On today’s episode, we are gonna start a new series talking about how to build certain types of websites. And today, we’re gonna talk my very favorite. How to build a podcasting website right here on Your Website Engineer, podcast episode No. 335. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Your Website Engineer podcast. My name is Dustin Hartzler. And we are in the fifth month of 2017. It’s hard to believe. I know that a lot of it has to do with the years going so fast, it seems like. And it just has to do with the fact that I’ve got a 6-week-old son at home. And life is just really, really crazy around these parts.

But, it’s hard to believe it’s the fifth month of the year. And this month we are going to be diving into tackling five different types of websites that we can build. And just kind of the services, the plug-ins, the extensions, things that we need to get set up to run those types of sites. And of course, like I said, we’re going to be starting with podcasting because that’s the one that’s most familiar to me. Because that’s the one that I’ve already built. And that’s one of my favorite ones. So, we’ll talk about that in just a little bit. I heard the only announcement that I have this week is about the call for speakers is now open for Word Camp US.

WordCamp US will be happening this year in Nashville. It’ll be December 1st through the 3rd. And it’s the third annual quote, unquote Word Camp US. Used to be the biggest Word Camp. Used to be held in San Francisco every year. And then three years ago, they started moving it from city to city. And it’s in a city for two years in a row. So, the last two years it was in Philadelphia. This year it’ll be Nashville. And next year it’ll be Nashville. And so, if you live in the Nashville area and definitely recommend checking this out. It’s the largest Word Camp event. They’re looking to sell around 2,500 tickets.

And it is a very, very large event. Most WordCamps are anywhere between the 200 and 500 mark. So, this one is almost five times the biggest Word Camp that’s happening in the United States. So, definitely recommend checking it out, or any other local Word Camps if you aren’t anywhere close to Nashville and you wanna get involved in. Just learn what’s happening in the WordPress space. Alright, the plug-in of the week this week is called Maintain Tools. And this is a plug-in that allows people – allows clients to keep their websites updated and secured.

It’s just a big, like a huge internal tool that a company built and now released it for use inside of the WordPress repository. It is a plug-in that doesn’t have a lot of installs because it’s a brand new plug-in. But, it gives a site-level info – information about your WordPress installs. You can see the registered post types and post statuses, perma-link structure, multi-site network active plug-ins. All of this good stuff. There’s a site scanner so it compares the WordPress core files on your web hosting to the WordPress core files available on WordPress dot org. You can manage plug-ins. You can turn on and turn off plug-ins.

You can do all kinds of things. You can do a lot of management of your websites. And so, I’ve got a link in assurance for this. And it is Maintain Tools. And it’s a plug-in in the WordPress repository. Alright, today we’re gonna talk about how to build a podcasting website. We’re gonna talk about several different types of websites all throughout this month. And the first one that I thought would be easiest to start with because, one, I didn’t have a lot of time for preparation. But, one that I know inside and out is how to start a podcasting website. And this one is going to be, not really the most complex.

And we’re not gonna go into all of the steps because there’s a lot of steps to get ready for a podcast. Like, I’m not gonna talk about editing your show and all this good stuff. But, more along the lines of how to set up a website and get it ready for a podcast. And so, that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna talk about the things that you need. And then how to set up the site. So, first, let’s dive into the things that you’re gonna need. You’re gonna need a WordPress site. Obviously, this is a site, or this is a podcast about WordPress. So, we definitely need a WordPress website. You’ll need some sort of audio equipment.

And we’ll talk a little about that briefly here in just a few minutes. But, you can start with all kinds of levels of audio equipment. You don’t have to go out and buy, like the big mixing board that I have and the digital recorder and the audio processing equipment and this Heil PR40 and all the good equipment that I quote, unquote thought I needed. And it’s just something that really, I enjoy. And I love doing audio podcasts. And so, this is something that’s a passion of mine. And so, I love having this nice equipment and a boom arm so I can move the microphone out of the way and whatnot. So, you don’t need all of that.

But, you need some sort of audio equipment. And we’ll talk to you about that in just a little bit. You’ll need a media hosting account. Your web hosting provider usually frown upon putting digital files, media files that are downloaded, like a podcast files or video files. They don’t really like those on shared hosting environments, or even dedicated VPSs, and whatnot because it takes a lot of resources to serve all of this content up. So, it’s best if you’re running a podcast to have a media hosting account. We’ll talk about that in a few minutes. And then you need some sort of podcasting plug-in.

You need some way to display a player on your website in the enclosure for a RSS feed to pick up and be able to download the files. So, let’s go ahead and just kind of start talking about how to set up your website. Now, note, if you already have a website, like if you already have a WordPress self-posting website running, you can definitely skip some of these steps and get going and just build the podcasting piece right into your current website. You don’t need a special website just for podcasting. You can do it with the current WordPress site. So, the first step is the basic one.

The one that I hope that everybody listening already has, is set up your WordPress site. This is a step that – you’re listening to a WordPress podcast. So, I’m gonna assume that you’re already using WordPress. You’ve already got a WordPress site set up and running. And you can use different platforms. But, WordPress makes it the easiest because it automatically generates this RSS feed. And the RSS feed is what allows a podcast catcher to go out and download podcast episodes, episodically, I guess.

The description of what a podcast is, is it’s a series of episodes of audio which, or video files I guess, too, that users can subscribe to and download and listen. So, if you think about it, your podcast player, it goes out there. It looks at the RSS feeds and says, oh, there’s a brand new episode. I’m gonna download that and just downloads it into either into iTunes, if you’re using iTunes for your podcast. Or directly into whatever app you may be using on your phone. And so, since WordPress comes with a built in RSS feed system already, just for the blogs. It makes sense to use this as a way to create and RSS feed for our podcast as well.

So, that is why we like to use WordPress. We like to use WordPress for other things, but we’re using WordPress for our podcasting website. The next thing we wanna do is that we need to set up that media hosting service I talked about a little bit earlier. I use a company called Libsyn. L-i-b-s-y-n dot com. And that who I use. And there’s another one out there called Blubrry. And that is B-u-l-b-r-r-y. so, it’s blueberry without the e’s. And either one of those are web hosting companies that you can – they’re dedicated to uploading audio content or video content. You just basically, can – you pay access to how much – how many file you upload per month.

And then you get unlimited downloads. So, if this file that you’re listening to is 100 megabytes, like I can upload x-amount of 100 megabyte files. But, if I have ten people download and listen to it, or 100 million people download and listen to it, my cost is exactly the same. It’s a fixed rate, a fixed cost. So, you get that set up. You go out there and purchase. You can start as low as $5.00 per month with Libsyn. And I’m not sure exactly what Blubrry’s starting price is, but $5.00 per month and it all is based on how much you wanna upload. And so, the price that I’m paying is like $20.00 per month. And that includes some detailed stats and whatnot.

But, that’s just about enough – that’s more than enough to – for all the audio files I upload each and every week. And then the next step, once you have that account set up. Then you want to choose your podcasting gear. You know what they may be, whether it’s just the headset that you get with your Apple iPhone. Or you get a Samsung C1O, U entry level mic or a Road podcaster mic. It’s a USB mic that you can plug right into your computer. Or the Heil PR40 with an exit LR connection that you need a mixing board and some other audio gear. Like, there’s tons of options that are out there. There’s the Snowball mic that a lot of people recommend.

Again, this isn’t a podcast about setting all the quality microphones to use, to set up a podcast. But, you basically, just kind of setting the stage. Like you want to – once you have the media hosting files, or the media company set up. Then you want to find the gear that you’re gonna use. And then, the next step of the process is going to record and edit your show. You gotta figure out what you’re gonna talk about. There’s a lot of steps that are involved in between there that I’m not necessarily gonna talk about because that’s not important to setting up the website. Creating the podcast is a whole nother animal.

You have to come up with content and ideas. And sit down and think through like 35 topics. What am I gonna talk about for the first 35 shows. Just to drum up some ideas and here’s some of the things I can talk about. So, there’s a lot of pieces to the puzzle to try to decide what your podcast is gonna be about. And again, the show’s not all about that. But, once you’ve created the show, you figure out what you’re gonna talk about. You’ve created that audio file. Maybe you’ve edited it a little bit. Now, you’ve got it in a nice mp3 file format. You want to upload that audio to your media host.

Whether that be Libsyn or Blubrry, or whatever the case is, you take that file. You kind of – it’s very similar to using WordPress and the Add Media button. Like within Libsyn, you just say, add new show or add new media file and then you click a button. And then it asks for you to browse across your computer and find that file and upload it. Once it’s uploaded it give you a – an URL. So, it’s got this big, long kind of messy URL that ends in a dot mp3. And then we take that plug-in – or we take that audio file and we’re gonna put it into our WordPress website.

In order to create a new podcast show notes page, if you will, is just another regular post within WordPress. It’s just, you create a new post. And then you’ll, once you add a new plug-in – you’ll need some sort of plug-in to display that WordPress player on your website. And so, the one that I use is the Smart Podcast player. There’s one by Libsyn, they have one. Blubrry has their own player. There’s smart – there’s a handful of other plug-ins that are out there that are built specifically for displaying a podcast on your website. So, that’s another plug-in that you’ll need. There’s some free ones.

The Smart Podcast player that I use is a paid-for premium version. And it is just – a lot of things that you may look for in a podcast player is, how easy is it to share your content. Smart Podcast player makes it really easy to go and share content on different social networks. It makes it easy to speed up the content; if you want your visitors to be able listen to your podcast in 2x or 3x speed. What else? The podcast player, some of them have like timestamps built in. And so you can create show notes with timestamps.

And then if somebody wants to listen to that specific piece, then they can click on that timestamp, and it’ll jump them right all the way to that part of the episode, right there in the player. So, there are things to look for when you’re looking for a WordPress podcast player. And you can do a quick Google search that says, just search for WordPress podcast player plug-in – WordPress podcast plug-in. And let’s say that, three times fast. But, you can do that. You can look for that. You can find the ones that are out there that may work the best for you.

So, once you’ve got that all set up. And you basically take that mp3 file, and somewhere in that podcasting plug-in that you’ve added, it will ask you for the media file URL. And you can put that right there inside – you paste that mp3 file on there. You configure that plug-in for all your settings – or iTunes settings and all that good stuff. What your show title is. And the podcast author, or the podcast producer. All that good stuff is all built right in. You change the color of the themes and all of the settings that may come with that podcast player. And then you publish that show as a post. And now, you’re all set up. You’ve got it all set up.

That’s as simple as that. It doesn’t take a lot to actually publish the podcast. But, the next piece of the puzzle is, you want to preview your podcast with iTunes, to see how it looks. To see if it’s working right. And to see, have you included all the necessary details for your podcast. So, you can go to this on a Mac or a PC, you go right into iTunes. And then you can go to file – open iTunes, and then go to file, and then subscribe to a podcast. And then you can add your podcast feed URL. And that will look something like, your website dot com, slash feed, slash podcast, if you’ve titled things on podcast.

And it’s usually best practice to set a category inside of your WordPress site as podcast. And then you can generate a feed specific for that category. And that’s the way I have it set up on my website. So, every new podcast episode each week, I’ve gotta check that podcast button. And then, once it’s checked it will automatically go to the right feed. And that feed only includes the 334 other podcast episodes that I’ve published over the last four or five years. So, once you’ve previewed it, and it all looks good.

Then submitting to iTunes is really, really simple. Inside the podcast area, inside of iTunes, you can go to a button that says, Submit a Podcast. And there are just a couple steps. You put that URL back in there. And you might have to fill out a little information about your podcast, or about your show. And then, that’s pretty much it. In a high-level nut shell, like, that’s essentially all you have to do for a podcast. To get a podcast set up on your WordPress website. Now, some other things to think about when it comes to building your website, or featuring it, or whatnot. You wanna think about, like, how prominent is your content?

Like, my website is completely audio content for the most part. I’ve got some webinars that from past years that I did. But, mostly, all my content is podcast related. So, it’s not like I have to differentiate between posts and pages, or like different blog posts, or – I know that there’s a great example, if you wanna see, over on Smart Passive Income dot com. There’s a little icon on each one of his featured images. Whether it’s a play button, which means it’s an audio podcast. Or there’s three little lines, I think, if it is a – if it’s a blog post. If it’s one of his monthly income reports, it’s got another little icon.

And you just wanna make sure that you’re highlighting and showcasing that – okay, this is audio content. Make sure that when you create the show notes for your website – or for your podcast episode, that they’re detailed. That they have lots of words in them. And I know that I’m not the best at this, but the more words you have, the more Google knows what’s on there. And the better, like they can crawl and serve up content to people that are doing some sort of Google search. And so, there’s just a lot of thinking through, and how you want people to stumble upon your content.

And the better the show notes, the more people that’ll probably come. Not necessarily more people that will listen to your show. I know that Daniel J. Lewis, over at the Audacity to Podcast, he has a phenomenal podcast. But, he also has phenomenal show notes. And I can glean almost everything that I need to know from his show notes, by just reading through the show notes. So, sometimes I just read the show notes if I’m running behind and don’t have time to listed to his shows.

So, that’s another great thing that he’s got such detailed show notes that Google knows that and they’re probably gonna serve his content better than some of my podcast episodes that don’t have a lot of content. Or some of those shows that you like, oh, I’m gonna go check out the show notes to see what they’re talking about. And there’s actually nothing there in the show notes. So, that is something to think about as well, as you’re creating a podcast website or a website for you podcast. So, again, a high-level overview of how you set it up. You basically need WordPress. You need some sort of audio equipment to record the podcast.

You probably need some sort of software, like Adobe Audition, or the – I think there’s a free software called Audacity. You can use that as well. One of those, even Garage Band, on a Mac. Those are some options to edit your podcast, if you want to edit your podcast if you want to edit. But, you don’t want to do any editing. You don’t need any type of content like that. Or you don’t need any type of editing software. And then you need some sort of media hosting account, so you can upload those files to a dedicated place on the web where you won’t get charged extra for people downloading your files.

And then you need some sort of podcasting plug-in that will allow your website to – for a visitor to come to your website and hit play right there on the web browser. And, believe it or not, there is a large majority of people who have no idea what a podcast player is, or a podcast catcher on – they’ve never heard of Overcast, or Pocket Casts, or even the iTunes podcast app. Like, they never heard of that. And if they wanna listen to a podcast. They come to your website and then they click play, and they listen. And when they come – and then, they’ll wait till next week.

And they’ll come back to check and see if there’s a new episode, and then they’ll hit play. And so, you’ve got to have a way to play your podcast right from your website. So, that’s week 1. Week 1, how to set up a podcasting website. And next week, we’ve got, we’ll talk about, I think, eCommerce, or we’ll talk about eLearning, or I’ve got a whole handful. All of May we’ll be talking about how to set up these particular plug-ins, or these particular types of websites. And what types of services or plug-ins that you may need to create a great, awesome website from that type of style. So, that’s what I wanna share with you this week.

So, take care and we’ll talk to you next week. Bye-bye.