Himself podcast terminal
This topic somewhat deviates from the questions raised in the TiRP , but the answer to the question “how can I make my podcast site” was sought from me more than once. On the other hand, over the past two weeks I had to put together a couple of such podcast sites, and this experience somehow got fixed and prepared for publication. I will not tell anything particularly revolutionary, however, even the most common knowledge gathered together can help someone.
So, you are the author of a podcast project, or you are preparing to become one. In any case, the issue of publishing your podcasts is not as simple as it seems. If you go the simplest way, then after a short study, you can find services that solve the problem in a comprehensive, free of charge and with a certain degree of convenience. In runet, such services call themselves a podcast terminal, and today the authors of audio / video shows have a choice where to go. A small but choice. This is primarily rpod.ru , podfm.ru and the podcast section on Habré . There are less noticeable services, but this does not change the essence of the question: each of them allows you to publish your podcasts with certain amenities / glitches.
In addition, these services provide the entire environmental infrastructure needed by most podcasts. I will talk about this binding a little later, but for now I want to remind you that the great network is not the only one that has a single runet and there are quite a few such services on the foreign language Internet. In practice, this is not very important to us, because Overseas podcast services are not very popular with our audience, except perhaps with the exception of the iTunes Store, which is not a full-featured podcast terminal.
')
However, some authors podcasts prefer to publish shows on their own sites. The trend of leaving noticeable podcasters from public terminals is quite noticeable. Those. over time, the podcast tries to find its own site and own its own infrastructure. This trend is noticeable both among well-known podcasts in RuNet and outside it. It seems that some of the authors are purely individualists and are trying to create their own small but remote podcast site.
So, what is necessary for any podcast project, except for the actual quality of both the content and the sound of the show? First of all, this is the place where you can upload audio files. I'm talking about hosting, which should be adequate to your audience and ideally be podcast-oriented. There are a lot of options, consideration of the pros and cons of which is beyond the scope of this note, but from my more than 3 years experience I can recommend the specialized podcast hosting libsyn and general purpose hosting GoDaddy . Both of them are slightly paid ($ 5- $ 10 per month), but in my opinion, quite affordable. Surely there are decent sites in Russian hosting – space, but here I’m not a specialist at all and I can’t say anything meaningful.
When choosing a hosting service, it is necessary to carefully calculate your volumes both by traffic and by disk space. Podcasts in these senses are quite heavy and sometimes the usual tariff plan may not cover your requirements. As a rule, podcast authors at the stage of budding into their own site already present both the size of their files and the number of downloads, so simple arithmetic will answer questions about traffic and disk space.
Unlike general-purpose hosts, podcast hosting provides statistics for your shows. This is a nice feature, especially if it is implemented well. However, it does not seem to me that the absence of such comforts is too critical, since There are other methods of calculation, independent of the basic service. For example, the podtrac service will calculate everything you need, and quite popular among podcasters, FeedBurner provides some statistics. And of course, for skilled hands, it will not be difficult either to independently analyze the logs and get all the numbers, or set up one of the ready statistics calculation tools for podcaster needs.
After we have decided on hosting, we are faced with the next question: what kind of engine will we put there so that it is good, fast, beautiful and without any particular headache. Of course, I do not insist on the last point: if you have time, desire and ability, then of course you can write something unique for yourself. However, I didn’t have time or energy for such a heroism, and I took a completely standard way - WordPress . I am sure that you are aware that this is a general-purpose blogging system used by most “stand-alone” blogs. And this engine, after simple gestures, can be an excellent basis for your wonderful podcast site.
Practically in WP, support for podcasts is right out of the box. This appeared either in version 2.5 or 2.6, but it is there today and almost works. I say that WordPress allows you to publish links to audio files and the generated rss includes them in the encloser. This support, although working, is very basic. RSS will be perceived by podcast catchers, but for example, additional information for ITS is not so easy to add there. Yes, and your audio will look like a simple link to an mp3 file, but I want to fuck a full-fledged player right on the page. To solve this problem, I would recommend paying attention to the WP plugin audioplayer . Once activated, it replaces the links to mp3 files in your posts with a very nice flash player. An example of this can be seen on my new UWP podcast site. There you can see both the link to the file and the player. This is one of the standard plug-in modes and it seemed to me the most adequate. After checking the operation of all other methods of inserting audio, I came to the conclusion that the most convenient is the direct insertion of the link into the message text, i.e. I do not use the standard WP function “add audio file”. Because each release will contain a similar element, it makes sense to automate this process. The Post Templates plugin does exactly what you need and allows you to easily and easily create shunoty to podcasts without re-typing the html link syntax.
The next item is creating an RSS feed for your podcast site. As I said before, the standard out-of-the-box RSS is a little simple, but if you feed it with FeedBurner and activate SmartCast, you’ll get a decent and complete podcast – rss. Unfortunately, FeedBurner understands Russian letters far from everywhere, however, after playing with its settings, you will quickly understand how you can, and how not. All my podcast feeds are generated by this great and free service, and besides, you get good statistics from your subscribers. Oh, and do not forget to change the RSS link to the newly created FB podcast feed in the template.
If you are going to use WP blog besides podcasts for direct blog purposes, then set (as the source rss) for FB only the category in which you publish podcasts. By the way, if you have more than one podcast on this site, then by distributing them into different categories, you can create 2 or more podcast feeds in FB. The specific url for a particular category depends on the system chosen by you the naming of permalinks WP and in my case looks like url / category / feed
The last point of our project will be a pleasant and convenient commenting system. I translated all my podcast sites to use IntenseDebate — a completely convenient external comment system perfectly integrated into WP. In addition to the clearly visible beauty of the tree system and authorization by OpenID, you also join the actively growing “club” of ID users. This system is becoming increasingly popular among podcasters, and today you can comment on a dozen of popular podcasts with the same user. The system is not without flaws. Many people point out the limit on the length of the maximum message, but personally it seems to me rather a merit than a disadvantage. In very large discussions, the ID begins to slow down, but this problem arises after hundreds of comments and the authors promise to fix it (they personally promised me).
I think that it’s possible to stop here, although maybe I’ll cover some issues in more detail in the next article, of course, if this is your interest.
So, you are the author of a podcast project, or you are preparing to become one. In any case, the issue of publishing your podcasts is not as simple as it seems. If you go the simplest way, then after a short study, you can find services that solve the problem in a comprehensive, free of charge and with a certain degree of convenience. In runet, such services call themselves a podcast terminal, and today the authors of audio / video shows have a choice where to go. A small but choice. This is primarily rpod.ru , podfm.ru and the podcast section on Habré . There are less noticeable services, but this does not change the essence of the question: each of them allows you to publish your podcasts with certain amenities / glitches.
In addition, these services provide the entire environmental infrastructure needed by most podcasts. I will talk about this binding a little later, but for now I want to remind you that the great network is not the only one that has a single runet and there are quite a few such services on the foreign language Internet. In practice, this is not very important to us, because Overseas podcast services are not very popular with our audience, except perhaps with the exception of the iTunes Store, which is not a full-featured podcast terminal.
')
However, some authors podcasts prefer to publish shows on their own sites. The trend of leaving noticeable podcasters from public terminals is quite noticeable. Those. over time, the podcast tries to find its own site and own its own infrastructure. This trend is noticeable both among well-known podcasts in RuNet and outside it. It seems that some of the authors are purely individualists and are trying to create their own small but remote podcast site.
So, what is necessary for any podcast project, except for the actual quality of both the content and the sound of the show? First of all, this is the place where you can upload audio files. I'm talking about hosting, which should be adequate to your audience and ideally be podcast-oriented. There are a lot of options, consideration of the pros and cons of which is beyond the scope of this note, but from my more than 3 years experience I can recommend the specialized podcast hosting libsyn and general purpose hosting GoDaddy . Both of them are slightly paid ($ 5- $ 10 per month), but in my opinion, quite affordable. Surely there are decent sites in Russian hosting – space, but here I’m not a specialist at all and I can’t say anything meaningful.
When choosing a hosting service, it is necessary to carefully calculate your volumes both by traffic and by disk space. Podcasts in these senses are quite heavy and sometimes the usual tariff plan may not cover your requirements. As a rule, podcast authors at the stage of budding into their own site already present both the size of their files and the number of downloads, so simple arithmetic will answer questions about traffic and disk space.
Unlike general-purpose hosts, podcast hosting provides statistics for your shows. This is a nice feature, especially if it is implemented well. However, it does not seem to me that the absence of such comforts is too critical, since There are other methods of calculation, independent of the basic service. For example, the podtrac service will calculate everything you need, and quite popular among podcasters, FeedBurner provides some statistics. And of course, for skilled hands, it will not be difficult either to independently analyze the logs and get all the numbers, or set up one of the ready statistics calculation tools for podcaster needs.
After we have decided on hosting, we are faced with the next question: what kind of engine will we put there so that it is good, fast, beautiful and without any particular headache. Of course, I do not insist on the last point: if you have time, desire and ability, then of course you can write something unique for yourself. However, I didn’t have time or energy for such a heroism, and I took a completely standard way - WordPress . I am sure that you are aware that this is a general-purpose blogging system used by most “stand-alone” blogs. And this engine, after simple gestures, can be an excellent basis for your wonderful podcast site.
Practically in WP, support for podcasts is right out of the box. This appeared either in version 2.5 or 2.6, but it is there today and almost works. I say that WordPress allows you to publish links to audio files and the generated rss includes them in the encloser. This support, although working, is very basic. RSS will be perceived by podcast catchers, but for example, additional information for ITS is not so easy to add there. Yes, and your audio will look like a simple link to an mp3 file, but I want to fuck a full-fledged player right on the page. To solve this problem, I would recommend paying attention to the WP plugin audioplayer . Once activated, it replaces the links to mp3 files in your posts with a very nice flash player. An example of this can be seen on my new UWP podcast site. There you can see both the link to the file and the player. This is one of the standard plug-in modes and it seemed to me the most adequate. After checking the operation of all other methods of inserting audio, I came to the conclusion that the most convenient is the direct insertion of the link into the message text, i.e. I do not use the standard WP function “add audio file”. Because each release will contain a similar element, it makes sense to automate this process. The Post Templates plugin does exactly what you need and allows you to easily and easily create shunoty to podcasts without re-typing the html link syntax.
The next item is creating an RSS feed for your podcast site. As I said before, the standard out-of-the-box RSS is a little simple, but if you feed it with FeedBurner and activate SmartCast, you’ll get a decent and complete podcast – rss. Unfortunately, FeedBurner understands Russian letters far from everywhere, however, after playing with its settings, you will quickly understand how you can, and how not. All my podcast feeds are generated by this great and free service, and besides, you get good statistics from your subscribers. Oh, and do not forget to change the RSS link to the newly created FB podcast feed in the template.
If you are going to use WP blog besides podcasts for direct blog purposes, then set (as the source rss) for FB only the category in which you publish podcasts. By the way, if you have more than one podcast on this site, then by distributing them into different categories, you can create 2 or more podcast feeds in FB. The specific url for a particular category depends on the system chosen by you the naming of permalinks WP and in my case looks like url / category / feed
The last point of our project will be a pleasant and convenient commenting system. I translated all my podcast sites to use IntenseDebate — a completely convenient external comment system perfectly integrated into WP. In addition to the clearly visible beauty of the tree system and authorization by OpenID, you also join the actively growing “club” of ID users. This system is becoming increasingly popular among podcasters, and today you can comment on a dozen of popular podcasts with the same user. The system is not without flaws. Many people point out the limit on the length of the maximum message, but personally it seems to me rather a merit than a disadvantage. In very large discussions, the ID begins to slow down, but this problem arises after hundreds of comments and the authors promise to fix it (they personally promised me).
I think that it’s possible to stop here, although maybe I’ll cover some issues in more detail in the next article, of course, if this is your interest.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/37406/
All Articles