Move your podcast to a new WordPress website
Important: Before Starting
- Confirm both your current and new WordPress websites have the same version number of WordPress and the SSP plugin installed
- Create backups of both WordPress websites
For this help guide, we'll call the WordPress website you're leaving old site A and the website you're moving to new site B
Move your podcast managed by WordPress and Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin to a new WordPress page. This step-by-step guide is useful for a few reasons, including:
- Merging your podcast with another website and need to move it to an existing site
- Redesigning or restructuring your website, starting fresh with a new theme, or
- Updating a staging site with only your podcast episodes
Using a WordPress migration or backup plugin will help avoid transferring unnecessary files or database tables.
"Why can't I just import the RSS Feed?"
SSP plugin stores extra data in WordPress database in custom fields, like Castos episode IDs, file IDs, and post IDs for syncing to Castos. These custom fields for your podcast aren't found in the RSS feed. If your podcast and episodes don't have those IDs moved on the new WordPress site, Castos will create a new version of the podcast with new GUIDs. To move all stored data and RSS feed information to new website, follow this guide.
Export an existing podcast from Seriously Simple Podcasting to a new WordPress installation
- On new site B, install and set up the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin using the SSP setup guide (do not connect this WordPress site to Castos yet: skip these steps for the time being)
- In the WordPress dashboard of old site A, go to Tools → Export, then select Episodes and click Download Export File (tip: save the file to your desktop or a location you can easily find later).
- In the WordPress Admin dashboard of new site B, go to Tools, select Import → Run Importer
If you're prompted to install the WordPress Importer plugin, click Install and follow the on-screen steps to import the XML file.
- In the WordPress Admin dashboard of new site B, go to Podcast → All Episodes and click each episode and check the box to assign it to the appropriate podcast (if needed). If you have a lot of episodes, doing this from the list table and QuickEdit is more efficient than opening each post individually:
Note: Episodes that have multiple podcasts selected will not sync to each podcast on your Castos dashboard. See how to include multiple podcast's episodes in your default feed here.
Verify Custom Fields on new site B for correct episode and file IDs
Within each SSP episode that has synced to Castos, there are custom fields that contain the Castos episode ID and file ID that that SSP episode is related to. It's these custom fields that shouldn't change from old site A → new site B. Enable Custom Fields on new site B and spot-check your episodes for these IDs. Do not edit these.
Enable Custom Fields: On WordPress, go to an episode in the editor, click the three dots in the upper right corner of the post editor, and then click Preferences from the menu that appears. Next, click Panels, and toggle on the Custom fields selector. Finally, click Show & Reload Page to proceed.
For your episodes that have synced to Castos, you can compare the podmotor_episode_id that WordPress has to the episode's ID here at Castos. The episode ID is in the URL of the episode when viewing the episode's edit page via the Castos dashboard:
WordPress
Castos
We don't have the file IDs publicly available on the Castos dashboard, but if the episode IDs match - the podmotor_file_id should match what Castos has as well. If the episodes are missing any of these IDs, specifically the episode ID, then the episode would recreate on Castos's side, duplicating the episode, because SSP doesn't know that it exists yet.
Disconnect the previous WordPress site from Castos
Only one WordPress site can be connected to Castos at one time. To prevent any overwrite issues, disconnect this WordPress from Castos (you'll connect new site B soon)
- Go to Podcasting → Settings → Hosting
- Under Danger Zone, click the checkmark box Select this if you wish to disconnect your Castos account.
- Once this is clicked, a new dialog will appear:
YourWPSite.com says
If you disconnect from Castos hosting you will no longer be able to upload media files to the Castos hosting platform. If you're no longer a Castos customer your media files may no longer be available to your listeners.
- Click OK, then Save Settings
You're now disconnected from syncing to Castos. The podcast RSS feed and episodes will still function on this website, but no new episodes or any changes made to old site A will sync over to Castos
Redirect your podcast's RSS feed from old site A to new site B or Castos
Redirecting a podcast is adding a new RSS feed to the feed details of your current/old RSS feed so podcast directories can start looking to a new RSS feed for updates.
Podcasters using Castos and Seriously Simple Podcasting will see they have two RSS feeds: one powered by Seriously Simple Podcasting and another from Castos. These are not connected, but will be identical if the feed details for both are configured the same.
Which one should you use?
- Using your Castos RSS feed will reduce bandwidth to your WordPress page when listeners and podcast directories crawl your RSS feed.
- Using your Seriously Simple Podcasting feed will show episode URLs from your podcast on WordPress to podcast directories that support episode links. These can be added on Castos using custom links.
If your podcast is distributing from its Castos RSS feed, this step isn't necessary. But if your podcast is distributing from the Seriously Simple Podcasting-generated RSS feed for your old site, you'll want to either redirect it to your new site's RSS feed or Castos.
- Go to old site A's Podcasting → Settings → Feed Details and find the Redirect this feed to new URL box and New podcast feed URL text field
- Add your podcast's new RSS feed (from new site B) or the RSS feed from Castos
Note: Remember to keep your old WordPress site active for at least four weeks to ensure that all podcast directories have seen the redirect and the change in the RSS feed.
Connect your new WordPress website to Castos using the API Key
- To re-sync your podcasts on new site B to Castos, go to Podcasting → Hosting and enter your Castos email and API key
- Click Verify Credentials.
- After verifying, click Save Settings:
Sync your podcast on new WordPress site B to Castos
By now, you have:
- correctly exported your podcast database to an XML file from Tools → Export
- imported the XML into your new site from Tools → Import
- confirmed the episode IDs match what your old site A and Castos have to avoid creating duplicates or overwriting your podcast
- disconnected your API credentials from old site A's Podcasting → Settings → Hosting
- redirected your RSS feed from Seriously Simple Podcasting (if the podcast directories were using that RSS feed to distribute) to the new RSS feed on new site B or the RSS feed on Castos, and
- re-connected y our API credentials to new site B's Podcasting → Settings → Hosting
Now, you can sync your podcast on new site B over to Castos:
- Go to Podcasting → Settings → Import
- Check the box for the podcast, click Trigger Sync
- Message under Sync button confirms sync in progress. Refresh page to check sync status.