About SerialFeedAudit

Why this exists

The lifeblood of any serialized podcast — a show where listening in order is not just preferred, but required — is the show's RSS feed. It decides what order your episodes arrive in, whether a new listener starts at episode one or lands in the middle of season three, and whether your show reads as a series at all.

Sadly, in the 20+ years podcasting has been a thing, the podcast hosting companies still don't do a good job of helping creators get the correct information into that feed. SerialFeedAudit is an answer to that problem.

What it does

Enter a feed, press Audit, and let the magic happen. SerialFeedAudit checks your feed against podcasting best practices and the ever-changing RSS 2.0 and Apple Podcasts specifications, then tells you what's out of place — what's wrong, why it matters, and which tag to change — so you can log into your hosting provider's dashboard and make the necessary edits. New listeners to your show get the best possible experience.

Findings come in three flavours. Errors are things that break or misrepresent your show. Warnings work today but will bite you later. Info is context worth knowing.

Some problems aren't yours to fix

Not every problem is your fault. Some hosts won't let you mark your show as serialized, or point the feed at your own website, or upload audio without re-encoding it first. When your feed is on one of those platforms, the audit tells you so — rather than sending you off to fix something their dashboard will never let you change.

Who's behind it

Envisioned by Evo Terra, curator for The End, and developed and maintained by Chris Miller, who along with Evo founded Podiobooks.com. SerialFeedAudit is free to use.

Your feed stays yours

There's no account to create. The audit reads the feed at the address you enter, reports what it finds, and keeps nothing.

Contact

Found a bug, or a feed the audit gets wrong? Get in touch at evo@simpler.media.