Getting started with Pod

Pod is a Ghost theme that turns your site into a full podcast host. This guide walks you through installing it, wiring the two routes it needs (/podcast/rss/ and /subscribe/), and publishing your first episode. Ten minutes end-to-end.

Prerequisites

• Ghost 5.93 or newer (Ghost 6.x recommended). If you're a Magic Pages customer, you're already there.
• Access to your site's Settings → Design and Settings → Labs pages.
• The MP3 files for your episodes ready to upload — Pod hosts them from your Ghost site's own file store.

Install the theme

1. Download the latest pod.zip from the GitHub releases page.
2. In Ghost admin, go to Settings → Design → Change theme → Upload theme.
3. Select the zip. Ghost validates it via gscan; you should see a green "Compatible with Ghost 6.x" confirmation.
4. Click Activate.

Your site now uses Pod. Load your homepage — you'll see the theme in place with your existing posts. The podcast surfaces come next.

Wire the routes

Pod adds two routes to Ghost's routing table: /podcast/rss/ for the iTunes-spec RSS feed, and /subscribe/ for the podcast-app landing page. Both are optional — the theme works without them — but you almost certainly want them enabled.

In the theme zip you downloaded, there's a file called routes.yaml.example. Its two entries look like this:

routes:
  /podcast/rss/:
    template: podcast/rss
    content_type: text/xml
  /subscribe/:
    template: subscribe

To install them, download Pod's ready-to-upload routes.yaml (it's attached to every GitHub Release as a separate file — no need to unpack the theme zip). Then:

1. In Ghost admin, go to Settings → Labs.
2. Click Upload routes.yaml and pick the file you just downloaded.

The file combines Ghost's default routes with the two Pod needs, so on a fresh Ghost site you can upload it as-is. If you've already customised your routes, download your current file first (Beta features → Download routes.yaml), merge the two routes: entries from Pod's file, and upload that instead of overwriting.

Your feed is now at https://yoursite.com/podcast/rss/ and the subscribe landing at https://yoursite.com/subscribe/. Load them in a browser — they'll be empty until you publish an episode.

Set the show-level metadata

Pod exposes a small set of custom settings to Ghost's Design → Site-wide panel — everything Apple Podcasts and Spotify need for the channel-level RSS block. Fill in these before submitting your feed to any directory:

• iTunes author — shown as the artist/creator in Apple Podcasts.
• iTunes owner name + iTunes owner email — required by Apple's submission form.
• iTunes category — pick the primary Apple category.
• iTunes explicit — false unless every episode carries explicit content.
• iTunes type — episodic for newest-first, serial for oldest-first (choose serial only for narrative-arc shows).

Ghost's Publication cover becomes your show artwork in the RSS feed. Set it in Ghost admin → Settings → Design & branding → Brand → Publication cover. Upload a square 3000×3000 JPG or PNG under 512 KB — Apple Podcasts wants both. If you leave the Ghost default placeholder in place, Pod falls back to a bundled cover so the feed still validates on day one, but you'll want your own artwork there before you submit to any podcast directory.

Publish your first episode

1. In Ghost admin, click Posts → New post.
2. Give the post a title, a custom excerpt (this becomes the episode description), and — highly recommended — a feature image sized 3000×3000 (this becomes the per-episode Apple Podcasts artwork).
3. Give the post an audio file. The simplest path is to add an audio card in the Ghost editor and drop your MP3 in — Ghost hosts the file and Pod picks it up automatically. If your audio already lives somewhere else (Castopod, Azuracast, an S3 bucket, the podcast host you're migrating from) you can point at any URL instead. See Hosting your audio files for all three patterns.
4. Tag the post with the internal tag #podcast. Pod filters the feed and the archive by this tag.
5. Open Post settings → Code injection → Foot and paste the episode's metadata markers. Use our episode metadata generator — it produces the exact block you need for episode number, duration, chapters, and every Podcasting 2.0 tag.
6. Publish.

Your homepage now leads with the episode. The RSS feed at /podcast/rss/ carries it. The /subscribe/ page shows the right list of apps for your setup. When you're happy with what you see, submit the feed URL to Apple Podcasts and Spotify for Podcasters.

What's next

• Episode metadata generator — the tool for building the code-injection block. Handles chapters, transcripts, hosts + guests, everything.
• README on GitHub — the full technical reference. Covers every custom setting, every pod:* marker, and the release + contribution flow.
• Live demo — see the theme running end-to-end.