Create or import a podcast

You can create a new podcast or import an existing podcast into Castopod in the Podcasts section. If you are adding a second podcast to Castopod, see the Home page documentation for how that will change your home page.

From the left hand navigation sidebar, press the + sign to the right of Podcasts to create your first podcast.

Podcast Identity

Podcast Cover

To upload your podcast cover art, press the Choose File button and choose your cover art from your computer. The cover art needs to be in JPG or PNG format and a minimum of 1400px wide and tall with a maximum of 3000px wide and tall.

Title

Enter the name of your podcast in the Title field.

Description

Describe what your podcast is about. You can use Markdown to style the text and you can resize the text box by pressing and holding the bottom right hand corner of the text box.

Type

Choose how your listeners should listen to your podcast. Episodic lets listeners know they can consume your podcast in any order, such as an interview podcast. Choose Serial if your episodes are meant to be listened to in sequential order.

Medium

Choose the type of audio for your podcast:

• Podcast: a standard podcast.
• Music: A feed of music organized into an “album” with each item a song within the album.
• Audiobook: A specific type of audio with one item per feed, or where items represent chapters within a book.

Classification

Language

From the dropdown menu, choose which language is spoken in your podcast.

Category

Choose the category that represents your podcast, such as Arts, Comedy, Technology, etc.

Other categories (optional)

You can choose a second category in addition to the main category you set up.

Parental advisory

Choose if your podcast has explicit content or swearing or choose Clean if your podcast is suitable for everyone. You can also choose to leave this category as undefined. When creating a new episode, you will also have the opportunity to choose clean, explicit, or undefined on a per episode basis.

Author

Owner name and email

Enter the owner name and email in the provided fields. This is only visible in the RSS feed and is used by other podcasting platforms to verify your ownership of your podcast. You can choose to remove the owner email from the public RSS feed by using the provided toggle.

Publisher

If your podcast is part of a podcast network or is produced by a company, enter the publisher here.

Copyright

You can optionally add the copyright holder in this field.

Fediverse identity

Enter the handle (or nickname) for your podcast. This will allow people on Mastodon and other Fediverse services to follow your podcast. Your handle will be shown as @yourdomain.com@handle on the Fediverse.

To learn more about Fediverse integration, visit the Fediverse documentation page.

Podcast banner

Upload a banner image to be displayed at the top of your podcast’s home page. The banner must have a 3:1 ration and be at least 1500px wide.

Premium

Toggle this setting to set all episodes by default as premium. When creating an episode, it will default to premium, and you can still choose to make some episodes, trailers, or bonus content as free and public.

Open Podcast Prefix Project (OP3)

The Open Podcast Prefix Project is an open source and trusted third party analytics service. If you toggle this to enabled, you will be able to view analytics for your podcast over time including the number of listens over time, episode comparison charts, and more.

Location

You can optionally add a real or fictitious location name in this field. When creating a new episode you also can add a location to an individual episode.

Advanced Parameters

You can optinally toggle the following settings:

• Prevent podcast from being copied: this locks your podcast and does not allow other podcast platforms to import your podcast. If you decide in the future to migrate away from Castopod to a new platform, this toggle will need to be unchecked.
• Podcast should be hidden from public catalogues: If toggled, a best effort is made to hide the entire podcast from appearing in Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, and any other third party podcast apps. (Not guaranteed)
• Podcast will not be having new episodes: If your podcast comes to an end, you can toggle this to let listeners know there will not be new episodes.

Import an existing podcast

When importing a podcast, make sure you own the rights for this podcast before importing it. Copying and broadcasting a podcast without the proper rights is piracy and is liable to prosecution.

Import the podcast

To import a podcast, enter the podcast’s Feed URL. The feed must be in XML or RSS format. You may want to validate the feed to make sure there are no errors in the RSS or XML feed prior to importing as errors may cause the import to fail. One popular feed validator is Cast Feed Validator from Blubrry Podcasting.

Podcast information

Enter the handle for your podcast. This will be part of the URL for others to interact with your podcast on the Fediverse. It will be yourdomain.com@nameofyourpodcast.

Choose the language your podcast is recorded in from the drop down box.

Lastly, choose the Category of your podcast, such as Sports, Technology, Arts, etc.

When complete, click Add import to queue. You will then be redirected to a Podcast imports page to view the status of the import. You can refresh the page to see the status of the import including the import duration and how many episodes were imported when complete.

!!! note If your import times out, check your max_execution_time in your PHP.ini file. You may need to increase it from 30 seconds (the default) to add more time, such as 300 seconds (5 minutes) for larger podcasts.