Episode information

Each episode of your podcast should have an associated Eleventy template, with a podcastEpisode tag. The front matter of this template will contain the necessary information about the episode, and the content of the template will be the show notes.

Front matter

The important information about each of your podcast episodes — the title, the date, the filename, the episode number, the size, the duration — should be made available in an episode object in the front matter of a post with an podcastEpisode tag, like this:

---
title: Entering a new Phase
date: 2024-04-14
tags:
  - podcastEpisode
episode:
  filename: 500YD S1E1, Entering a New Phase.mp3
  seasonNumber: 1
  episodeNumber: 1
  size: 61231442
  duration: 3283
  explicit: no
  episodeType: full
excerpt: >-
  A big week for beginnings this week, with a new Doctor, 
  a new origin story for the Daleks, and a whole new approach 
  to defeating the bad guys. Oh, and a new podcast to discuss 
  them all on. So let’s welcome Patrick Troughton to the studio
  floor, as we discuss _The Power of the Daleks_.
---

And here’s a detailed description of all of this information.

Required

field	value
`title`	The title of the post on the website; by default, this will also be the title of the podcast episode.
`date`	The date of the post on the website; this will also be the date of the episode.
`tags`	Every episode post must have the tag `podcastEpisode` included in the `tags` array. Additional tags are also permitted.
`episode.filename`	The filename of the episode’s audio file.
`episode.size`	The size of the episode’s audio file in bytes.
`episode.duration`	The duration of the episode as a number of seconds.
`episode.episodeNumber`	The episode number. Needn’t be unique, but the combination of `seasonNumber` and `episodeNumber` must be unique.

Tip

It’s possible for Podcaster to calculate the size and duration for each episode if it has access to your episode audio files, in which case you don’t need to explicitly provide this information in the front matter. Read more to find out how this works.

Optional

field	value
`guid`	A unique ID for the post. Normally this will be the post’s URL, in which case there is no need to provide it here. It’s should really only be necessary to provide it if you’re importing the podcast from some other system that has assigned a guid to each post.
`episode.title`	The title of the episode if it’s different from the title of the post, above. If omitted, `title` is used instead.
`episode.itunesTitle`	A specific episode title for use in Apple Podcasts only. (Apple Podcasts doesn’t allow episode numbers in titles, so if you want to include episode numbers elsewhere, you need to specify a separate episode title for Apple Podcasts.) (New in version 1.1.0)
`episode.description`	A short textual description of the episode. If omitted, the `content` of the post, truncated to about 800 characters, will be used instead.
`episode.seasonNumber`	The season number. (Most podcasts don’t group their episodes into seasons.)
`episode.image`	The path or URL for an image specific to this episode.
`episode.explicit`	If the value here is `true` (or truthy), listeners are warned that this episode contains explicit language. Should be used for a single episode in a podcast that isn’t itself marked as explicit.
`episode.type`	The type of episode. Defaults to `full`, meaning a full episode of the podcast. Other valid types are `trailer` and `bonus`.
`episode.transcript`	The path or URL for a file containing a transcript of this episode. It should be a file in VTT or SRT format.
`episode.block`	If the value here is `true` (or truthy), the episode will be blocked from appearing in the Apple Podcasts Directory.
`excerpt`	A shorter version of the content of the post, written in Markdown. For use in lists of episodes where the show notes are long. For other ways of providing excerpts to Podcaster, check out its optional excerpts feature.

Tip

It’s also possible for Podcaster to automatically create an excerpt for each episode. Read more to find out how.