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).

To get a decent sounding recording the first step is get a decent microphone. I recommend the Sure SM58 if your room is somewhat noisy, and the Audio technica 2020 if you room is very quiet. Then I typically recommend using a mixer just so you can (if nothing else) add treble and bass to your voice. There are lights that show your level at the mixer and you want these to be green and yellow, if it occasionally blinks red that should be ok. Be sure to be listening through headphones so you can hear yourself.

I typically send the tape out of the mixer into the line in of my computer. Now whatever computer software you are using SHOULD have some sort of meter. Again you should have green lights, yellow lights, and red lights. To get technical, at the top of the meter is a zero. When you go over zero the lights turn red. You do NOT want to go over 0. You do NOT want it to go in the red. If you go into the red the sound is distorted. I found a podcast called church leader insights and this was my first impression.

There is a master volume which adjust the levels of all the microphones you have plugged into the mixer. Then each microphone has a volume knob. This is called the channel volume. If the master volume is set to 10 o click, you would not want the channel volume to be 1 o clock (or higher than the master volume). This can cause distortion.

WordPress.com as A Podcast Solution

I am working with a consulting client, and they had just started a podcast so they decided to use WordPress.com. This version of wordpress is already installed and you can purchase additional space for your media files. However, all of the cool plugins that you hear about are limited to the plugins that wordpress.com allows people to use. The alternative is to host your Website on a website like coolerwebsites or host gator and install WordPress on your own (it takes about 3 minutes and 7 mouse clicks – easy). I prefer and recommend people to use this method in the past so you have complete flexibility. However, after working with this client I can say I’m not impressed with WordPress.com as a media host as well. Their reliability seemed suspect as files would sometime stream, and some time not. My client uploaded a file only to have it appear blank when I downloaded that site (I checked the original file, it’s not). The bottom line was there were strange things happening at wordpress.com

Some people ask, “should I start here?” After all its very inexpensive, and its easier (as there are less options). The idea being that you can move once you decide to “stick” with podcasting. Well much like real life, moving is never fun. NEVER. It’s not hard, but it’s a pain in the butt. So let’s look at the “Hassle” of going with yoru own hosted version of WordPress. If you don’t want to purchase a longer contract, Host Gator is 10 bucks a month. Let’s say you use Libsyn for your media, that’s 12 a month. So as you start you spend 22 bucks. IF you go with the WordPress.com version you put out 20 a year. Well in theory you’re going to know if you want to stick with podcasting within the first month. If you are you’re going to want to have your own hosted version anyway, so why not start there if spend the extra two bucks. If you stick with it, sure it will be another 22 bucks next month, but the good news is IT WORKS. Then you can call Host Gator, and change your account and only pay 5 bucks a month.

2 Buck Themes – Great Segway Royalty Free Music

In this episode I show how you can use music to transition between topics. By having the music come in towards the end of a segment a person listening knows that when the music comes up that segments is also over (and they can stop fast forwarding if they were not interested in that segment). I’ve been using Mike Stewart’s Two Buck Themes which gives you 5 different themes each month for $10 (hence 2 bucks each).

If you need one on one Podcast Consulting, or if you’re ready to learn to podcast using our Step By Step Podcasting Tutorials, then Dave Jackson can be your personal podcast coach. Start podcasting today, cause if you don’t your competition will.

My wordpress sites www.supportthisshow.com and www.stageclothes.net both got hacked over the weekend. The good news is the hackers only performed the following:

They changed my password which made it impossible to login to my wordpress.

They changed the index.php

Here is how I fixed it:

Login to your website control panel.
Go to Php Myadmin
Click on yrou wordpress database.
Click on wpUsers
Click on the browser button
Click on Edit
Enter your email address.
Go back to your website and request the password be sent.
Go to your email and click the link that is sent to confirm the request.
The new password is sent. Copy it and paste it into the login screen.
Now that you are in, click on Users and change your user password.

To get the front page back to normal, install wordpress on your website (from scratch). Go into the index.php page and copy that code. Then copy this code into your hacked index.php file removing all code from that file before pasting in the new code. When you save it and refresh the screen you should see your site come back. If not they may have deleted your data. Then you can go in and delete your second installation of WordPress.

One great tool to back up your wordpress installation is a plugin call WP-DB-Backup. Which I originally heard on the Internet Business Mastery podcast with Jason Van Orden (who I met at the first Podcast Expo). This backs up your tables in the event that things go horribly wrong and ALL your data is taken and deleted. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

Are you ready to avoid the pitfalls? Then its time to go to the School of Podcasting and start a successful learn how to podcast today.

“Thesis also features the most advanced, semantically-correct HTML markup structure on the market. There are lots of situations where using default WordPress settings will result in a sub-optimal markup structure, and Thesis recognizes these situations and issues the proper markup instead. <h1> and <h2> tags are handled to perfection on every page of the theme, and you even have the ability to control nofollows and noindex attributes on an alarming number of theme elements and core pages (tag archive pages, for instance).

Also, Thesis is built for the future of SEO because it contains a ton of microformatted content served up in a meaningful way. In the years to come, search engines are going to use microformats to pull specific pieces of information from sites. In theory, this information is more “rich” because the markup contains additional data about the information, and in my opinion, SEs are going to leverage this in their results. Oh, and even if microformats do not become a meaningful piece of the SEO puzzle, they’re still a HUGE piece of the accessibility puzzle, so you’re going to win on that front no matter what.”

I love the flexibility. If you dig in real deep you are going to need to have a little bit of code knowledge, but their forums are very active with people who can supply the answers you need. If I had one suggestion it would be to take that group of users and get them to put together some sort of wikki manual.

Check it out at diythemes.com

Dave gets some more feedback on shaping your image with a podcast (as some feel www.betterdave.com is not the right image for Dave), and he answers a question about using podpress (www.mightyseek.com/podpress ) with Libsyn and how to get the URL into WordPress.

P.S. I realize this episode breaks format a bit. I am away from my typical system, and do not have access (but I think this episode is fine anyway – even if it doesn’t let you know its episode 68)