User talk:PeterSampson/How to publish a Podcast
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When you create a podcast, you create an MP3 file. In order for people to download your MP3 file, it must be stored somewhere on the Internet. You basically have two types of places on the Net that you can store your MP3 files: on servers that you own or pay for, or on third-party servers. In both cases, you have two worries: how big are my podcast files, which plays into the amount of storage you have on the server, and how popular are my podcasts, which affects the costs of your bandwidth. In other words, the larger and more popular the podcast, the more it's going to cost you.
You have many options available to you, and your choices are going to be affected by how much money you want to spend, how much control you want over your podcast's home and subscription information, and how technically proficient you are. In this chapter we're going to cover several of your options, in order to help you find the best solution that fits your needs and budget.
Find a host
It can be tricky finding a place to store your podcasts online. You want to make sure that the host you choose is reliable, scalable, and gives you control over not only your actual podcast, but also the resulting RSS feed that subscribers will use.
There are several different ways to skin this cat. If you're technically proficient, you could upload your MP3s to your own server and then write your own RSS, the file to which users actually subscribe. You could do that, but then why are you reading this book? Go code! For everyone else, there are much simpler ways to accomplish the goal of getting your podcast in front of anyone who wants to hear it.
If You Need a Place to Store Your Podcasts
If you're lucky and your podcast becomes popular, you're eventually going to find yourself having to pay the costs in storage and bandwidth, even if everything is on a server you own and run. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a place that would store your MP3s online, for free, forever? This might sound like a complete fantasy, but it's not.
The Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org) is the world's largest collection of websites, audio files, text files, movies, and other multimedia, and it's all free, in terms of cost and license. For our purposes, take a look at http://www.archive.org/details/audio_podcast, which, as of this writing, hosts 1,447 podcast files to which anyone can listen and subscribe.
If you're interested in letting the excellent Internet Archive host your podcast files for free, create an account at http://www.archive.org/create/ and start uploading your audio files. There's one important condition that you have to follow, however: you must make your podcasts available under a Creative Commons license.
Creative Commons is an alternative to copyright that allows for others to use your work within certain restrictions that you set. If copyright is "All rights reserved," then Creative Commons is "Some rights reserved." To find out more, watch the short, informative movies at http://creativecommons.org/learnmore/. To use Creative Commons, go to http://www.creativecommons.org, select License Your Work, answer a few simple questions, and you've generated a Creative Commons license under which your podcasts will reside.
You should strongly consider putting your podcasts under a Creative Commons license. Besides the fact that you can thereby acquire free storage forever at the Internet Archive, there's also the added advantage that it will help make it easier for people to re-use your podcast in ways that you specify, thereby spreading the word about ___you__. Podcasting isn't about making money - hardly anyone is going to do that - but is instead about communicating and collaborating with people all over the world. A Creative Commons license furthers those purposes, while bringing the additional benefit of free hosting as well. Give it consideration, and you might see that the Internet Archive - along with Creative Commons - is the perfect solution to your needs.
Host Your Podcast Yourself
If you're technically knowledgeable and don't mind getting your hands dirty, or if you just want to maintain total control over your blog and podcast, then rolling your own is the way to go. Whether you have your own server, or just have space on a server, you'll find that it's not that hard to install and set up software that enables you to publish your blog/podcast onto the Net.
WordPress
WordPress is a great choice for many people. Its software is robust, complete, and always improving, and its community is large and helpful. The fact that it is both open source and free (as in speech and beer) is another great plus that should make WordPress a strong contender if you want to host your blog/podcast yourself.
You can download WordPress at http://wordpress.org. I can't go into the finer details of installing the software, but fortunately the website has very complete, detailed instructions. Once it's up and running, all you need to do to generate the basic RSS you need for your podcast is link to an audio file reachable on the Net by using an absolute URL (like http://www.mydomain.com/podcasts/myfile.mp3).
Podcasters who want to use WordPress ___must__ (and that is a "must") install an extension written specifically to extend WordPress' capabilities when it comes to managing and working with podcast files and feeds: PodPress, available from http://www.mightyseek.com/podpress/. Once you install it, you'll see a new section when you create a new post, as shown in the following figure.
PodPress' website lists an amazing - and essential - list of features. It installs easily, just like every other WordPress extension, and you'll be amazed at how cool it is. Check it out!
Movable Type
Movable Type is popular and full-featured, but it's not open source. It is free to acquire and run, however - or at least, the download, available at http://www.movabletype.com, is free. If you want support, a one year contract is going to cost you $49.95; more information is available at http://www.movabletype.com/pricing.html.
Movable Type isn't hard to install, so you should have it running soon after you download it. I won't go into the instructions here, but you can read them on the software's website. You will quickly find, however, that Movable Type 3, which is the version current at this writing, doesn't really have support for podcasting built in.
You have two choices if you want to rectify this issue. If you're sticking with MT 3, install the free MT-Enclosures plugin, available at http://brandon.fuller.name/archives/hacks/mtenclosures/. The plugin will help generate the correct RSS feed your subscribers will need.
By the time this book is in your hands, Movable Type 4 will probably be out, and the new version of MT should have complete support for podcasting baked in from the get-go. Even if it's not yet out, the beta is available now, so you can try it and get your feet wet before the final release.
Host Everything With Someone Else
There are many good companies that offer the total package: they host your podcast files, they make it easy to generate short blog posts with info about each podcast, and they generate RSS feeds (but you'll want to replace them with those generated by FeedBurner, as you'll discover later in this chapter).
Even with these niceties, there are downsides. All the solutions in this category suffer from two (perhaps minor to you) problems. First, these solutions aren't really free (well, they can be if you use the Internet Archive, which I'll cover in a moment). If you want to take full advantage of their environments, you're going to end up ponying up some money. Not a lot, but it's going to cost you.
Second, with ease of use you sacrifice control. If you don't like the way that your blog/podcast is configured or works, you may not have the ability to change it. If your host doesn't allow you to do something, you can't do it. This may be just fine for many people, but others may chafe at the restrictions.
With those caveats in mind, let's look at some of your options.
- Odeo (http://www.odeo.com)
- Liberated Syndication (http://www.libsyn.com)
- Switchpod (http://switchpod.com)
WordPress
WordPress is a great choice for many people. Its software is robust, complete, and always improving, and its community is large and helpful. To create your free blog, go to http://www.wordpress.com, answer the few questions shown in the following figure, and you're ready to go.
The free blog gives you only 50 MB of space, which under normal circumstances is fine, but for podcasters spells disaster. In fact, the free WordPress allows you to upload pictures, but that's about it, as you can see in the following figure.
If you want to use the hosted WordPress, you're going to have to purchase an upgrade. 1 GB of storage for your podcasts (or whatever else you'd like to feature on your blog) is just $20/year, while 5 GB is $50/year and 10 GB $90/year. In addition, upgrading your storage also allows you to upload MP3, OGG, and even WAV files (but why?).
WordPress is a good solution that will make many users very happy, as long as they're willing to spend a little bit of money.
TypePad
TypePad is based on the popular and powerful Movable Type blogging software. To create your TypePad blog, head over to http://www.typepad.com, answer the questions shown in the following figure, and start blogging.
One thing you have to keep in mind is that TypePad doesn't offer any free options; you must pay to use the service. Since WordPress isn't very useful to podcasters unless they pay, this isn't that big a deal, but you should know it. You should also know that you get a lot more for your money with WordPress. Just compare the prices and you'll see what I mean.
For $49.50/year, you get the TypePad Basic service: 1 author, 1 blog, 100 MB of storage (meaning it's practically useless to podcasters) and 2 GB of bandwidth/month. $89.50/year bumps you up to the TypePad Plus plan, with 1 author, 3 blogs, 500 MB of storage, and 5 GB of bandwidth per month. The next step is TypePad Pro, which nets you multiple authors, unlimited blogs, 1 GB of storage, and 10 GB of bandwidth per month, for $149.50/year. If you want to spend even more money, you can. Every one of these plans includes support for podcasting.
TypePad is a nice service with some cool features, but it's a little pricey. Nonetheless, it may be just what you're looking for, so consider them if you want to podcast.
Spread the Hosting Around
One of the largest and most popular free blogging services in the world is Google's Blogger. It's big, but it's not very full-featured; in fact, in many ways it falls far behind Movable Type (and TypePad) or WordPress. For instance, it has zero support for podcasting. After creating your free blog at http://www.blogger.com, you have to upload your MP3 file to another server (like the Internet Archive) and then point to it in the blog post you create at Blogger.
So why would anyone use Blogger? Well, it doesn't cost anything at all, and it's easy. If you have no money to spend, the combination of the Internet Archive and Blogger will give you a completely free way to store and propagate your podcasts to the world. For some people, any aggravations due to Blogger's limitations will be completely offset because they won't have to spend any money. If your budget is zero, it's hard to argue with that.
Upload your podcast
Most of the services and software we've discussed in this chapter so far provide a method for you to upload your MP3 to their servers so that it's available on the Net. If you run your own server, however, or if you use a service that allows you to use FTP to upload your podcast, you may be pleasantly surprised to find out that support for FTP uploads is now built in to Audacity directly.
To use Audacity to get your podcast off of your computer and onto the Net, go to File > Upload File, and you'll see the following figure.
The Name is for you; it's the name you're going to see after this in the list of saved connections. Enter something meaningful and move on.
Host should contain either a domain name, like www.yoursite.com, or an IP address, like 111.111.111.111. Username and Password are obvious: they're the username and password you use to access the site you specify in Host. Press Connect to make the connection to the server.
Press Upload File and find the file you want to upload. A few moments later, depending upon your connection speed, a copy of your podcast will sit on your server. You can also upload folders if you'd like, or even create a new folder in which your podcast will sit.
Most people won't need this feature, but it's great that it's in Audacity, and it will undoubtedly be improved in future versions.
Create a Better XML feed
If you use the services that I discussed earlier in this chapter, like WordPress and Movable Type, then you're generating an RSS feed every time you publish a new post. Most of these RSS feeds will work, in that people interested in your podcast can use them to subscribe to your words. But they are pretty basic, and there are better options available.
In fact, for the do-it-yourselfers, there are a variety of tools and services that you can use to create a podcast feed by hand (for a good list, see http://www.podcastingnews.com/topics/Podcasting_Software.html). But that's way too much work for most people.
There has to be a middle way, between the easily created but basic RSS feeds on the one side and the robust but difficult to create RSS feeds on the other, and there is. In this chapter, we're going to focus on a service named FeedBurner that meets our needs in several ways. First, it's a very complete service with just about every feature you could ever need as a podcaster. Second, it's now owned by Google, so you know that it will available and up all the time. Finally, thanks to Google's recent purchase of the company, FeedBurner's services are now free, which is a great bonus.
Set Up Your FeedBurner Feed
To start, point your web browser to http://www.feedburner.com and create an account. Then, if you're not automatically taken there, click on the My Feeds link. On that page, you'll see Burn a feed right this instant, which you can view in the following figure.
Enter your blog or feed's current address, check the box next to I am a podcaster and press Next. FeedBurner will now walk you through three screens that will set things up for you. The first screen you'll see is visible in the following figure.
On the first screen, enter the title of your feed in Feed Title. Be as descriptive as possible, but don't be unduly verbose. Keep it interesting, so that potential listeners will see your title and want to click on it to learn more. Some good titles that you can see in the iTunes Music Store's Podcast section include Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, Google Developer Podcast, and The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Title is very important, as it is one of the fields that the iTunes Music Store indexes, so make sure that it will grab attention.
For Feed Address, enter something that is unique to FeedBurner, without spaces or symbols. You could just take your Feed Title and concatenate it together, as you see in the previous figure. On the one hand, you should try to mention your podcast's name. On the other, it doesn't matter what you put, because you're going to see in just a little bit that you're about to get a better URL.
Step 2, shown in the following figure, is really all about your podcast itself.
One of the neat things about FeedBurner is that it will automatically detect links to MP3s in your blog postings and set up your RSS feed accordingly. Next to Create podcast enclosures from links to, change Any rich media file to xxxx.
Be sure to leave checked the box next to Include Media RSS information and add podcast to Yahoo! Search, as that will help publicize your podcast through Yahoo's channels (it'll be interesting to see how long this feature lasts now that Google owns FeedBurner).
If your podcast contains adult content, then you should should choose Yes next to Contains explicit content, as that will let iTunes and other podcast aggregators know how to classify your podcast.
If you want to copyright your material, enter that info next to Copyright message. Something like Copyright 2007 Joe Podcaster will work. It would be even better if you used Creative Commons, which I discussed earlier in "If You Need a Place to Store Your Podcasts."
What you put into Podcast author should be easy: your name. Let the world know who's behind the brilliant words to which they're listening. Author is also important since it's one of the fields that the iTunes Music Store indexes.
You may have noticed that I've skipped the checkbox next to Include iTunes podcasting elements. This is not because you should ignore it, but because it deserves special attention. You should definitely check the box, because you want iTunes to index your podcast and thereby get it in front of millions of potential listeners. When you check the box, a whole new section appears, as shown in the following figure.
Select an item from the Category dropdown, which you can see in the following figure, so that iTunes knows the general subject area of your podcast.
Once that's chosen, you can move on to the Subcategory. For instance, if you decided that your podcast is best placed into the Category of Society & Culture, to be even more specific, you might then say that your podcast belongs in the Subcategory of History, as displayed in the following figure.
If you want to place your podcast into additional Categories, you can. Click on the link that says Use additional categories, and four more Category/Subcategory drowdowns will appear, as in the following figure.
You don't need the additional Categories, so don't feel obligated to use them, but they're there if you want them. More importantly, if you use more categories, then iTunes users can find your podcast in more places, and the more places it's in iTunes, the more likely it will be found.
Upload a JPEG or PNG graphic to your website that is 50x50 pixels and that will serve nicely as your podcast's logo or descriptive image. In the Podcast image location, enter the URL that points to that graphic. To make sure that you entered it correctly, click on Preview Image. If you want some good ideas, open up iTunes and go to the Podcasts section. Look at the graphics for the popular podcasts, and use those as inspiration.
The Podcast subtitle field appears in the Description column in iTunes, so you need to keep it short. If a user clicks on the "circled i" in the Description column of iTunes, then the contents of Podcast summary will appear in a separate, small window. Your summary can be up to 4000 characters.
Podcast summary is vital, as it is one of the fields that the iTunes Music Store indexes. Don't forget to include your subject matter, the file type you use (MP3, OGG, etc.), your publishing schedule ("A new podcast every Wednesday!"), and anything else that potential subscribers should know before they decide to commit to your podcast. Use words that people might search for in your summary.
Enter words that describe your podcast into Podcast search keywords, and keep in mind that the iTunes Music Store indexes them, so choose them with care. However, Apple recommends that you use few keywords, as your title and summary should be the key to attracting listeners. In fact, Apple actually says that you should use keywords for common misspellings of your podcast's title, your name, or other relevant info. Finally, don't go nuts adding keywords, as iTunes only looks at the first 12.
Finally, Podcast author email address is easy: put your email address in, or at least an email address that you'd like listeners to use if they want to contact you.
Step 3, shown in the following figure, allows you to find out how many people are subscribed to your podcast.
I'm of the opinion that more information is good to have, so go ahead and click everything on this screen. Besides, it's all free now, so it's not like it's costing you any money.
Use FeedBurner with Your Own Domain Name
You now have a FeedBurner RSS feed address set up, and if you direct people to that address you will immediately be able to use it. However, some people may not want their feed's URL to be http://feeds.feedburner.com/MyPodcastName. Instead, they want to brand their RSS feed with their own URL, so it might instead look like http://www.mydomain.com/podcast.rss. FeedBurner has a service that makes this possible, and it's your great luck that it's now free since Google bought the company.
There's one warning, though: to use your own domain name with your podcast's RSS feed, you're going to need to have access to your domain's DNS records in order to make a change to your DNS. If you don't control your own DNS, you're going to need to ask your host if they can alter it for you. If you can't change your DNS, then you can't use this service.
The service is called MyBrand, and to set it up you log in to your FeedBurner account, click on My Account, and then MyBrand. Follow the instructions to request MyBrand activation. You'll receive an email within a day or so informing you that you can go ahead and change your DNS settings so you can use FeedBurner with your own domain. Log back into the MyBrand page at FeedBurner and make the changes shown in the following figure.
After going through this process, you'll now be able to point subscribers to an RSS feed at your domain, but still get all the benefits of using FeedBurner. What a great combination!
Advertise Your Podcast
Just making your podcast available to the world using whatever service you decide upon isn't enough. You need to advertise your podcast so that it's easy for people to find.
Advertise On Your Blog
This might seem obvious, but you must make absolutely sure that visitors to your blog can tell that you offer a podcast. The best way to do so is to plaster the widely-accepted orange blog icon, shown below, on your blog.
Don't just use the icon, though. Include the words "Subscribe to My Podcast!" next to the icon so that it's crystal clear to visitors that yes, this is the link to your podcast's RSS feed.
Also, at the end of each blog post that contains within it a link to a podcast, remind readers that you have a podcast feed to which they can subscribe. Include a link to the feed, and that will hopefully help to increase your subscribers.
Submit Your Feed to the iTunes Music Store
Since Apple's iTunes is the most widely used podcast aggregator in the world, it's vital that you get it to index your podcast. Rather than list all the steps, I'm just going to point you to Apple's excellent walk-through, which covers the issue in detail, with clear instructions and helpful tips. You can find it at http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcaststechspecs.html; scroll down until you see the sections labeled "Testing Your Feed" and "Submitting Your Podcast to the iTunes Store." Read those, and then continue down. Follow Apple's advice, and your podcast should show up in iTunes in no time.
Tell Everyone You Know
Last but not least, if you want people to know about your podcast, flat out tell them. Put your podcast's website on your business cards, your email signature, and your Facebook or MySpace description. Tell people you meet about it. If you're on a mailing list, and it's relevant news to share, tell the folks on the list. The point is, get the word out in a polite way, and you'll vastly increase the likelihood that listeners will check you out.
Conclusion
You've reached the final stage in podcasting. From recording to editing, you've now uploaded your podcast and made it available to the world. In some ways, this is the most important stage of all. Unless you podcast purely to entertain yourself, you want others to hear what you have to say. In this chapter, we learned how to add your podcast to the global conversation. May you find many listeners!
