Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How do I claim my podcast?

Search for your podcast on the podfollow Home page. Scroll down and click ‘Tell Me More’. We’ll then send you a claim email based on the email address in your RSS feed (this is normally set wherever you upload your podcast to). You’ll then click on a link in that email (check your spam!) and you can then claim your podcast. Alternatively you can add a code to your RSS feed and claim it that way.

Q. I don’t have access to the email address in my RSS feed!

You can also use the option where you add a code into your RSS feed. With this you just paste it into your show’s description (or an episode’s description) we can then look for this – and that tells us that you’re the boss. Alternatively you can email us your podfollow link and we can manually send you a claim email. We’re keen to make sure you are you, so do use an email address from your podcast. If you can’t do that, follow us on Twitter from your podcast’s Twitter account and mention that when you email us.

Q. When I claimed my podcast I used my Twitter account rather than the show’s one and I want to change it!

Firstly, the social account you claim with, is just what podfollow uses to log you in, we don’t publish that anywhere. So, it’s fine to use a personal Facebook or Twitter account – to be honest that’s what most of our users do!

However, if you want to change it, the best thing to do is use the User Access section of the podfollow Dashboard for your show.

Here you can add other users so they can login and manage a show.

So if you were still desperate to change it, I would invite yourself as an ‘Owner’ user (that’ll send you an email), then I would log out of podfollow. I’d then click the link in the email I’ve just received and login as my show Twitter account. I’d then go to User Access and remove the personal account.

Q. My podcast doesn’t appear in your search, help!

A. Your podcast needs to be in the Apple Podcasts directory, that’s what we use, initially, to find you. So, you’ll need to have submitted your podcast to Apple. If you’ve done that recently and had it approved, it might take 24hrs or so to appear in their search (so we can find it!)

Q. My podcast’s in Apple Podcasts search, but it’s still not showing up!

A. Podfollow’s default web URLs use the Apple Podcasts ID, so if you’re podcast has an Apple Podcasts URL like this: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/science-vs/id1051557000
…then you’re podfollow URL would likely be podfollow.com/1051557000 – if you visit that URL with /links on the end – podfollow.com/1051557000/links – you should be able to see it.

Q. My podcast title is wrong!

A. We take a snapshot of your podcast to fill our directory, it doesn’t necessarily automatically update. If you’ve claimed your podcast though, it’s really easy to change the title. Just go to the ‘channel’ page in the podfollow Dashboard and change it there.

Q. My description is wrong!

A. To update your description go to the ‘home’ page in the podfollow Dashboard and press ‘Check RSS’, it may take 5mins to show up.

Q. My image is old or looks weird!

A. The quickest way to fix an image, if you’ve claimed your podcast, is to visit the ‘channel’ page in the podfollow Dashboard and upload the new one.

Q. The link to Spotify is wrong!

A. If you’ve claimed your page, visit the ‘Advanced’ section of the podfollow Dashboard – you can paste a URL or ID of your podcast into there.

Q. When I use an episode link it brings up the podfollow Profile page and not what I’ve set it to do. Why?

Mobile

If you use an episode link, and someone clicks on it on mobile, we aim to take them to the destination that you’ve set up.

However, if you’ve just posted an episode it might not be on, say, Apple Podcasts yet (it can take a few hours). If we see that that’s the case, rather than send someone to a broken Apple Podcasts link we send them to our podfollow Profile so they’re able to listen to what you’ve linked to. This should be replaced with Apple Podcasts when it has your episode.

Also, remember that for Apple Podcasts, if you’ve subscribed to your show you get the episode updated automatically. Non subscribers have to wait for Apple to update their database. If you visit your Apple Podcast link on the web, and you can’t see your new episode listed yet, then podfollow (and non-subscribers) can’t see it either.

Apple will check podcasts for new episodes regularly (and more regularly the more episodes you post), but you can also get it to check your podcast quicker if you refresh you podcast in Apple Podcasts Connect.

Desktop

We want episode links to bring your listeners to a destination that allows them to listen straight away.

Some show’s websites make that quite difficult to do or don’t do that at all – just linking to a social media page etc – therefore if you select ‘Website’ as a destination, for episodes we’ll send them to the podfollow Profile page.

If you do want them to go to a website, or maybe a particular page/post for an episode, if you visit the Episodes section in the podfollow Dashboard and edit an episode, you can paste in your own URL and it’ll send Desktop users there.

I’ve posted a new episode, why isn’t showing up?

We check new episodes regularly, but if we haven’t caught your latest, logged in users can go to their Dashboard Home and click ‘Update RSS’ this will force the system to have another look and see if there are any new episodes to grab.

I’ve tried that and it still doesn’t work!

Are you using Cloudflare on you website? Sometimes this doesn’t like our servers grabbing things from your site. In Cloudflare you can set your RSS feed to be ignored by Cloudflare (if we’re having problems, it’s likely other services could have trouble too).

You can also whitelist our service too. Go to Cloudflare and the Firewall section and then click ‘Create A Firewall Rule’. Select Useragent in the Field drop down, the choose ‘contains’ and then type podfollow as the value and allow as the action. Then click Deploy.

My RSS feed is at a new address. Do I need to tell you?

Generally, at the point that Apple Podcasts is using your new address then Podfollow will start to use it too. If it hasn’t changed after 24 hours and you’ve pressed the Re-Check RSS feed button (which claimed users can see), then contact us.

The social card has a broken image or showing the wrong image/title

Podfollow grabs information from your RSS feed and builds the social cards. Sometimes the RSS feed doesn’t import properly, your host is having a problem, or we’ve grabbed it, and then you’ve gone on to edit it or delete/resubmit and episode etc. Most of this can be fixed by clicking the Re-Check RSS Feed button when you’re logged into a claimed page.

If we haven’t answered your question, get in touch.