Chris J Davis has posted a very simple 3 step tutorial on how to Podcast using WordPress.
Chris’ first step brought Audacity to my attention for the first time – Audacity is an Open Source Cross-Platform application for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems and with a freely available add-in, it can export mp3 files. So step one of Chris’ tutorial is the creation of your mp3 sound files using a tool like Audacity.
Step two of the tutorial deals with where to put the sound file once you have created it. In my ignorance, as a Podcasting newbie, I would simply have uploaded it to my own server but Chris points out that it is possible to upload your sound files to the Internet Archive. Using the Internet Archive’s storage facility saves your own server both storage space and bandwidth – this consideration becomes increasingly important as more and more people listen to your podcasts. You can upload to the Internet Archive using the Creative Commons Publisher (Mac OS X version available too).
The final step of the tutorial is to create a WordPress post containing the URI of the sound file and WordPress will do the rest!
One further tip Chris gives is to create a separate WordPress Category for your Podcasts so subscribers can subscribe to that feed alone and not have their subscriptions filled with your text-based WordPress posts.
I have taken Chris’ advice and created a Podcast category on this blog – the feed for which is available here. As an experiment I have created a podcast of this post and will podcast future posts (not all!) and monitor the interest levels. If I’m not world-famous by next week, I may give up!
This post will be available from the Internet Archive in 24 hours (submissions to the archive are moderated I discovered and take up to 24 hours to be approved) and will be downloadable from here – in the meantime, you can download it from my own server here.
Thanks to James for pointing out this tutorial.
UPDATE: The podcast is now available for download from the Internet Archive here. Also, in comments Liam burke mentioned that you can upload podcasts to podblaze.com free and they are available immediately – I will try this out and report back.
UPDATE2: I created an account on Podblaze.com and uploaded my podcast – it seems to be a straightforward enough process, the only rub is the 40mb free account limit! Also, there doesn’t appear to be a way to see how many times your file has been accessed.
The podcast is available on podblaze here.
Nice Podcast Tom, music blends in really well. Excellent for your first time using audacity. Another place to upload your podcasts (for free) would be on http://www.podblaze.com which uploads straight away.
Liam,
thanks for the kind remarks and the podblaze tip – I’ll check that out and point it out to Chris Davis,
Cheers,
Tom
Yes podblaze is an excellent alternative. The one problem I have is one of longevity. The Internet Archive is a project with numerous forms of financial backing and stands a very good chance of lasting, since it is an not-for-profit archival project.
Podblaze will be looking to make money somehow off this service, which is not a bad thing mind you, but that means that there is a very real chance that 6 months down the road their operating costs begin to outweigh their revenue stream.
What happens to your podcasts when they have to close doors?
That’s a very legitimate concern Chris – that and, as I mentioned in my update 2 on this post, the fact that there is a 40mb limit on free posts will have me looking again at the Internet Archive option!
I just left another comment on Chris’s post – instead of uploading to the Internet Archive and waiting 24 hours, use Ourmedia.org, they are working with the Internet Archive, and your files get stored there, but the time betweeen upload and availiability of your file is minutes not hours. (At least it has been this week as they’ve been improving the system.)
I’m still looking for a way of automatically uploadng web-hosted content into archive.org. I run a number of podcasts – it would be cool if I could have archive.org automatically cache stuff in the same way that coral cache does. If only coral were not so unreliable.
If you come across anything, please stop back and let me know – I’d be very interested as well,
Thanks for stopping by and commenting,
Tom
I’ve been working on a plugin for wordpress that allows you to easily cache your podcast using Coral. In my experience, coral has been pretty good. Anyway, the plugin is available over at http://theblogthatnoonereads.tunasoft.com/coralize/.
Followed your instructions as best I could. Did a little ad-lib but you’ve been a great help.
Internet Archive is confusing. Not sure how to manipulate file and the stream doesn’t work with their flash player and my mp3. But I did get it up and it’s linked to my blog.
Still don’t get the RSS thing.
Also, Internet Archive had my file published within minutes and not the 24 hrs mentioned above.
Will be learning by doing for quite some time.
Thanks again,
Thomas
Hi,
Internet Archive is actually quite frustrating. Can’t access file anymore. Don’t know why. Yes, I’m new to this. I also cannot get a RSS feed. Can anyone help me out…?
Regards, Thomas
Thomas,
I haven’t used the Internet Archive in some time now because of the issues I mentioned in this post. You might want to look into ourmedia.org to host your files for you. I tried them a couple of times. They were a little less frustrating than the Internet Archive.
I’m in the fortunate position that I have a friendly hoster who is happy to host my mp3 files for me gratis so this is no longer a concern for me.
Thank you for all of the tips! This is a great resource for podcasting and the info about uploading to a different server is well noted. Thanks!
Would very much like to see this tutorial. Seems to be gone now. Is there an alternative?
Yes, it is this first step you mention, posting the audio file onto WordPress so that the RSS aggregator can find it that has puzzled me and all my IT guys.
Sure would like a manual to WordPress. The WPCodex has not been helpful and so far I have not found anyone who is familiar enough with it (podcasting on WordPress) to answer simple questions.
Thanks.