The published show¶
Everything so far has been the inside of spOken. This is the outside: what a listener opens, and what a podcast app reads.
A collection is what gets published. It has two public faces, and they are the same content — one for people, one for machines.
The page¶
The collection's title, description, artwork and tags, then its published items in order, each with a player. No sign-in, no menu, none of the app around it — a listener sees the show and nothing else.
Each episode also has a page of its own:
That per-episode address is what a feed points at, and what someone shares when they share one episode rather than the show.
Drafts are not here
Only published items appear. An item whose publish date is in the future is scheduled, and one with no date is a draft — both stay in the builder and out of the page and the feed.
The feed¶
Turning on Podcast feed in the collection's Podcast tab makes it a real podcast: Open RSS in the builder gives the feed URL, which is the address you submit to Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the rest. Submit it once — from then on, publishing an item in spOken is what puts an episode in everyone's app.
The feed carries what directories require: the show's title, description, language and artwork, the author details and categories from the Podcast tab, and per episode its title, description, publication date, season and episode number, and the audio file itself.
Left switched off, the collection still serves a plain RSS 2.0 feed — right for an audiobook or a reel of testimonials, which are not shows and do not belong in a podcast directory.
Your own domain¶
By default these live on a spOken address. Point a domain you own at a collection and the page is served from it instead, so the show sits on your own name rather than ours.