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, 

check out this post.

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. 

 

Podcasting Woes, Friends and Foes..

Today on Facebook, one of my geeky cool friends Linc (of TLLTS.ORG fame) asked a simple question.. 

"Can someone please point me to a hosting provider that is not a dick?"

I too, had some hosting issues. GoDaddy, 1and1, etc...  These hosting companies make an offer that seems reasonable, and good, etc... and then... WHAM! You've got a podcast that's not getting out, people try to download it, and Phhttziled bandwidth happens.  Back before I gave The JuicedPenguin.com oggcast over to Terryf,  I had issues with 1and1.com I had also had issues with GoDaddy  prior to that with my RandomizedRadio.com Podcast. 

MY solution? Post your audio files on The Internet Archive. http://www.archive.org  It's not hard, they're not "assholes", and they'll host your show for you. I've yet to hear a bandwidth problem to be complained about by them, I've yet to see them shut someone off for "honest" content.  And when I say "honest" I'm talking about content that doesn't infringe on some copy write issue.  

 As for the Blog, I'm going to stick with Blogger for most of my blog stuff. Yea, its' not as powerfully configurable as WordPress, but then it's also not as cut down to the nubs as Posterous, and Posterous is nice and simple,  you just can't easily advertise or add AddSense, Adwords etc to it.  So, if you're just a casual blogger/podcaster I'd go with Blogger for your blog, setup your blog for enclosures, use the Flash Widget that Internet Archive gives you, edit the the width of the Flash Widget to something less then the 640 pixels that is in the code, (really not that hard to do, I set my to 440, you just replace the "6" twice in the code) and go on with your life...

Got Questions? Ask them here in the comments! :)