Advanced Configuration

Hello @metaglyphics,

What you want is Post Type podcasting. Under Advanced options section in PowerPress settings, check the box to enable “Post Type Podcasting” then click save. Once enabled, you can go into a new menu option on the left called “Post Type podcasting”. Here you can create 3 post type podcast feeds for your use. The feed that you want to be the “default”, use the word “podcast” as the feed’s slug, this way it will map correctly to the default podcast feed. When it is all said and done your feeds will look something like example.com/post-type/feed/podcast/ example.com/post-type/feed/hour-1/ example.com/post-type/feed/hour-2/ example.com/post-type/feed/hour-3/ You can make podcast channels and post type podcast feeds password protected. Category and other taxonomy feeds do not have password protection options.

Also please read this page to make sure your post type is podcast feed ready: https://create.blubrry.com/resources/powerpress/advanced-tools-and-options/post-type-podcasting/

I think I was able to get that far. But what I need is to combine all the hours into a single password-protected feed. So I have:

mysite/default feed (Hour 1 only)
mysite/premiumfeed (which includes all hours)

I can create a separate feed for each hour, but I can’t seem to combine them.

Oh I see what you are trying to do. You cannot combine multiple media files into one episode. Ther are no podcast apps that support such functionality, particularly iTunes and the Apple iOS podcast app. Technically if you want hour 1, 2 then 3 to appear in the podcast app so the listener knows which episode hour is which, you should create 3 separate blog posts with “hour 1”, “hour 2” and “hour 3” in the title. I would even make the date-time of each blog post synchronized by an hour apart so they appear in the correct order of hour 3, hour 2 then hour 1.

I was afraid of that. On a daily podcast, having to create 3 or 4 separate posts each day will increase the number of posts exponentially! And if we want to include descriptions or show notes, we’d have to add them to each post.

It seems like there should be a way to manage these as single posts.

Thinking about alternatives… If this isn’t possible, is there a way to include everything in a single feed, but password-protect some of the files?

That way, the feed would include hours 1-3 and the full show. But you’d only see the first hour unless you are logged in with an active WordPress username and password? Maybe we could distinguish the access with categories…

Hello @metaglyphics,

You cannot do that either. iTunes (and other apps) will see the link to the media file and follow it to make sure it’s available. when it fails it will not show those episodes in the directory, and in some cases may think your media is offline and thus take your podcast out of the directory. You also run the risk of getting removed from iTunes if someone complains that they cannot access those other episodes listed. You are better off keeping a separate feed for these reasons.

One option is to provide 3 feeds like what I thought you were going to do, a feed for each hour. Then you will have a total of 4 episode boxes when editing each blog post.

I would suspect that each hour has different show notes, correct? If they do not, why not simply make one 3 hour long mp3?

BTW podcast apps are designed to stop a subscription after 5 episodes pass without user interaction. If you release 3 episodes a day, and 2 days go by, folks subscribed to your podcast who did not listen in the last 48 hours will stop downloading the episodes until they go into the app and tell it to resume. Another reason not to stuff multiple feed items in a 24 hour period.

Thanks. I just spoke with Mike, and we figured out an approach that may work. I’m going to do some testing, and we’ll see!