Create your first episode

To add an episode to your podcast, choose Podcasts -> All podcasts from your instance management left hand sidebar. Then choose Podcast dashboard and press the Add an episode button in the upper right hand corner and fill out the following fields.

Episode Info

Audio file

Press the Choose File button to select the audio file to upload to Castopod. The audio file must be an mp3 or m4a file and cannot be larger than 512 megabytes.

Episode cover

You can optionally add a different podcast cover / artwork. Press Choose File and select an image from your computer that must be at least 1400px wide and tall and no larger than 3000px wide and tall. If you do not choose an episode cover, your default podcast artwork will be used.

Title

Enter the name for your new episode. Do not add the season or episode number in the Title field. Choose a clear and concise episode name to help your listeners.

Permalink

The permalink is the link to the public episode page. This will be automatically filled out based on the title you entered above. If you wish to have a different permalink, press the edit button to the right of the displayed permalink.

Season and Episode

You can optionally add a season and / or episode number to your episode.

Show Notes

Describe your episode in detail. You can use up to 4000 characters, and you can use Markdown to style your show notes. You can expand the text box by pressing and holding the bottom right corner of the text box.

When your show notes are complete, press Preview to view how your show notes will be displayed.

Additional Files

Transcripts

You can add a transcript to your episode by choosing a file in SRT or VTT format to upload. Transcripts will be shown in a tab on the episode page and some podcast apps such as Apple Podcasts can display the transcript.
Transcripts help users who may have a hearing disability and can also help with search engine optimization.

Chapters

You can optionally upload a chapters file in JSON format. To learn more about chapters and for an example of the correct format, visit the Podcast Namespace.

!!! note Not all podcast players natively support chapters in JSON format. More modern players, such as Fountain and Apple Podcasts, do support chapters in JSON format.

Publish your episode

When complete, press the Create episode button at the bottom of the page. You will be automatically directed to the next step to publish your episode. Your episode is in draft mode and is not yet published. You can preview how your episode will look when published or publish your episode. To publish your episode, press the Publish button in the upper right hand corner.

Create your announcement post

After pressing Publish you will be directed to the next page to draft your announcement post. Write your message in the text box provided. This will be the message broadcast to the Fediverse and published on your podcast’s home page.

Publication date

Choose Now or Schedule to publish your episode. If you choose Now, your episode will be live. Or you can schedule the day and time to publish your episode by choosing the Schedule radio button and choosing the day and time. Press Publish to finish.

Your RSS feed will be automatically updated with your episode information and listeners who subscribe will be notified of a new episode. Congratulations on publishing your first episode!