I’ve been a fan of Powerpress when it first came out, as they added more functionality (to tie it in with the blubrry.com network) I kind winced a bit (I loved it simplicity). However, recently updates to the powerpress plugin have made it my official plugin of choice. They added the 1 pixel player (and four others) to the mix, so customization is at your fingertips (and without a huge learning curve to figure out how). To me, this makes Powerpress, THE podcasting plugin. I still use Feedburner for my iTunes stuff, but I love the ability to have different players, and the ability to offer a download link, a streaming link, and a “Play in new window” link.

I don’t use Blubrry.com for hosting (nothing against it), but they do have some great tools to make things simpler. Todd Cochrane, Angelo Mandato and the crew at blubrry deserve a round of applause for listening to their audience and over delivering on what we wanted. Check it out at http://www.blubrry.com/powerpress/

Other Plugins I Use

WordPress Automatic Upgrade is a great plugin. I know this is part of WordPress out of the box, but I like the plugin as it reminds me to back up my blog.

WordPress Autmatic Backup is a great plugin that e-mails me a backup of my blog on a weekly basis.

All in One Seo Pack is a tool that allows you to add additional meta tags, and customized titles to your blog. I like this plugin, it is easy to use, but it seems lately it needs upgraded about once a week. This is annoying. The upgrade simply takes you to the page in the plugin that asks for donations.

Tweet Meme is an interesting plugin that allows people to “retweet” your blog post. They click the button, enter their twitter information and boom, they’ve retweetted and put a link back to your blog (through bit.ly if you want so you can keep track).

I never used half of the features of Podpress, and Powerpress has all the features (and a few new ones) that I really like.

iTunes tags
Redirects for advertising networks
It separates the whole RSS and the Podcast RSS so you can submit the podcast RSS to iTunes (I recommend putting both feeds into Feedburner).
It takes the information entered by Podpress and uses it so you don’t have to edit all your old posts (COOL!)
Allows people to stream, play in new window, or download episode.

The only thing it doesn’t do is allow me to change the look of the player. The good news its not a bad looking player. Check it out at http://www.blubrry.com/powerpress/

Keeping Everyone On the Same Page
I answer a question about www.premiumcast.com and some of its features from Kenn from www.blackmanwithagun.comhe asked why I didn’t use Premiumcast for my membership site. The biggest reason is when I started the School of Podcasting in 2005, Premiumcast didn’t exist.

The other feature I was asked about is “keeping everyone on the same page.” For example if you have a fitness podcast, you may want people to listen to every podcast from start to finish. Unfortunately, if they sign up in iTunes they will “jump in” wherever your last episode is. Using Premiumcast, you can make start at episode one, and then time released your episodes (for example once a week). It’s a great feature used by authors to time release their chapters of their books. Check it out at www.premiumcast.com

If you’re ready to start podcasting, if you don’t want the technology to get in your way then  learn how to podcast at www.schoolofpodcasting.com