How to prepare my RSS feed to switch to Transistor?

You’ve decided to migrate your podcast and you’ve chosen Transistor as your new host. The podcast migration process has two important steps:

Podcast Import. This just takes a copy of your existing content.
Podcast Redirect. The redirect tells any app or subscriber that is still using your old feed where your podcast has moved to.

Podcast Import

Transistor needs to pull in the information from your existing RSS feed. To ensure the import process completes successfully here are some optional checks you can make to your feed before you begin the import.

View your RSS feed on a tool like XML Feed Viewer. Click into the text of the feed and use Ctrl + F to find and examine certain tags in your feed.

Episodes - Are there any episodes present in your feed? Platforms like Soundcloud don’t automatically add your tracks to your public RSS feed. Also some hosts have a default limit of how many episodes they present in the feed. For example, they may only show the last 100 episodes. So you’ll need to change the settings in your old host, so that all episodes are present in the feed before you import it to your new host. When viewing your feed in a feed viewer search for the <item> tag. The number of <item> tags it can find, is how many episodes are present in your feed. Ensure that number matches your true total number of episodes.
Email address - An email address is needed to verify ownership of your podcast when importing it to another host. In your feed, search for the <itunes:email> tag and see what email is present. If it’s missing it will need to be added. If it shows an email address that belongs to your old host rather than you, you’ll want to check in your old host settings to ensure your own email address is showing up.
Locked Status - Podcasts have a locked status to prevent them from being imported to other hosts without the creator’s permission. Search for the </podcast:locked> tag in your feed and see if it says yes or no. You’ll need to set the status to no in your old host settings before you can import it to another host.
Publish Dates - Do all of your episodes have valid publish dates? Make sure each of your episodes has a date, that it is a valid date format, is set in the past and there are no blank dates. Search for the <pubDate> tag in your feed and skip through each episode to check the date.
Analytics - We recommend you take an export of your data from your old host for your own records. Analytics don’t migrate between hosts, so it is useful to keep that data.

Podcast Redirection

When you move podcast hosts, your old feed is likely still in use in a lot of places. Podcast directories and subscribers need to be pointed to the new place your podcast is hosted. Most podcast hosts provide a free redirection service, even after you have deleted your account with them.
Here are the links to some redirection guides from podcast hosts:

Captivate - How to setup a 301 redirect
Libsyn - Configuring a 301 redirect
Podbean - Setting up a 301 redirect
Anchor - Switch away with a 301 redirect
Buzzsprout - Apply a 301 redirect

Updated on: 13/11/2023

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