Sample Podcast RSS file

When I was putting together a podcast of my favorite Japanese-language radio program last month, it took me several tries to get the RSS tags right. Even with Apple's explanation of where the tags' contents are presented in iTune's podcast display, I still couldn't get it right the first time. On top of that, even once I was satisfied with how it looked in iTunes, I didn't like how the episodes were presented in the iPod U.I.

I'm not going to bore you with the details, but in hopes to help others to avoid the same trial-and-error process I went through, I put together a sample podcast feed in which the tags' contents are the names of the tags themselves.

If you subscribe to the feed [link only works if you have iTunes installed], you'll quickly see what I mean. Click around the iTunes U.I. and the podcast and episode properties and you can learn how each tag is displayed. Also, sync it to your iPod and you can see how the tags are displayed in the iPod U.I.

Unfortunately, my sample podcast does not validate with feedvalidator.org. The reason is simple, though: it doesn't like the tags' contents being the tag names themselves. For example, the <itunes:email> tag should contain an e-mail address; my sample podcast has the text "<channel><itunes:owner><itunes:email>" in it. While this makes it clear which tag's contents you are seeing in the U.I., you'll obviously want to fill them in with real data in your podcast. Just be sure you validate your podcast's RSS feed when you are done.