Sorry to those who were waiting for the rest of this - it seems that the 3 slices I made the podcast into are now too big to upload. I have lost the original and need to resew and then recut into 4 new episodes.
It’s too much of a pain to ask you folks out there to do, so I’m looking for an alternative
It is probably easier to go to Wes Fryer’s site and listen to the podcast there or download it or simply subscribe via iTunes (not sure that episode is still available though)
My first choice for simplicity seems to be GCast - something I’ve kept in mind for a while now (also Ourmedia, but I hear it’s not too good at handling the media)
GCast also integrates instantly with iTunes - a feature that is much too difficult to set up with Edublogs embedded mp3 files. By the time I had registered and uploaded a demo, my podcast feed was already in iTunes - brilliant, just what I need - a programme that does it for me
As ever, things are not straightforward and their player which shows all your podcasts in the sidebar, doesn’t work with Edublogs
I see from the forums (or is it fora?) that others have had the same problem but prefer GCast for hosting as they have no limit to uploads - Edublogs has 100Mb total and 10Mb for each podcast - a bit short for serious stuff, but ok for a quick book or field trip review
I have contacted James who recommended requesting thet GCast develop a plugin or embed code that works for the 100,000 users, which I have done
Well it would look like delayed intelligence has raised its head again.
Have you ever read instructions and they have made no sense at all? Yet when you work out how to do it, they somehow translate themselves into a new, friendly language.
Well that’s just what has been happening with this podcast thing.
Now I’m sure there’s no-one else out there who wonders what to do with a podcast when you’ve put it onto your edublog site - well I’ve been trying to sort this out for perhaps a year or so now. I know it’s simple and I should have asked, but everywhere I went - forums, blogs, podcasts, the universe, it seemed that this was a bit tricky.
I knew you could host a podcast on a blog
You can then submit it to iTunes
You can then let others see it on iTunes
Step 2 had me beat.
Until I read this Podcaster Tech Specs article on the …. - I know it sounds silly - but it’s on the iTunes website - yes I had looked all over this but didn’t find this info - or maybe I just didn’t SEE it!
So here are the instructions in my words - hopefully others will understand because it still took me some time to decode the iTunes instructions
to do this, right click on the RSS logo on your site
click on Copy shortcut or copy link location - whichever one turns up
this will copy the “feed” for iTunes to work with note steps
James has been great and has sent me some further instructions
The main thing is that the feed address you get from your RSS button on your edublog is not right for podcasting.
So it needs some change to the end of the address
Just replace the end bit which says /feed/ with /wp-rss2.php
Now when you do stage 9, it works.
I thought I’d hit a brick wall but found out that there’s a delay in iTunes picking up the feed
ALSO, you need to make sure that there is an mp3 in the last 10 posts on your blog or your feed won’t pick this up
To alter the number of posts it will “see”, go to the admin dashboard
Go into Options>Reading
Change the RSS bit to a bigger number - I set mine to 50
The feed will now pick up the last 50 posts
In the Advanced menu, select Subscribe to Podcast.
Enter your feed URL (paste it in) in the text box and click OK.
Next to the new podcast subscription, you should see an orange circle, which indicates that iTunes is downloading your most recent episode
Double-click on the episode to play it in iTunes.
If you can successfully play the episode, then your feed is working and you can submit your podcast to iTunes.
However, if the orange circle is replaced by an “i” in a black circle, iTunes encountered a problem with your feed or episode.
You should troubleshoot your episode and feed before submitting it.
Please do not submit your feed until you can successfully subscribe using the Advanced menu.
If you can successfully subscribe to your feed using the Advanced menu in iTunes, you’re ready to submit your feed:
The next bit needs you to sign up for an iTunes account
You will need to add your credit card details to identify you
Launch iTunes.
In the left navigation column, under iTunes Store, click on the Podcasts link to go to the Podcasts page.
In the left column of the Podcasts page, in the For Podcaster’s box at the bottom, click on the Submit a Podcast
That’s as far as I have got as I need to read a bit more to try and find out about adding tags and pictures to my feed
This involved using www.feedburner.com to change the RSS feed code to include your picture and description of the podcast - so far, I’ve had no luck with this
Back to step 16
So not so much
More
We’re getting there
James also offered to write a full tutorial for this, so maybe it’ll all become clearer than my efforts
