Craig Hewitt

Hi there,

If you look at the “View Page Source” for the RSS Feed page you should see that the HTML formatting is still present if you’re using the “Post Content” option in the Podcast -> Settings -> Feed Details area. May not be showing up exactly as that on the feed page, but in podcasting directories like Apple Podcasts, etc. it would come through with the HTML formatting exactly as you see it in the source code.

Does sound like you’d want to keep with the “Post Content” option though to include formatting, links, images, etc. in the Description area for each episode.

Hi @cleuenberg have you tested this behavior with a stock theme like TwentyTwenty? We see sometimes that some themes control aspects of the RSS Feed contents, independent of the settings that you choose as to whether to show the Post Excerpt or Post Content.

Be curious to see what this looks like with a standard theme to see if this behavior is still present with a different theme.

Hi @audreycormont94 could you confirm that the Feed Details for your Series have been saved in the Podcast -> Settings -> Feed Details area and that the proper Series has been selected in the episode(s) that you’re not seeing the Series name showing up in the player? Both of those need to be done to show the Series/Podcast name in the player.

Hi @ohliza thanks for the update and glad you were able to resolve this. We’ll definitely take your suggestion to improve how we display shortcode options and parameters in the plugin and post editor in future versions of the plugin.

If we can do anything else just let us know.

Hi @stephendew thanks for the updates here. Yes, in order for the contents of the /podcast (or Series) pages you’ll need to modify the contents of the archive-podcast.php page to reflect the content/style changes you’re looking for. I don’t believe most themes will give you the ability to modify those page templates from the wp-admin dashboard. It’ll be actual code level changes in your theme that you’ll need to do.

Hi @bounce187 thanks for the message and for explaining the issue you’re seeing.

The root of the issue you’re experiencing is that the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin uses an audio file URL in the feed that is actually the name of the post and does not by default link to the audio file directly. Instead, SSP passes the audio file URL request through an intermediate step where it logs a listening event for the Seriously Simple Stats plugin.

Because of this, even though you’ve updated the audio file on the post the audio file URL link you’re seeing on your site is still something like https://mysite.com/podcast-download/123/post-slug.mp3 – is that right? So because of this Spotify is not “seeing” that the underlying audio file has changed, because the audio file link in the feed is still the same, and in fact will always be the name of the post.

You are able to link directly to the audio files in your RSS feed if you’d like, but doing so would render the SS Stats module ineffective since it would be bypassing that listening collection step. The details of that change can be found in this gist: https://gist.github.com/TheCraigHewitt/e918e39c4432334fc59d4d99dd0f8cb4

Alternatively, you ought to be able to reach out to Spotify directly at https://podcasters.spotify.com/ and request for them to Refresh your RSS feed manually, which should pull in the latest files.

Hope that helps, and if there’s anything else we can do just let us know.

Hi @lukecarbis looks like you’re needing to contact WPEngine for them to update a config on their end to allow the passthrough link that SSP uses to collect analytics data: https://support.castos.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018923959-Podcast-episodes-will-not-play-

They ought to be familiar with this request as it’s something that most all SSP users on WPEngine need to request.

Let us know how that goes.

Hi @stephendew

Thanks for the message and the details here. In looking at your site it seems that your /podcast page is showing the same kind of layout as other archive pages (such as https://www.freshradiouk.co.uk/category/blog/entertainment/). Have you created a new custom page template yet that you want to use on the Series page? If not then https://support.castos.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018867300-Create-custom-podcast-templates walks through that.

If so and it’s a matter of the page not rendering the proper template please let us know so we can dig into things further. We’ve used https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/which-template-file/ in the past to help determine which theme files are being used on which pages during troubleshooting like this. Might be helpful.

HI there,

Yes, sounds like this would be possible through a custom role that you could set up. Might want to check out https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/members/ as a solution to create and manage this role’s details.

Hi there. We don’t typically like to use the W3.org validator because it’s not build specifically for podcast feeds. Instead we look at https://castfeedvalidator.com/?url=https://www.osersenparler.ca/feed/podcast – and looking there the only issue i see is that the cover image that you’re using is a bit too large. We suggest using a file size of <1MB for your cover image. Other than that it looks ok from what i can see.

Let us know how that goes.

Most podcasting mobile apps will fall back to the default image for the feed (default feed or Series) if there is not an episode-specific image. SSP (at this time) does not populate an entry in the feed for each episode that would be the default cover image if there is not an episode-specific image. We rely on podcast apps to fall back to the feed cover image.

So, in the eyes of podcasting apps, yes the default image will show if there is not an episode-specific image, but we don’t place that default image in the feed for each episode.

Yes, that sounds right. The episode specific image should be square and between 1400x1400px and 3000x3000px in size. for most themes the Featured Image is rectangular (like your FB image) and those will not be picked up in the RSS feed.

Hi @netzblogr we just released v2.6.2 which brings that episode-specific image into your RSS feed. Please let us know how that’s looking for you after you’ve updated to the latest version, and if we can do anything else to help.

Hi there, we just released v2.6.2 which brings that episode-specific image into your RSS feed. Please let us know how that’s looking for you after you’ve updated to the latest version, and if we can do anything else to help.

Hi there, we just released v2.6.2 which brings that episode-specific image into your RSS feed. Please let us know how that’s looking for you after you’ve updated to the latest version, and if we can do anything else to help.