[Editor’s Note: This is part 4 of a 4 part series: Podcasting Sermons]
If you want to ‘podcast’ the sermons (rather than just having them on the website) you need a ‘feed’. This is the magic part of a podcast because the feed allows people to subscribe to the sermons, so new sermons come to them, rather than them having to visit the site every week.
Feeds? What’s a Feed?
If you’ve not come across ‘feeds’ before, they’re a way of finding out what’s happening on a site/blog/podcast without having to keep visiting the site. Most news based sites and blogs have feeds. They are also sometimes called ‘news feeds’, ‘rss feeds’ and ‘xml feeds’. The common logo for feeds of all kinds is an orange square with three white curved lines ‘broadcasting’ out from bottom left to top right. But you also might see orange buttons with ‘RSS’ or ‘XML’ on them.
This is a good section on the BBC site about podcasts and feeds.
A podcast is a feed with audio (and/or video) ‘enclosures’ put into the feed. They’re a bit like attachments on an email. To subscribe to podcasts you need a feedreader/podcatcher that can use podcasts. Two popular ‘podcatchers’ are iTunes (made by Apple and used with the iPod and Juice. You don’t need an iPod to listen to podcasts!
Creating Feeds
It is possible to create a feed ‘by hand’ using the XML code which is used to create feeds. But frankly this is quite a pain todo! Thankfully, if you use something like Buzzspout, Blogger or WordPress (and the plugins mentioned in part three of the series) they will create the feed for you automatically (which is great!).
However, if you’ve got a list of sermons/MP3s on your site (and have added the Yahoo Media Player, so you’ve got a player!) and would like to make this into a podcast without having to use a service like Blogger or WordPress, then FeedForAll ($40USD) is a good way to create a feed. FeedForAll is a Windows and Mac program that allows you to create a feed on your own computer. You enter all the details of the sermon (the name, speaker, etc. and where the MP3 is stored) and it creates the feed ‘file’ for you which is then uploaded onto your website.
Make Your Feed Better
Whatever feed(s) you have, I thoroughly recommend ‘burning’ the feed through an excellent free service called FeedBurner.
FeedBurner (also owned by Google) takes your original feed address and ‘burns’ it through their magic services. You then get a new feed address for the ‘burned’ feed. So for my Church, the original feed address is: http://minehead-baptist.com/category/sermons/feed and the ‘burnt’ address is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MBCSermons. It’s this new address that you make available to the world.
Perhaps the most import reason for podcasters to use feedburner, is that by using the ‘SmartCast’ service you can make the podcast feed very iTunes friendly, very easily.
Having a feed that iTunes likes is vital to people finding and using your podcast. You can add the podcast to categories within iTunes (like Religion & Spirituality >> Christian), add a summary and keywords for when people search the iTunes podcast directory and add a logo/image that will be displayed with your directory listing (the image is best if it’s a 600px x 600px .jpg or .png file).
Let the World Know About Your Podcast!
Now you’ve got a nice podcast feed, but what to do with it?!
#1, Add a link to the feed address on your Church site so people know that can subscribe to your podcast! (This might mean editing your sidebar or adding a widget.)
If you’d like a little feed icon to go next to your feed address to make it more prominent download a pack of feed icons from http://www.feedicons.com/. The excellent ‘Silk Icons’ set also has some nice feed icons and variations (for podcasting etc.)
#2, Add the feed address to the <head> section of the site. Doing this allows people who visit your site (using most modern browsers) to know that you’ve got a feed(s) for your site. (You might have noticed a feed logo – not always orange – on the right of the address bar when you visit a site. This appears because there’s a special html tag in the <head> of the site/page that tells the browser that there’s a feed(s).) The code for the feed address will look something like this:
[cc lang=”html”]<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”Your Church Sermon Podcast” href=”http://yourchurch.com/feedurl/” />[/cc]
#3, Add the podcast to iTunes podcast directory. This is relatively simple but you do need iTunes installed on your computer to add it to the iTunes directory
When your podcast is added to iTunes, you can get a special link (to add to your site/ sidebar) that will take users with iTunes directly to your listing. When viewing your podcast in the iTunes store, right click on the logo on the left and choose ‘copy link’. Paste the link into a text editor. The end of the link will be a series of numbers. You can add those numbers to: http://itunes.com/podcast?id=
The iTunes link for my Church is: http://itunes.com/podcast?id=77771498
Some other podcast directories you might want to add your podcast to include the Podcast Directory, Podcast Pickle and Mevio.
Decisions Decisions!
So with all the options out there, what’s best for you?!
I chose to use WordPress to run my Church site because I was already very familiar with it. Also, I’m a geek, and so I wanted complete control every little detail!
However, with services such as Buzzsprout and Sermondrop doing all the hosting, having a player, creating the feeds/podcasts and the iTunes things for you they make life much simpler. If I were starting from fresh now, I’d probably use Buzzsprout!
Chandos says
At my church, we use Podcast Producer for Mac to generate our feeds. It takes a bunch of the scary, code-looking stuff out. All you have to do is fill in the blanks. Then it auto-publishes to our website. Super easy.
James Cooper says
Thanks for the tip Chandos. Podcast Producer seems to be on ‘server’ editions of OSX only. And indeed, feeds are made up of scary code looking stuff! Anything that makes them nicer has to be a good thing!
Chandos says
Oops! That was a slip of the finger :). I meant Podcast Maker. OS X server is not required 🙂
James Cooper says
Thanks for the update! http://www.lemonzdream.com/podcastmaker/ looks pretty sweet.
Darren says
We use the Sermon Browser plugin for WordPress. Most useful plugin on the site 🙂
http://www.sermonbrowser.com/
You can see it in action here:
http://www.parkerville.net.au/downloads
James Cooper says
Great Darren (fyi the sermons on your site seem to be on /messages not /downloads 😉 ). I bigged up Sermon Browser in part three of the series! https://churchm.ag/podcasting-sermons-publish/