Tips For Adding A Podcast To A Blog

I'd been looking for ways to add extra pizzazz to my blogs and sites. I have only recently got into audio, and podcasts seem to rank well in Google. I started by reading a couple of my articles to create a soundfile (using Audacity shareware) and LAME shareware as the format converter to .mp3. Not complicated. The results were passable, and I quickly learned how to edit/splice the sound files using Audacity (after getting tired of umpteen re-takes). I opened a Podbean account and uploaded the .mp3. Then I needed to put the podcast on the blog.

Then I looked more closely at Wordpress and discovered that I couldn't just load and go. I dug around and came across a number of articles referring to Wordpress plugins such as Cool Player and Anarchy Media Player. I didn't feel like setting up yet another plug in, with the attendant danger of the software becoming unsupported and so on (lorelle's Wordpress blog was very informative).

I'd just posted a podcast on Podbean and wondered whether I could make use of that. Then I worked out how to do it.

Here's how:

1. Open your Podbean account and locate your podcast under the My Dashboard/Manage tab.

2. Below the 'Play Now' buttons you should see the rectangular Audio MP3 button. Alongside this is a list of options underlined with dashes.

3. Select the 'Embeddable Player' option and copy (ctrl+c) the script code in the box. There is currently a choice of two button colours - green on grey and green on black. I had a look at the html code and couldn't spot a way to change the button theme colours.

3. Now, create your post in your Wordpress blog, with some appropriate text - just a brief summary of what is in the Podcast. My preference is to include the full text of the article/post and offer the Audio option:

'In a hurry? No time to read this great post? Hit the Podbean button and listen in while you do something else!'

4. Then, paste in the Podbean script where you want it in your post(make sure that you have the html view of the post). I prefer to put it at the beginning, as you don't want people to read your post and then find out that they could have listened to it (though it does depend on content - whether it is pure entertainment or informational).

That's it - click to publish/update your Wordpress post and the button is live.

What I like is that the button goes out on your blog's RSS feed and is accessible on the feedreader (I use feedburner, so I have not tested any others) - the button diplayed properly, and worked as it should have.

This technique also works on blogger.

So, that's all there is to it, looks good, works good, but doesn't always fit the theme colours!

(c) 2010 Phil Marks