This is a step-by-step manual on how to create your own Podcast feed with Blogger and Feedburner SmartCast.
PRECONDITIONS:
A. you have already created the MP3 files (see podcastingnews.com on software for this)
B. you already have hosting for the MP3 files, i.e. the Mp3 files already have their URL that anyone can access (see podcast hosting on hosting providers).
- Create a new blog in Blogger: [your_podcast].blogpost.com
- Go to the Settings/Formatting page of your new blog
- Set ‘Show Link Field’ to Yes
- create a new Post, and put the MP3 file you want to podcast in the ‘Link’ field.
- Publish the post, and check the blog (the title of your post will be clickable and point to the MP3 file)
- At www.feedburner.com, burn the http://[your_podcast].blogpost.com/atom.xml
- Enable the ‘SmartCast’ option for this feed:
- Verify your feed on feedvalidator.org (just to be sure - the result should be “This is a valid RSS feed”).
- Enter the Feedburner RSS feed into your Podcast aggregator (here: Doppler)
- Let the Podcast aggregator update (in Doppler: push “Retrieve Now”): your MP3 file should download
- configure your aggregator to introduce the downloaded files into iTunes, Windows Media Player or whatever application you use
Good luck!
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Awesome post, Peter.
Just a reminder, in Step 6, make sure you select the “SmartCast” service when you’re burning your feed with FeedBurner.
Eric Lunt
FeedBurner
Thanks mate. been trying to get some podcasts going from my campus. This helps a lot.
This is a great post.
I tried this out with various files as a test and found that iPodder also will pull almost any file as a syndicated feed. So podcasts now enable any media type to be sent on demand.
Check out Podcast Central. Every media file type I could find, from MP3s to RAM, WMA, WMV and even ZIP files, short of sending jpegs and straight text - even linking directly to streaming feeds. I found that iPodder tended to hang up on streaming feeds, better on static feeds.
Your solution means that people can search and promote their favorite mp3 or other media, meaning that this enables “Long Tail” niche promotion of any media anyone can find.
Im not 100% sure its going to work all the time, but I have worked up a blogger template that seems to be doing the trick for turning a blogger.com blog into a real honest to bog podcast source. The upshot of this, if it works right , is the ability to use the blogger.com interface and hosting to create podcast xml.
Be warned, the blog whose template you put this code in will look like dookey to anything put a podcasting app..
(the template code is list at http://wsmf.org/blogcast.txt as blogger’s comment system will not allow the posting of certian tags)
Please let me know if this works for you, any changes you can suggest and all that. Thanks
-tomhiggins
tom at wsmf.org
OK i came up with one glitch…While the results worked with bashpodder it made some rss aggregaters a little mad due to the code blogger was adding for the banner.
Now on some of my blogger blogs I can turn the banner off alltogther, on others I do not have that option. I think this was due to having paid for some of these blogspot blogs way before the big blogger buy out. Some bit must be flipped on them that allows me to turn off the banners.
Ok so round two…it seems if you are hosting the blog somewhere other than blogspot you can turn off the banner, thus no code gets inserted to mess up the purity of the xml+enclosures.
The result is I am now using my old slack.net account to post this blog to via sftp.
http://slack.net/~tomwhore/blogcast.xml
This works perfectly, even the checker at ipodder.org loves it:)-
A few points, I had to fudge the file size inthe enclosure tag, I set it to 666 in honor of our reelected bubaya.
The results so far are
1) We can use the blogger interface to generate the podcasting rss+enclosure and have it hosted for free on blogspot with a little bit of ugly cruft that does not seem to bother bashpodder; I would be interested to hear of other podcasting apps can handle it as well.
2) If we host it on a non blogspot site, or use one of the blogs on blogspot with the magic bit set to turn off the banners, we get crystal clear totaly passable podcasting code.
Ok enough for tonight/morning.. Please comment and the like
-tomhiggins
tom at wsmf.org
Ok I forget to mention…on the blogger interface side… You need to have the TITLE and LINK options tunred on. Use the the LINK field is what gets stuffed inside the Enclosure tag and the TITLE becomes the item title.
You can find both these options in the Settings:Formatting section.
I worked out some bugs and documented the whole thing over on http://blogcasting.blogspot.com/
Feedback welcome
-tomhiggins
Thanks! I totally overlooked the blogger link option (I thought it was just the deanred url icon) and now thanks to you my podcasts are working. hooray!
Good to Bad. Last night got it all to work great, now, nothing works, ARRGHH. I am going crazy. I have gone through the directions a dozen times now. ozreportradio davidhglover and davisstraub all at blogspot, podcasting fine last night, now nada.
I could be making a stupid newbie mistake, but… Everything works brilliantly all the way up to the final step.
When I try to update the feed to my own little ol’ Podcast on iPodderX, it doesn’t seem to find any files (Morning Editon from WGBH Bsoton just fine; mine, nothing). It does, however, have an entry for my feed.
I’ve spent hours of squinting at various help sites trying to figure out what I’m missing. I wouldn’t bother you fine folks with this if it weren’t for the fact that this was by far the most useful set of instructions I found on the matter. (Teach you to be user-friendly…)
Thanks.
Hi, came here thru Preetam’s site. I blog at Yahoo (Korea), which allows music and video files to be uploaded as part of a post’s content. The templates provided at Yahoo Korea means I never had to learn to write codes in order to blog. Now that I wanna try podcasting, I wonder if the tips above would also work at Yahoo’s Blog ? If I post each day’s MP3 file as a new post, then I will get a new URL daily to burn at the site you mentioned. Then how is anyone gonna syndicate the podcast when the URL changes everyday ? I’m confused.
Thanks so much. I’ve been racking my brain over this forever… I’ve finally got my first (horrible quality, short, but I made it) podcast out to the masses!
http://www.fuzznik.com
Hello,
I’m sure the info is right in front of my face, but, I just can’t figure out how to do my own podcast. I have ipodder and feedburner but, it’s just not happening. Help.
thanks.
Hello, thanks for your sharing. but I come across a problem. do I need to burn the feed everytime i post a new feed? yesterday i try to podcast another mp3 file, but fail to retrieve by ippoder. then I burn the feed again. but I told to have another burn feeds address. do u know why? if so, how can I have a permanent podcast address?
This is a fantastic guide, thanks very much!
However, I have the same problem as reid, in that everything works until I try to retrieve my file, when iPodder just freezes. Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks for any help you can provide!
I was going to podcast but my pod sprouted and turned into my wife. She’s much happier now but insists on me going to sleep.
I was going to
Learn Spanish in Costa Rica
but got sidetracked in Myrtle Beach. Now i speak fluent Redneck!
I think I’m all set up here with FeedBurner from Blogger, but have one question if anyone can help: When my feed comes into iPodder, I don’t get the attachment icon that indicates that there is an MP3 to be downloaded. It does recognize the file, but I’m used to seeing an icon.
how do you creat a link for your mp3? cause i have an mp3 for a pod cast but
still u neeed a link
this is a great how to thing. thanks.
thanks for the awesome info. It helped a lot. I would add for MAC users, Doppler didn;t work for me so try using ipodder which is a cross platform aggregator.
Thanks again!
This (Blogger + Feedburner) is an easy and inexpensive way to start podcasting that I also suggest to many beginners.
For easy and inexpensive ideas on creating and hosting your MP3s, I’ve posted a lot of info on my How to Podcast Tutorial site.
hi im just starting out to make podcasts.. but im doing them from scratch.. is it possible to have folders? like for instance i have music.. but when people access my podcast i would like it to have a couple options for instance:
Hip Hop
R and B
Rap
each one would lead to that kind of music
Hey I used your walk through and now I have my podcast all set up. Thanks so much.
Is it possible to tag a podcast this way, buy adding tags into the html code of the blog post?
Hi,
I’ve had no success getting blogger to work as a podcast RSS feed.
The issue I have is all the aggregators are saying “No Items” or “No episodes”.
do you have to more than 1 post on blogger or something ?
Hi I have a weird problem, everything works perfect for mp3 files, but once I want to podcast a video file, itunes doesn’t recognize it at all. It only downloads the mp3’s I add, not the video, what is the cause of this?
you have to convert the video for you can use it in itunes…
search in goggle for “isquint”
Another thing, i didn’t use any agregator to read my feed, i’ve just go to itunes and clicked “Advanced / subscribe to podcast” and paste the feed address i’ve got from Feedburner…
Would like to allow someone to my site to listen to an mp3, but not as a download, but just stream it on the site (non-downloadable). I’d love to allow others to hear a song, but I don’t necessarily want to put a link on my blog that would allow them to download the song (you know, copyright and all). Any suggestions?
Tom
I’ve used Wavelog mobile blogging client to post WAV and MP3 audio format recordings directly from my N95 to my own WordPress powered blog. According to Telewaving.com it works also with Joomla and Drupal powered web sites. Just in case some of you want to have your own site in stead of shared social networking sites that are slow and full of ads…
would like to know what you mean by “put the mp3 file” i have an mp3 file ready to go but i can only type text into that box