PodCheck — Podcast RSS Feed Health Checker

Google PageSpeed Insights, but for podcast feeds.

PodCheck is a free web tool where podcasters paste their RSS feed URL and get an instant health report: validation against Apple/Spotify/Google specs, SEO scoring for titles and descriptions, artwork checks, and actionable fix suggestions.

Live Demo: www.podcheck.dev

---

Features

• Feed Validation — Checks your RSS feed against Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts directory requirements
• Health Score — Overall 0–100 health score with category breakdowns (Compliance, Technical, Best Practices)
• SEO Analysis — Title length analysis, description quality scoring, episode title pattern detection
• Artwork Analyzer — Validates image dimensions (1400×1400 to 3000×3000), format (JPEG/PNG), and reachability
• Episode Sampling — Checks the first 10 episodes for enclosures, GUIDs, pub dates, durations, and more
• Shareable Reports — Every report gets a unique URL you can bookmark or share
• Result Caching — Repeat checks are instant (cached for 1 hour, with force re-check option)

What Gets Checked

Channel-Level (8 checks): Artwork, iTunes Category, Explicit Tag, Author, Owner Email, Language, Website Link, Description

Episode-Level (6 checks per episode): Enclosure (media file), GUID uniqueness, Pub Date format, Duration, Title quality, Description presence

SEO (3 areas): Show title length & keyword stuffing, show description quality, episode title descriptiveness

---

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Backend	Laravel 12 (PHP 8.3+)
Frontend	Blade + Alpine.js + Tailwind CSS 4
Build	Vite
Database	SQLite (dev) / MySQL (prod)
Cache	File-based (MVP)
Testing	Pest PHP (335+ tests)
Deployment	Docker + Railway

---

Screenshots

Visit www.podcheck.dev to see it live, or add your own screenshots to docs/screenshots/ and reference them here.

---

Deployment

PodCheck is deployed on Railway using a multi-stage Docker build.

Infrastructure:

• App: Docker container (PHP 8.3 FPM + nginx) on Railway
• Database: MySQL on Railway
• Domain: www.podcheck.dev via GoDaddy DNS

How it works:

• The Dockerfile uses a two-stage build: Node.js 20 compiles Vite assets, then the PHP 8.3 FPM image serves the app with nginx
• The docker/entrypoint.sh runs migrations and caches config/routes/views on each deploy
• Railway environment variables configure the database, logging, and app settings

To deploy your own instance, see the Railway production overrides documented in .env.example.

---

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• PHP 8.3+
• Composer
• Node.js 20+ and npm
• SQLite (included with most PHP installations)

Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/daniloradovic/podcheck.git
cd podcheck

# Install PHP dependencies
composer install

# Install Node dependencies
npm install

# Set up environment
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate

# Create the SQLite database and run migrations
touch database/database.sqlite
php artisan migrate

# Build frontend assets
npm run build

Running Locally

Option 1 — Quick start (two terminals):

# Terminal 1: Laravel dev server
php artisan serve

# Terminal 2: Vite dev server (for hot-reload)
npm run dev

Option 2 — All-in-one with Composer:

composer dev

Then open http://localhost:8000 in your browser.

Running Tests

# Run the full test suite
php artisan test

# Run a specific test group
php artisan test --filter=ChannelChecks
php artisan test --filter=EpisodeChecks
php artisan test --filter=FeedCheckFlowTest

# Check code style
./vendor/bin/pint --test

---

Architecture

app/
├── Http/Controllers/
│   └── FeedCheckController.php        # Thin controller — form, check, report display
├── Services/
│   ├── FeedFetcher.php                # Fetches and parses RSS XML (with error handling)
│   ├── FeedValidator.php              # Orchestrates all validation checks
│   ├── Checks/
│   │   ├── CheckInterface.php         # Contract: name(), run(), severity()
│   │   ├── CheckResult.php            # Value object: status, message, suggestion
│   │   ├── CheckStatus.php            # Enum: pass, warn, fail
│   │   ├── ChannelChecks/             # 8 channel-level checks
│   │   └── EpisodeChecks/             # 6 episode-level checks
│   └── Scoring/
│       ├── HealthScorer.php           # Overall + category health scores
│       ├── HealthScore.php            # Health score value object
│       ├── SeoScorer.php              # Title/description SEO analysis
│       └── SeoScore.php              # SEO score value object
└── Models/
    └── FeedReport.php                 # Stored report with results JSON + slug

How It Works

1. Fetch — User submits an RSS feed URL. FeedFetcher retrieves and parses the XML with timeout handling, SSL validation, and format detection.
2. Validate — FeedValidator runs all 14 checks (8 channel + 6 episode) against the parsed feed. Episode checks run on the first 10 episodes.
3. Score — HealthScorer calculates a 0–100 health score with weighted deductions (fail = −10, warn = −3) across three categories. SeoScorer analyzes title/description quality separately.
4. Store — Results are saved as a FeedReport with a unique slug for shareable URLs.
5. Display — The report page shows an animated score ring, category breakdowns, grouped check results with expandable fix suggestions, and episode sampling details.

---

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please follow these guidelines:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/your-feature)
3. Follow PSR-12 coding standards
4. Add declare(strict_types=1); to every PHP file
5. Write Pest tests for any new functionality
6. Ensure all tests pass (php artisan test) and code style is clean (./vendor/bin/pint --test)
7. Submit a pull request

---

License

This project is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.