Adding and Publishing Episodes

Learn how to add new episodes to your Wistia Channel.

Adding an Episode

There are two options for adding a new episode to your Channel.

  1. Select Add from your Channels page. Here, you can either select to Copy from Project and select an existing file in Wistia to add a brand new copy to your Channel. Or, you can choose to Upload a new media.

  1. Click on the carrot next to Add and select Move or Copy Existing. You can choose multiple files, or just one, and then select whether you would like to make brand new copies to add to your Channel, or move the existing content to your new Channel.

After you’ve added your new episodes, you’ll want to be sure to fill out all of the details and metadata for each one. This includes the Title, Summary, and Notes. These fields apply to both your Wistia Channel embed as well as your podcast feed, if you’ve enabled podcasting in your Channel.

  • Title: This is the individual episode title that will show up in Apple Podcasts and other directories.
  • Summary: This is a brief description that gives your subscribers a preview of what the episode is about.
  • Notes: This is where you should put a detailed outline of your episode, along with any links you want to direct your subscribers to click after they’re done listening.
Note
Don’t forget to save your changes! Also, if you’ve added your podcast to listening applications, such as Apple, keep in mind that any changes you save for published episodes may take several hours to be picked up by these directories.

Podcast Episode Details

If you’ve enabled podcasting for your Channel, there will be a section on your episode pages that is called Podcast Details. This includes Episode Type, Episode Number, Episode URL, and Explicit Content.

  • Episode Type: Most of the time you’ll want to choose Full Episode but you can also add a Trailer or Bonus.
  • Episode Numbers: Order your content by episode number.
  • Episode URL: The URL to your episode in your Wistia Channel.
  • Explicit Content: If your content is explicit, make sure to check this box. We recommend that you review Apple’s explicit content guidelines to learn more.

Previewing Your Episode

When you’re ready to see what your episode will look like to users visiting your Wistia Channel, click the Preview button on your episode’s Overview page.

Note
This preview shows what your content will look like in your Wistia Channel, and may not reflect exactly what your listeners will see in podcast directories or listening apps.

Publishing Your Episode

When you have all your podcast details set up, it’s time to publish your episode! By default, all new episodes are unpublished and in draft mode.

  • If you’d like to publish an episode to your Wistia Channel, but not to your public podcast feed, check Hide from podcast feed.
  • Choose to Publish at a specific date and time or Publish immediately on save.
  • If you’re not ready to publish your episode yet, keep it as a draft.

Automatic Publishing

If you enable automatic publishing, any new content uploaded to your Channel will publish upon upload. Automatic publishing is great to use if you would like to avoid clicking through each episode to publish them individually. You can enable automatic publishing on your Channel Details page.

Note
Automatic publishing cannot be turned on for Channels that have podcasting enabled. This is so that you have a chance to add additional details (such a title, description, episode number) before sharing new episodes with your listeners.

Replacing Your Episode

If you’ve made an edit to your episode (big or small!) and you’d like to replace the current one with the new version, hover over the arrows in the top right hand corner, just above your media.

Once clicked, you can choose whether you would like to Overwrite the original or Swap out video content.

Overwritng the original episode will build on top of its current stats and is great for small tweaks.

Swapping out the content will archvie the old version (along with its stats) as a separate episode in your Channel (don’t worry, you can either keep this unpublished, or delete it if you’d like!). The new media will then also start stats from scratch.

When your replacement is complete, all embedded instances, as well as your RSS feed URL, will update to reflect the new episode.

Downloading Your Episode

To download an episode from your Channel, select More Options. You’ll see here that you can download the original file, or, different quality assets that Wistia has created. You can also choose to download the thumbnail file.

Note
What you see here depends on whether you’re downloading an audio episode, or a video episode. For audio episodes, you’ll see the Original File, the Encoded Version and the Episode Art / Thumbnail. For video episodes, you’ll see a number of different quality options, in addition to the original file and thumbnail.

Deleting Your Episode

Select More Options on your episode’s page. Scroll down and click Delete Episode. Then, confirm your decision in the popup box. If the episode has received any plays in the last 90 days, we’ll also display the embed location where the plays occurred. Deleting an episode will delete all of its analytics and remove it from your Channel and podcast feed (if you’ve enabled podcasting).

Note
Depending on your plan, you may also have ability to archive your episodes. You can read more about archiving here!