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).

First off feedbruner is a service that allows you to track the number of subscribers while adding additional functionality to your RSS feed. One of those features is the extra tags for iTunes. However, recently feedburner changed their service and now you have a new RSS feed.. The old RSS feed will point at the new one, but for the future you need to update iTunes with the new RSS address.

In Podpress this is easy. There is a setting in the iTunes tab where you tell it what RSS feed to use, and on the left hand side you select “YES” to the “Is this a new feed” drop down. However, keep in mind that Podpress is no longer compatible (without tweaking) with the latest version of WordPress.

I’ve been recommending PowerPress from Blubrry. This has most of the useful features from Podpress and is compatible with the latest version of WordPress. However to update iTunes with your new feed you need to edit a bit of code. THIS IS NOT A BIG DEAL. Login to your wordpress installation, and download the wp-config.php. Then make a backup copy of this in another folder. Go into the original download and add the text define(‘POWERPRESS_NEW_FEED_URL’, ‘http://yoursite.com/feed/’); (and put your new feed address from feedburner). Then upload the file to the exact location you downloaded it from. Over the next week or so (assuming you put out a podcast once a week), iTunes should read your feed, and update their system to reflect the new RSS address.

How do I know if iTunes has found my new feed? Subscribe to your podcast in iTunes, Then click on the name of the podcast (not an episode), and rich click and choose “Show Description”

New Public Webinars

ShopWurld Fundraising – Save Money While You Make Money February 26th at 9 pm EST. This is a free webinar.

Making Money From Your Podcast – March 3rd 9 PM EST. Fee $14.99 (Free for members).

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

Back to School Special

Earn 20% of at the School of Podcasting using the coupon code ” bts ” now through the end of September 2008. Don’t be Tardy!

Blubrry Tools (part I)

One of my Podcast Fast Pass clients is using tools from www.blubrry.comThe first one I started using was their PowerPress Plugin. To me this is like “everything and I love about Podpress with all the things I hate about Podpress left out.” It does your itunes, puts a streaming player on your site, it has the ability to work with Podtrac (or Blubrry stats), and provides the ability for listeners to download the file or play in a Pop Up window (all of which is customizable). The only down side is you can change the color of the player.

Blubrry Premium Stats

I’ve also started using their premium stats service on one of my client’s sites. It provides QUICK stats, and show everything like referrers, what they are using as a podcastcher (itunes, zune, juice), it show you their operating system. I do like Libsyn stats that show the total times a podcast has been downloaded. So far so good.

The stats are set up using what I call “the Podtrac method” where you put in a redirect before your media URL. The best thing is if you are using their powerpress plugin, you enter this redirect location once and forget about it (and the plugin puts it into the episode automatically). This is again one of my favorite features of Podpress (that broke a while back in version 7ish…) and now works great in PowerPress.

What’s the difference between blurbrry stats and podtrac? It appears blubrry gives you more details (a few), except podtrac also provides a tools to measure demographics (age, income, of listeners). The blubrry network also works with Podtrac (when you are using blubrry to help find advertisers). PoPodtrac makes it a bit easy to see the stats per episode at a glance. However, blurbrry gets you great stats (as in you can dig deaper) per episode (so you can see operating system of this episode).

Why would I use these stats?

More and more people are talking about using Amazon S3 to host their media as its very cheap (.15 gig for storage and .17 per gig of bandwidth).  So you have the “back bone” of amazon.com and the ability to track your downloads (as S3 doesn’t have any stats out of the box).

Meet the Members: Fred Castaneda

Fred has 9 Different Podcasts including:

Struggling Entrepreneur
www.strugglingentrepreneur.com

Gain Control of Your Day (free and Paid Version)
www.gaincontrolofyourday.com

Jungle Warrirors (Great Audio Book)
www.junglewarriors.org

CASABLANCA to VE Day (Another great audio Book)
www.premiumcast.com/a-paratroopers-memoirs

Austin Podcasters Meetup
www.austinpodcasters.podomatic.com

Combat Infantrymen’s Association (Austin Tx)
http://www.cibaustin.org/

Whats New at IMB
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=267037423 (itunes)

Arriba folklorico music and dance of Mexico
http://folkloricomusicdance.blogspot.com/

His exposure via podcasting may be leading to a career as a consultant for movies.

People Choice Podcast Awards

These kick off on September 15th at http://www.podcastawards.com/ be careful with these. Too much begging for votes = bad content = loss of listeners.

Additional Sites Mentioned

PremiumCast.com

Zune H2 Portable Recorder