Codex

Podcasting

Contents

What Is Podcasting?

Podcasting is distributing audio or video content via RSS 2.0, or Atom. Podcast clients such as iTunes, Juice, or CastPodder(linux) allow listeners to subscribe to your RSS/Atom feed and automatically download your content to their portable audio players as it becomes available.

How It Works

  1. Create audio or video that you want to share (usually MP3 or MP4)
  2. Upload the file to a server
  3. Link to the file in a post in your weblog
  4. Wordpress automatically Includes a link to the file in your RSS/Atom feed
  5. Listeners "subscribe" with podcast client application to your RSS/Atom feed and download new files automatically.

WordPress creates all the necessary links for you!

Using WordPress For Podcasting

Podcasting is seamlessly supported as of Wordpress 1.5. Just link to an audio file in one of your posts and WordPress will automatically add the necessary enclosure tag to your RSS2 feed to make it useable as a podcast.

Important: Use a complete, absolute URI when linking to the audio file. Otherwise WordPress will not make an enclosure for it. 

Wrong: <a href="my-podcast.mp3">My podcast</a>
 
Right: <a href="http://example.com/my-podcast.mp3">My podcast</a>

That's it — just link to an audio file and WordPress takes care of everything for you.

Well, there is one more step: You need to make your RSS2 feed available. Be sure to put a link somewhere on your page: 

http://example.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2

Or, if you're using Atom: 

http://example.com/wordpress/?feed=atom

As of WordPress 1.5, the RSS 2.0/Atom links are located on the bottom of the page by default.

To make life easier for iTunes users, consider also linking to your podcast feed with the itpc:// protocol rather than http, e.g.: 

itpc://domain.org/path/?feed=atom

iTunes users will then be able to subscribe to your feed with a single click.


Notes:

  1. As of WordPress 1.5, this only works for posts but not for static pages.
  2. Make sure the linked file is accessible when you publish your post. Otherwise, WordPress won't be able to collect the information it needs from the linked files.
  3. If you change a linked file, republish the post so WordPress can update its file size information about the file.
  4. Occasionally, you may have to put .xml at the end of the RSS/Atom url, for it to properly work.
  5. To get Wordpress to recognize m4a and m4b files as podcasts, you need to make sure that your web server is configured to serve them with the right content-type. Do this by adding the following directives to your Apache configuration file or .htaccess file: 
AddType audio/x-m4a .m4a
AddType audio/x-m4b .m4b

Dedicated Podcasts

To create a dedicated podcast feed:

  1. Create a category in the Admin > Manage > Categories panel for your audio files and call it something like "podcasts".
  2. Assign every post containing an audio link to your "podcasts" category.
  3. If your blog is at example.com, your podcast feed will automatically be available at: 
http://example.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2&category_name=podcasts

Add this to your .htaccess file to make a nice rewrite rule that points visitors directly to your podcasts (assumes you've categorised your podcasts as 'podcasts' as in the example above): 

#podcast rewrite
RewriteRule ^podcasts/?$ /yourWPsubdirectoryhere/index.php?category_name=podcasts [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^podcasts/feed/(atom|rss2)/?$ /yourWPsubdirectoryhere/index.php?feed=$1&category_name=podcasts [QSA,L]

Now, you can give your podcasts feed as http://example.com/podcasts/feed/rss2 for RSS2 format, or http://example.com/podcasts/feed/atom for Atom format. (If you don't know the difference between the two, give out the first, as RSS2 is generally a bit better supported).

Archive.org issues

Archive.org can be used to host podcast audio files but archive.org uses re-directs on the file paths it publishes - this confuses WordPress, and consequently, the Podcast publication fails (missing enclosure tag error).

To avoid this error, if you are hosting your audio files on archive.org, you need to add a Custom Field called "enclosure" and paste the full url for the mp3 file in the Value field.

External Links

Post Podcasts with PodCasting

Podcasting brings complete podcasting support to WordPress. Podcasting will take a file from somewhere on the web (either your site or another site) and it will add it to an iTunes-based feed. Podcasting also includes a player allowing visitors to your site to view the file on the web.

Features

  • Adds a dedicated Podcasting feed with full iTunes support
  • Includes the ability to have multiple podcasting feeds based on file format or other factors
  • Fully integrates with ant existing enclosures already stored in WordPress
  • Offers a migration tool for users of podPress

Post Podcasts with PodPress

(Warning: PodPress doesn't work with WordPress 2.7!)

The PodPress plugin is designed to make Podcasting with WordPress as easy as possible.

Features

  • Full featured and automatic feed generation (RSS2, iTunes and ATOM)
  • Auto Generation of enclosure tag
  • Preview of what your Podcast will look like on iTunes
  • Podcast Download stats
  • Support for Premium Content (Pay Only)
  • Makes adding a Podcast to a Post very simple
  • View MP3 Files ID3 tags while you are Posting
  • Control where the player will display within your post.
  • Support for various formats including Video Podcasting
  • Supports unlimited number of media files.
  • Automatic Media player for MP3, MP4, MOV, FLV, ASF, WMV, AVI, and more
  • Includes inline and Popup Window support.
  • Preview image for videos

More Info

  • While you're Posting you will be presented with fields for your media file, and everything is made easy. [1]
  • In the admin screens you're able to define your standard podcast settings as well as your iTunes-specific settings and can even see a preview of what your podcast will look in the iTunes music store.
  • If you want to control where the player and links will show up in your comment, use the display_podcast tag. [2]
  • By adding the mp3 location after your Post, it will show the player in the post, and will add the enclosure tags to your RSS2 feed. [3]
  • You can set the iTunes-specific settings and get an instant preview of what it will look like in iTunes. [4]
  • You can view your MP3 file's ID3 tag information and even copy the contents of the ID3 tags into your Post. [5]
  • The end result is a nice flash player for MP3 plugin support for most video formats. Additionally you will have download links for each media file. [6]
  • Here's what it looks like when you play a video inline. [7]

Post Podcasts with Quicktag Button

Podz' Podcasting Quicktag Button instructions add a podcasting quicktag button to your Write Post admin panel.

To use the podcasting quicktag button, follow the directions in the article by opening your quicktags.js file from your /wp-admin folder in a text editor and adding the supplied code. Save and upload your quicktags.js to your site and test it out. In your Write Post panel, have the link ready for your podcast, click the podcasting quicktag button and paste in your link. Done!


Post Podcasts with Blubrry Powerpress

The Blubrry Powerpress plugin is a light weight podcasting plugin for Wordpress that provides only the fundamental features for hosting podcast.

Features

  • Easily add/modify/remove podcast episodes from blog posts
  • Integrated media player
  • iTunes RSS tags
  • iTunes album/cover art
  • Standard RSS Feed album/cover art
  • Ability to upload new cover art
  • Ping iTunes
  • Media size detection
  • Duration length detection (mp3 only)
  • 3rd party statistics integration

Add podcast episode to post:

Settings page:

File:Powerpress2.jpg

Requirements: Blubrry Powerpress requires Wordpress 2.5 or greater.

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