that you do not alter this setting unless you know what you are doing.
Advanced Options
SETTINGS BELOW HAVE PERMANENT CONSEQUENCES
Block
This will prevent the entire podcast from appearing in the Apple Podcasts directory. This means that your podcast will not be searchable or discoverable within the directory. However, it’s important to note that this setting may not apply to other podcast apps and sites. If you want to ensure that your podcast cannot be found outside of your website, you may need to take additional measures.
Complete
This option is used to indicate that your podcast is complete and that Apple will no longer update your listing in the Apple Podcasts directory. This setting is typically used when a podcast has ended or when the creator no longer plans to release new episodes. Like the “Block” option, this setting may not apply to other podcast apps and sites.
Website
Enable PowerPress media players and links
This option is enabled by default. If you want your selected media player to show up with the links under it, select this option.
Disable PowerPress media players and links
If you want to disable this option, select it. Your media file will only be available in your RSS feed unless you manually put a player or link into the post.
Permalinks
When configured to Match Feed Name to Page/Category, yourdomain/podcast is matched to the page/category named “podcast.” Otherwise, the site will use the WordPress default behavior.
Episode Box Appearance
Check this box to display all episode settings before the media is verified. Please note that if you select this option, you risk losing all your entered data if you try to publish an episode that has no media attached. This setting should only be enabled by very experienced PowerPress users.
Blog Posts and Pages
Display Media & Links
In this section, you can choose to place your player and links below or above your post content, disable them entirely, or put them in manually using the PowerPress shortcode.
Player Settings
Decide whether you’d like to display your player and links in excerpts, hide the player and links altogether, or put the Media Player and links in the WordPress Excerpts.
Display player / links: WordPress Excerpts
If you select this option, the player and the links under it will be displayed in your WordPress post excerpts, which can be useful in search engines.
Hide player / links: Read More tagged posts
If you enable this option, the player and links will be hidden; and a Read More link will be used after your post excerpt.
Display player
Mobile and tablet devices will use an HTML5 player with a fallback link to download the media.
Media Links
Display Play in New Window Link
If you select this option, the media file will open in a new window or tab to be played even if a user leaves your website. They would need to return to your website to play additional content.
Display Download Link
This option links directly to your media file. Depending on browser settings, users may have to right-click (or command-click) to download the file. You can include the file size and duration of the file with additional options.
Display Player Embed Link
This allows users to embed your media player in their own websites.
Subscribe Links Under Player
You can enable or disable the subscribe links such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Android, email and RSS displayed below the player and media links. These can be managed in the Destinations settings.
Subscribe Page
Add a link to a page on your site explaining to your audience how to subscribe to your podcast. The drop-down allows you to choose a pre-existing page on your website or you can create a new subscription page using a template provided by PowerPress.
Subscribe widget
Select the styling options and change the appearance of the subscribe buttons used on your subscribe page. We provide two different style and shape options, but there are options available for custom styling via CSS.
For more information on PowerPress Subscribe Shortcodes, view this page.
PowerPress Shortcodes
This section explains how to use the shortcodes available from PowerPress to customize your podcasting experience. More information on how to implement each of these shortcodes can be found within PowerPress itself, but we’ve also included links below for additional documentation.
Player, Playlist, Subscribe, and Skip-to-Position shortcodes
Learn how to use these handy shortcodes to customize your podcast player, playlist, subscription options and even specify a position in your audio where you want your listeners to jump to.
Having Issues?
If you’re experiencing problems with the players not appearing on some or all of your pages, we’ve got you covered. Some plugins and themes could conflict with PowerPress, so using this option could be helpful. If you still find yourself having issues, refer to this document for more information.
Play In New Window
With this section, you can specify a custom width and height of the window where your content plays if a listener clicks the Play in New Window link. By default, PowerPress adds to the width and height above to compensate for possible vertical and horizontal scroll bars. There’s also an option to ignore scroll bars if you don’t want PowerPress to compensate for browser scroll bars.
Destinations
We’ve added information in this settings tab for some of the top podcast directories to make it easier to submit your show and to manage the subscription buttons and links shown with your player and in the PowerPress subscribe shortcodes and widgets. Each platform listed here also includes additional options for where the link is displayed on your site.
Basic info
We’ve provided a quick reference at the top of this area so you know what your podcast RSS feed is. That’s what you’ll submit to podcast directories to syndicate your show.
Submitting your podcast
We’ve included step-by-step guides on how to submit your podcast to the top directories such as Apple, Google, TuneIn, Spotify, Blubrry Directory, iHeartRadio, Deezer, Pandora, Android and email. Whether you’re new to podcasting or a seasoned pro, these guides will help you get your show out to the masses.
You can find more details on our Podcast Promotion page.
Advanced
Please note that these features are designed for experienced PowerPress users. If you have any questions about them, please refer to our documentation or reach out to the Blubrry Support team for assistance.
Import Podcast
Easily import your podcast feed from Libsyn, PodBean, Buzzsprout or other podcast services that use RSS.
Migrate Media
Effortlessly migrate your media files to Blubrry Podcast Media Hosting with just a few clicks.
Podcasting SEO
Improve the discoverability of your podcast on search engines such as Google and Apple Podcast directories with our built-in search engine optimization (SEO) features.
Audio Player Options
Choose from three different web-based audio players to best suit your needs.
Video Player Options
Select from three different web-based video players to provide the best viewing experience for your audience.
Custom Podcast Channels
Easily manage multiple media files and/or formats in a single blog post. This feature is particularly useful if you plan on having multiple podcasts on your site.
Category Podcasting
Create and manage podcasting feeds for specific categories. Use this feature to set up individual feeds for each of your podcasts if you haven’t started yet.
Taxonomy Podcasting
Create and manage podcasting feeds for specific taxonomies. Please note that this is an advanced feature that should only be used if you are certain about what you’re doing.
Post Type Podcasting
Create and manage podcasting feeds for specific post types. This is an advanced feature that should only be used if you are confident in your abilities.
PowerPress Playlist Player
Create playlists for your podcasts to provide a seamless listening experience for your audience.