How difficult is it to set up a Podcast?

Woebot

Well-known member
Does on need a bit of software? Can I do it from home? Displaying total ignorance, havent done ANY research on it....

On a Mac BTW.
 
Someone asked me about podcasts by email. Here is an excerpt of my response. Hope it doesn't sound patronising. It assumes no knowledge of the subject. I'm also hardly an expert!

I'd say audioblogging is mainly about:

- Bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth (this is what costs you the money,
because sound comes in big files. obviously.)

- Podcast support (this is free. Hooray.).

Other than these two points, all you need is a sizeable amount of server
space (say 2/300MB) with database support, plus a blogging tool (movable
type & wordpress are the only 2 worth considering).

Podcast is crucial, because it'll get more and more popular. Podcasting just
refers to embedding audio content in RSS feeds (an RSS feed is just a text file, formatted as XML). So people can subscribe to
your audio files, archive them in their rss aggregators/media players (new
itunes has support) and listen to them when they like. It just makes it
convenient for the listener. In case you don't know about it, more here.

So, podcasting in a nutshell: The blogging tool will embed links to your audio files in your rss feed. The rss aggregators and media players will pick up these audio files and archive them.

In any case, getting yourself the server space/bandwidth is the only thing
costing you any money in all this. Bandwidth gets
tight soon as you get popular, but there's work arounds - like posting the
audio to places like YouSendIt, so you don't take the bandwidth hit.

Also, a bitTorrent audioblog (you upload bitTorrent seeds that point to the
mp3's) would cut down your bandwidth
no end.

 
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Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
1. create audio any way you like, but make sure the end product is MP3
and that it sounds reasonable when played on an MP3 player

2. store this MP3 file somewhere sensible on the net and make sure you have the
bandwith as mentioned (be prepared for ie Chinese listeners looking for mp3s from mp3.baidu.com)

3. post a small article within your chosen blogging tool and link to the MP3 in this post -
but make sure your blogging tool supports "enclosures" for the RSS feed
(which is what the "podcatcher" reads - ie iTunes, iPodder, iPodderX).
(not using blogging software is possible but harder, odeo.com is supposed to change this. we'll see)

I use Blosxom which is created on a Mac, and my own Blosxom template for creating the RSS feed -
but if you are non-technical forget Blosxom and go with a commercial tool like those mentioned.

4. be careful with non-free music. but even that can get you in trouble though ...
 
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h-crimm

Well-known member
summary: its easy

i was wonderin about this on friday... and trying to avoid fixing the bug in my code cos it was friday afternoon... so i had a go

setting up mySQL, php, apache and wordpress on my linux machine took probably less than 20 minutes without knowing what i was doing at all before i started, the wiki on the wordpress site is very clear.

since macOS is based on unix you should be able to get all those programs on it quite easily right? then you can host and publish it all yourself.
As long as it isnt too big you might be able to host it using you ordinary broadband connection, but you probably want to stick to 'casting' torrent seeds, to keep the load down.

mySQL is the database, apache is the webserver, php does something with webcontent i think...
wordpress is the publishing tool and automatically generates the RSS for your blog or mp3 posts
...and makes your blog look very neat and like everyone elses


someone needs to make a stand and get everyone using a distributed file sharing system cos seeing that "you send it" everyday is getting boring... just in my humble o...
 
D

droid

Guest
h-crimm said:
, php does something with webcontent i think...
wordpress is the publishing tool and automatically generates the RSS for your blog or mp3 posts
...and makes your blog look very neat and like everyone elses

PHP is the programming language that allows you to access your mySQL database, and display and interact dynamically with database content in your browser - it runs ON yer apache server...

Another easy way to set up a a podcast. Once you have your audio recorded and converted to MP3. Upload to your site.

Take the URL of your mp3 (eg: http://www.myblog.com/audio/mypodcast.mp3), and paste it into a text file.

Change the file extension of the txt file to m3u (mp3 playlist). Upload this to your server.

Post a link to the m3u. When the user clicks on ti, it will stream the track from your server, and if you put multiple URLS in your m3u, it will play them all in order. On a MAC, the m3u will download, and when clicked on will play the tunes on the list from the server.
 
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Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
droid said:
Change the file extension of the txt file to m3u (mp3 playlist). Upload this to your server.

Post a link to the m3u. When the user clicks on ti, it will stream the track from your server, and if you put multiple URLS in your m3u, it will play them all in order. On a MAC, the m3u will download, and when clicked on will play the tunes on the list from the server.

This (m3u) is an audio stream from an MP3 file (or "internet radio"), not a podcast.

A podcast is an audio file subscription that goes straight to your MP3-player
without any hassle, manual downloads or streaming audio.
 

gabriel

The Heatwave
i'm trying to work out how to subscribe to podcasts, but my mp3 player is a cowon iaudio and not an ipod. does that mean i can't make stuff go straight onto my mp3 player? can i at least make it go straight onto my computer? or do i need itunes?

thanks :)
 

nomos

Administrator
I use itunes and i still don't totally understand how podcasts work, but i'm pretty sure there are other free apps that you can use to subscribe and manage podcasts. Also, if you're using Firefox or another browser that can subscribe to newsfeeds, you can actually do it through there.

EG: the blogariddims feed is feed://feeds.feedburner.com/blogariddims/

In Firefox, enter that URL and a dialogue box will ask you where you want to create the bookmark. After making the bookmark, click on it, and the list of available episodes will appear in a sub-menu. Then you can just click on one. If you've set your file handling preferences to download mp3s rather than playing them in the window, you should be able to put them in any folder you like and then drag to your mp3 player as you would any other mp3 file.

Hope that makes sense.
 
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