Publish your first episode in WordPress

If you would like to use the  podcast post type for your podcast episodes go to Podcast Add New in your admin menu – this will take you to the episode edit screen. If you have selected any other post types in your podcast settings then you could also go to the Add New page for one of those post types instead. 

Either way, you will end up with a screen that looks just like your blog post edit screen, except now you will have a a new box below the content editor titled Podcast Episode Details.

In this box you will find the following fields:

Episode type

Here you can specify if your episode is in audio or video format – this defaults to audio, so if you are not publishing any video episodes then you can safely ignore this option.

Podcast file
 This is the only required field and leaving this out will mean that your post will not be recognized as a podcast episode, so it will not appear in your RSS feed. Here you can either upload your media file directly to your website by clicking the  Upload File button, or you can simply paste in the URL to wherever your website is located on the web. This gives you the flexibility to host your media wherever you like online.

There are some things to bear in mind for this though:

Duration
 This is the length of your media file as it will be displayed to your listeners (e.g. 23:45). If possible, this will be calculated automatically when you save your episode, but you can fill in a value here manually to prevent the automatic calculation.

File size
 This is the file size of your media file as it will be displayed to your listeners (e.g. 36.4M). If possible, this will be calculated automatically when you save your episode, but you can fill in a value here manually to prevent the automatic calculation.

Date recorded

You can optionally set the date on which the podcast episode was recorded using a handy calendar date picker. If you enter a date in here then it will show up in the episode details beneath the media player on your site using the date format that is set in your WordPress settings.

Explicit
 If your episode contains any foul or explicit language then you must select this box, otherwise simply leave it unchecked.

Block
 If you would like this episode to be blocked from appearing in iTunes and Google Play (but still to appear in your RSS feed) then select this box, otherwise simply leave it unchecked.

Along with those fields you can also fill in the episode title, content and excerpt. All of these fields will be displayed on the frontend of your site and also added to your podcast RSS feed automatically.

When creating a new episode you have the option of adding your podcast to a series. This works just like adding your blog posts to categories ad you can find the series in the  Podcast Series box on the right of the episode edit screen. The available series will be listed there with check box, but you can always add new ones by clicking on the Add New Series link. Adding your episodes to series has the benefit of allowing you to link to a specific series on your site instead of all of your episodes. It also allows you to get an RSS feed that only lists episodes in a specific series – you will find the URL structure for this in the Publishing tab on the Podcast Settings page.

Using the series is optional, so you can leave this out if it doesn’t apply to the way you are publishing and promoting your podcast.