Formatting RSS feed for “show notes”

  • I’ve figured out some of the issues for getting the best looking episode “show notes” that I can. I wanted to share what I learned and ask for your advice or links to any resources you recommend.

    I was getting many <br/> tags inserted which resulted in my content having many extra lines when viewed from podcast players. The PowerPress RSS feed was converting blank lines to <br/> tags.

    I figured out where the blank lines were coming from. I’m using a custom post type for my podcast episode entries. I had enabled the Gutenberg “blocks” editor. Enabled by the 'show_in_rest' => true arg in the register_post_type function. When viewed as text/code, this showed it was adding “blocks” helper comments. These comments don’t appear in the raw HTML of a rendered page. However they end up leaving blank lines in the HTML.

    PowerPress was interpreting the blank lines as <br/> tags. In my view, this is an undesired behavior. If I want it to be HTML, then any space between non-HTML tags could be collapsed or removed.

    I disabled the blocks editor and found it works better using the older “raw” HTML “text” version. However, even adding explicit <p> tags with content, the <p> tags are stripped out of the RSS feed and replaced with <br/> tags. This ends up making it more difficult to get a desired combined webpage and RSS feed format.

    Also, I noticed that WP aggressively removes <p> tags if I switch to the editor’s “visual” tab. So I have to avoid doing that.

    Are there other recommendations you make for improving the display of episode posts and their rendered show notes in players?

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Thread Starter brainlid

    (@brainlid)

    I felt this was related to this post: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/itunes-spacing/

    Our site is getting this too. Both show feeds are no longer accepted by iTunes. Ugh…

    Thread Starter brainlid

    (@brainlid)

    I noticed that PowerPress appears to be modifying explicitly written tags to remove <p> tags and add <br/> tags instead. Additionally, it removes multiple <br/> tags found together. I don’t want this to happen.

    Can you create an option that is something like: “Don’t modify podcast post HTML at all” or similar? It would make it easier for those of us who have settled on formatting podcast posts explicitly to get the display we want.

    Plugin Author Angelo Mandato

    (@amandato)

    Hello @brainlid,

    I wanted to follow pu if this is still an issue. We made changes to PowerPress to better format the text for Apple iOS app, are you still having this issue?

    Thanks,
    Angelo

    Thread Starter brainlid

    (@brainlid)

    @amandato Thanks for following up.

    I don’t know. The best solution I found was to use “Apple Podcasts Optimization (optional)” and set Summary explicitly as a short blurb of text and link to the page for full show notes.

    I don’t know of a good way to test it without the risk of creating a bad experience again. How would you recommend testing it?

    Plugin Author Angelo Mandato

    (@amandato)

    use “Apple Podcasts Optimization (optional)” and set Summary explicitly as a short blurb of text and link to the page for full show notes.

    That should be sufficient, if that works for you I would recommend doing just that. We updated the UX in PowerPress so it is easier to enter this in the same tab with everything else that is episode data specific.

    Thanks,
    Angelo

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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