First, beating a herd of dead horses

Today, I want to beat some dead horses. In case you are a new listener (and I’ve had a good blast of new listeners lately, welcome) I want to go over some of the things that should be common knowledge by now.

But first…. A disclaimer:

*** Even though I am part of the Blubrry and RawVoice support team, the advice given here is MY educated opinion based on 10 years of podcasting and is given freely and without regard to my relationship to any podcasting host or service and would be the same if I didn't have that relationship. ***

Now some news

News:

Soundcloud Podcasting is out of beta (open to everyone)

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/28/soundcloud-opens-its-podcasting-features-to-everyone/

Sarah Koenig makes Time’s Top 100 influential people.

http://time.com/3823276/sarah-koenig-2015-time-100/

Podbean now allows 301 redirects of feeds! (from Daniel J. Lewis from the Audacity to Podcast)

"Just wanted to let you know we've already updated the 301 redirect feature, so it is now available for Podbean users wishing to easily redirect their feeds when moving to a new service."

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Feedburner

Feedburner is the best of 2006 technology. While it does still work, it causes more problems than it solves. I think the word is getting out there that you don’t need feedburner to podcast, some “gurus” still say to use it.

It used to be the #1 support question but now it’s down to maybe #10. Not that Google has fixed anything, just podcasters are getting smarter about it. (I will take *some* credit for that). Along with my Colleagues Dave Jackson of the School of Podcasting, Daniel J. Lewis of Audacity to Podcast and Todd Cochrane of The New Media Show, Geek News Central and the CEO Of Rawvoice Inc. (parent company of Blubrry)

FREE hosting

We had another “Free” podcast hosting outfit pop up last week. Podcasts.com (Great domain). Just remember, if the service is worth money and you pay nothing, you are the product.

Podcasts.com is owned by http://www.emergemedia.com/ which also has the great domains Translate.com, brands.com and a bunch of other high profile domains. My guess is there are only into it for the money and will figure out that free is a lousy business model. Other companies have tried this and failed. Mevio.com (Podshow), Podango.com and a few more.

iTunes

RELAX - iTunes listings are what they are, you should worry about keeping your RSS feed healthy. The rest will follow.

Category Podcasting

I had an episode of QuickHits about this and I’ve talked about it here, but Unless you have a need for it, don’t use it. Use channels or post types instead.

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Top 6 things to keep your wordpress podcast healthy

1, Make sure you are on a good webhost. Godaddy LINUX, BlueHost (use my link), dreamhost and many others. Just make sure you can install wordpress from the control panel.

2. Keep everything updated as soon as an update is available. There was a Wordpress problem lately, so if you haven’t updated, do it.

3. Don’t get too fancy. Make sure your podcast works before you worry about how the website looks. If you HAVE to have a complicated website, maybe you should install a second wordpress install to power your podcast. This also includes keeping the number of plugins low. The more plugins the more stress you are going to put on your webserver.

4. Test everything when you add a plugin, update a plugin or update wordpress. Here is my checklist for double checking things are working:

Do the episodes still play

Look at your RSS feed in FIREFOX (other browsers won’t work as we...