RSS Invalid (followed all steps and FAQ)

I think I got it: The site being locked was blocking the site. I have Spotify working now.

Now, I’m wondering whether I can turn this block back on?

Hi there. Yes if you have a “coming soon” or other type of plugin that restricts access to your site it will block the feed URL as well. So you’d probably be best to remove those type of plugins so that you can validate and submit your feed to the different podcasting directories. You could turn these “coming soon” plugins back on later but may run into issues with places like Apple Podcasts not being able to read your feed and giving you an error message on their platforms if they can’t access a feed in a certain amount of time.

Thank you, Craig. It seemed to eventually get through the locked site. Here’s my question now as I better learn to navigate the plugin:

I now have a second episode that I’ve uploaded to YouTube. For my first episode, I actually uploaded a .mp3 file of that broadcast and used that to create the episode in the plugin. Worked like a charm.

For this second episode, I tried using the link to the YouTube video and inserted it into the audio section of the plugin when creating a new episode. That episode has yet to populate to Stitcher, Spotify, etc. It’s been about 12 hours.

I’m guessing that I may need to upload the actual .mp3 file again and that I cannot just link the YouTube url?

Thank you for confirming!

Yes, you’ll need to upload a proper media file URL for it to propagate through in your feed. YouTube video URLs are not valid. So .mp3 for audio and something like .mp4 if you want to use video

Last question: Do I need to create a “new” episode to get this to trigger again for Spotify etc, or can I just update the link to the actual file?

Just updating the file on the existing episode will do the trick. Spotify ought to update it within the hour.

@madamski it seems the last activity here was over a week ago, so I’m going to close this ticket. If you encounter any new issues, please feel free to open a new one.