Auto‑Publish Podcast Episodes to Your Website

Auto‑Publish Podcast Episodes to Your Website

Imagine dropping a new podcast episode and—boom!—it shows up on your website, complete with show notes, audio player, and cover art, absolutely automatically. No tedious copying, no late-night posting sprees. In this guide, I’ll walk you through setting up a smart automation using free, modern tools like n8n, RSS feed monitoring, and the WordPress API. No tech wizardry required—just a bit of setup, and you’ll save hours every month.

Why Automate This?

Manually adding each podcast episode to your website can quickly become a chore, especially if you release episodes regularly. Automation ensures that:

  • You never forget to update your site
  • New episodes go live the moment they’re published on your feed
  • Your audience and SEO both benefit from fresh, complete posts
  • You cut out repetitive, error-prone manual steps

Even better, once your workflow is set up, you get to spend more time creating and connecting with listeners—and less time fiddling with your website.

Step-by-Step Setup

Let’s break down the process into clear, manageable steps. For each, I’ll explain what’s happening, what the n8n workflow might look like, example JSON data that moves between the steps, and how you can tweak it for your business.

1. Detect New Podcast Episodes with n8n’s RSS Trigger

This first step watches your podcast RSS feed for new episodes. With n8n’s RSS Feed Trigger, as soon as a new episode appears in your feed, the workflow kicks off.

How it looks: In your n8n workflow designer, add the RSS Feed Trigger node. Paste in your podcast RSS URL, and tell it how often to check (like every hour or once a day).

{
  "feedUrl": "https://example.com/podcast/feed.xml",
  "latestItem": {
    "title": "AI in Podcasting: What’s Next?",
    "link": "https://example.com/podcast/ai-in-podcasting",
    "description": "We explore the impact of artificial intelligence on podcast creation...",
    "enclosure": {
      "url": "https://cdn.example.com/episodes/ai-in-podcasting.mp3"
    },
    "pubDate": "2025-03-26T12:00:00Z",
    "itunes:image": {
      "href": "https://cdn.example.com/images/ai-in-podcasting.jpg"
    }
  }
}

Tips: Make sure your podcast host provides a full-featured RSS feed (most do). If you use a private feed, check that n8n can access it. You can always adjust how often it checks—faster polling means episodes show up sooner on your site.

2. Process Episode Data and Generate Show Notes

Once n8n finds a new episode, you want to grab all its details—title, description, audio file link—and make it website-ready. You might even want AI to help summarize the content or create polished show notes.

How it looks: Add n8n’s Set node to pick out the fields you care about, and optionally an OpenAI node (or similar) to generate or clean up your show notes automatically.

{
  "episode_title": "AI in Podcasting: What’s Next?",
  "episode_description": "We explore the impact of artificial intelligence...",
  "audio_url": "https://cdn.example.com/episodes/ai-in-podcasting.mp3",
  "cover_image": "https://cdn.example.com/images/ai-in-podcasting.jpg",
  "show_notes": "In this episode, we discuss... (generated by AI)"
}

Tips: If the descriptions in your RSS feed are just teasers, try using an AI node to expand them into fuller show notes. If you’re summarizing, you can add your own intro or links at this step, too.

3. Create a WordPress Post with Episode Details

Ready to share it with the world? The WordPress node in n8n lets you post directly to your site—title, embedded audio, show notes and more.

How it looks: Wire up a WordPress node using your WordPress REST API credentials. Map the fields from your previous step to the right post properties.

{
  "title": "AI in Podcasting: What’s Next?",
  "status": "publish", 
  "content": "\n
In this episode, we discuss...
",
  "featured_media": 12345  // (ID of uploaded image)
}

Tips: If you’d rather review each post before it goes live, set status to draft instead of publish. You can also assign categories or tags based on your podcast series.

4. Upload Featured Image and Embed Audio Player

For a professional-looking post, you want each episode to have its own artwork. This step downloads the cover art and uploads it to your WordPress media library, then uses the image as the featured thumbnail. Don’t forget to add the audio player directly into the post body, too.

How it looks: Use n8n’s HTTP Request node to fetch the image file, then the WordPress node to upload media and attach it as featured image.

{
  "media_url": "https://cdn.example.com/images/ai-in-podcasting.jpg",
  "media_id": 12345,
  "audio_player_html": ""
}

Tips: Some themes display featured images differently—test your setup to make sure posts look just the way you want. You can even include transcript downloads or social links in the post content if you wish.

5. Full Automation vs. Human Review

Some folks want everything auto-published the second it’s ready. Others prefer to eyeball new posts before they go public. Either way, it’s easy to tweak: just choose whether your WordPress post is created as publish (live instantly) or draft (awaiting review).

{
  "title": "AI in Podcasting: What’s Next?",
  "status": "draft", 
  "content": "\n
Show notes go here...
"
}

Tips: If your workflow is solid and you trust your sources, go fully automated. Otherwise, a hybrid approach gives peace of mind!

Real Example: How This Looks for a Small Business Podcaster

Let’s say you run a weekly business podcast. Here’s how your day changes:
Instead of scrambling to write a post and remember to add audio every Thursday, you just upload your new episode as usual. n8n spots the update, pulls down your episode details, pings OpenAI to write catchy show notes, grabs your fresh cover art, and neatly posts everything to your WordPress blog with an embedded player. All you do is watch your site update like magic—no more copy-and-paste marathons.

Tools You’ll Need

  • n8n (Self-hosted or Cloud): Open-source automation tool, a bit like Zapier but more flexible. Try it free
  • Podcast RSS Feed: Usually provided by your podcast host (Buzzsprout, Anchor, Libsyn, etc.)
  • WordPress Site: Needs API access (most modern WordPress installs have this by default)
  • WordPress API Credentials: User token (see the n8n docs on WordPress for details)
  • (Optional) OpenAI API Key: If you want AI-generated show notes

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Final Thoughts

If you’re a podcaster who wants a hassle-free way to keep their website up to date, automating your publishing is a game-changer. It keeps your content fresh, saves you time, and looks totally pro—even if you’re a solo creator. Whether you post once a month or every week, these workflows are flexible, reliable, and free to set up with open-source tools. If you tweak anything or build a cool variation, let me know—happy automating!

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