Matthew Dickens

my personal space

XML Template for a Podcast RSS Feed

I have been paying monthly for our show to be hosted with a third-party because it was convenient and, more importantly, they provided very detailed analytics. However, they recently decided to increase their prices and switched the analytics to be an add-on feature for an additional cost. After shopping around for a new hosting provider, I decided that I would self-host our podcast here. Neither of us was planning to make a career out of podcasting, so I would rather save the money and forgo the statistics.

For any fellow podcasters wanting to make the switch, here is the basic XML template for a podcast RSS feed (change the file extension from .txt to .xml).

If you do a search online for an XML feed validator, the first and obvious choice is going to be the W3C Feed Validation Service. However, XML feeds are used for things other than podcasts, and podcasts have specific tags, like any that begin with itunes, that will cause you to get errors and a “sorry, not valid” message. A better service—one specific for podcast feeds—is Cast Feed Validator.

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