Saturday, July 23, 2011

Free Podcast hosting = Blogger + Archive.org + Feedburner

This post is just supposed to be a quick overview on how to host and produce your own free podcast. I still prefer the term NetCast Ala Leo Laporte. As he was putting his stuff online to DL before the "Pod Boom".

So, How many of you want to have a podcast, or have had one? 
How many of you have gotten a  hosted WordPress site, only to have your shared hosted server to get bogged down? 

I've been there. So why not just use the power of Google?  I wish I had setup The Juiced Penguin with blogger before I gave it over to TerryF. It would have gone much more smoothly for us if I had. 

You'll need to have a Blogger Blog. 
(Register a domain name via your blogger blog for $10 bucks a year, and it'll look like gold)

You'll need to make sure that you allow the enclosures for your posts.

It's best to setup Feedburner for your site, it will make your Atom feed an RSS feed and make it more agile, if you want to move where you do host the site. So if you do move from Blogger to WP to Ddrupal, you'll be able to do so, but your feed to your subscribers will go on without a hitch. Feedburner also has a few nice features that aren't included with Blogger, but make the feed much more manageable, such as submissions to iTunes, Convert that Blogger Atom feed into a RSS feed for pod-catchers, Twitter integration, has Email subscription options, and more. 

You're going to have to upload your content to someplace.  I have used the Internet Archive for myself. It'll require you to have your own account, etc. But you can upload them there, and link to them. They even have a good little widget for you include on your blog for the posting so people can listen to your podcast on your blog.  Embedding the player might be a little tricky, as they make it about twice as wide then you might want for your blog post. 


If you want to see what one of these posts look like using the Internet Archive.org player widget, 

That's really it. If you have questions, please leave a comment.  Let me know if you'd like more details about a particular section on this, and I'll create another post. 



 




6 comments:

  1. Leo actually DID use the world "podcast" early on. He stopped using it when Apple was trying to asset ownership over the word.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's like the term Frigidaire being used instead of Refrigerator, people understand what you're talking about, even if you're using a brand name.

    Same thing with the word Crapper. John Crapper invented a nice toilet, and thus, toilets were known as crappers. Glad I don't have that last name. Could you imagine someone named Richard Crapper? Ohhooh!

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  3. Hi there,

    I'm currently trying to submit my podcast via a similar matter and am running into problems with (apparently new) iTunes policy of enabling byte-range requests. I had uploaded the site on archive.org, linked to it on a Tumblr page, and created a Feedburner. Everything seems to be working, but when I try to submit the feed, I get the infamous message from iTunes about enabling byte-range requests. Do you know where the problem would be? Is it through the file, archive.org, tumblr or feedburner? Any help is appreciated!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm not sure Emily. I've never tried to submit anything to iTunes. I know they've gotten pickier over the years. I know a few people that are currently podcasting, and they might have an answer, if you send me a note on G+, I'll ask the podcasters that I know that are currently active. - What's the Feedburner link? And, Tumbler, isn't a full Blog / RSS site, so you might want to use Blogger to be your main site, and originate your Podcast feed from the Blogger site.

      Delete
  4. Thanks for the help Randy. We figured out the main problem: the link in the tumblr post was going to the page on Archive.org with the podcast info, as opposed to directly to where it was streaming. So it seemed to be successfully submitted to iTunes and is under review.

    As for Tumblr, our page is down at the moment but I think the whole site is experiencing issues. I think we'll see how things go for the next few weeks and if Tumblr continues to give us problems, we'll switch over to a Blogger site.

    Thanks again for your help!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey, it's what the internet and computers are for.
      Figuring out new things. :)

      After dealing with WordPress blogs going down on hosted sites (1and1 and Godaddy), I've found Blogger to be the most stable, and reliable for my money, and effort.

      Best of luck to you, and send me a link to check it out.

      Delete

Thanks for the Comments.

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