I’ve previously mentioned that I’m a huge fan of podcasting, so it should be of no surprise that I’ve given it a try myself. Without being too much of a self-promoter, I have a small little politics podcast that I do as an outlet for my internal political rantings, but it’s also been nice to experiment with the art of the podcast.
WordPress Just Makes It Easy
Years ago, I started my church’s podcast with a simple, hand-coded RSS feed and a dream. Now, the technology around podcasting has increased so that literally anyone can produce and distribute their own podcast with relative ease. One of these advances—probably not the greatest but certainly an awesome one—is the ability to use WordPress as your podcasting platform.
In the same way that WordPress makes site design/management so much easier, it now makes podcasting a breeze. Gone are the days of trying to find parsing errors in your XML code. Your WordPress site can do it for you with the proper plugin. It is with this in mind that I submit to you Blubrry PowerPress.
BluBrry PowerPress—The WP Podcasting Plugin
What I love about PowerPress is that it really makes the whole process so simple but offers tons of options for the advance user. Like many of you, I learn by doing, and since I haven’t been doing this as long as many in the podcasting community, there’s still a lot I don’t know. Thus, if I can use PowerPress successfully, so can you! Here a few screenshots of my settings (please let me know if you see any mistakes!):
There are premium options for those metrics-crazed podcasters, but I’m a dabbler on a shoe string budget and have no need/ability to use them. Personally, what I like best about PowerPress is that its designed to create an iTunes friendly podcast in an nearly idiot-proof way. And yes, I know that there are many other places one can go to find podcast, but iTunes is perhaps the most widely known.
PowerPress does receive regular updates, but you’re not flooded with them. There’s no “Jetpack-esque” update fatigue here, which is nice. Also, I haven’t experienced any increase load times or whatnot. Now, I also use FeedBurner along with PowerPress, but I think that it’s going to be killed next by Google and I’m not sure that I actually need it. I might try to experiment without it soon, but I haven’t had time yet.
Update Wish List
No plugin is perfect, of course, and I have two major suggestions for BluBrry on this one:
iTunes Preview
If my understanding is correct, the iTunes Store is only a fancy (read “cumbersome”) HTML browser, so it shouldn’t be too hard—but who am I to judge?—to include a feature that allows the podcaster a preview of how their podcast will look in the store. It would have helped me considerably a few days ago, as I was trying to to adjust my podcast’s description to no avail and couldn’t find out where, between PowerPress and FeedBurner, that the problem lay. (I did finally figure it out.)
Media Upload
As it is, you have to upload your content through WordPress’ Media Library or through an FTP client and then paste the link within the options in a post. It’s a small, little thing, but I think it would be nice to be able to upload media directly from the post. Again, it’s a small thing, but it would really speed up my workflow.
Church Application
If your church isn’t podcasting, then, my question is, “Can PowerPress help?” Because it really takes the learning curve out of publishing a podcast. I mean, if you can publish a WordPress post, you can publish a podcast to iTunes. Every church should be podcasting, if only as a service to traveling or shut-in parishioners. Hopefully, PowerPress will help you overcome some of the technical barriers involved.
Do you podcast? What do you use to publish it? Have you considered PowerPress?
Sele says
I use PowerPress to podcast our church’s sermons and Bible studies. Once you get the initial setup done,which is easy if you follow their video guide, podcasting could not be any easier. By far my favorite WordPress plugin.
Phil Schneider says
Thanks for the comment, Sele. I’m such a typical man—I didn’t even think about their video! I just fumbled around for a few weeks in trying to set it up. (Dumb)
Is it really helpful?
David says
I have been using PowerPress for years now to create a video and audio podcast for our weekly message at my church. It’s really simple to set up and easy to maintain. You can also have the audio player embed on your website alongside your video automatically which is a nice feature. And you don’t need Feedburner to get the podcast to work, I haven’t used it in over a year now. Your wish list items would be an awesome addition!
Phil Schneider says
Thanks for the comment, David! I’m really considering removing Feedburner just so that I can be ahead of the curve for when Google “removes” it from existence.
And great point about the media player! I use it, too. It’s a great feature!
Eric J says
Do you podcast? Yes! We get a VERY small amount of downloads like less than 20
What do you use to publish it? We use a local company called h7 solutions, the nice thing is there is someone to call on the phone when something breaks, the downside is that is pretty expensive.
Have you considered PowerPress? Yes! It would be a huge process as we uploaded as much of our archive as we could to our current provider but it would be nice to save some money.
Phil Schneider says
Hey, Eric. Thanks for the comment. If you don’t know me asking, how much and according to what factors does h7 charge you?
Dave Shrein says
Super timely post. Thx much!
Phil Schneider says
Thanks, Dave. Glad it was helpful.
Paul Clifford (@PaulAlanClif) says
I’ve been using PowerPress for years (after podpress was abandoned) and I love it. Something not a lot of people do (but I do b/c I have two, soon to be three podcasts) is directory podcasting. PowerPress lets you create separate feeds for multiple podcasts on a single website.
For example, I’ve got Tech, No Babel and Tech Help for Churches both on TrinityDigitalMedia.com. It’s trivial to add a third, a fourth and so on.
Now, how would this be good for a church? What if churches started podcasting things other than just sermons (everybody is doing that)? What if your youth program had a “fun things to do with friends” podcast and the children’s pastor had a “overcoming parenting challenges” podcast? Wouldn’t you rather go to that church if you were looking?
Powerpress does other great stuff like hooking into blubrry’s free stats, too, but I better head to bed instead of writing all night about podcasting (last time I did that I wrote “Podcasting Church”). 😉
Paul
Phil Schneider says
That’s a great point, Paul. I’m using the category-based podcasting for my podcast. It’s a great feature, which allows me to post blog posts and podcasts on the same WP install without messing up my iTunes feed.
Isn’t technology fun?
Eric Dye says
I’m considering something like this or Buzzsprout for the ChurchMag podcast. I like hosting them on my own, but if it has a huge spike or something, I get to foot the bill! (Plus, I would like some analytics of some sort)
Phil Schneider says
Do share your experience in charting those analytics. I haven’t even looked into because I’m pretty sure I have four downloads. (My laptop, my Podcasts app, my Instacast app, and a random fan)