Pros & Cons of adding audio/podcast entries to blog

PodPress is a plugin used inside WordPress.

Yes, I know that. What I wanted to know is if it is better to have a separate podcast “blog” page using Podpress, or will iTunes be able to pick up the audio files if they are interspersed with text blog entries in the blog.

iTunes has their own rules for picking up podcasts. You gotta sign up with iTunes and submit your valid RSS feed that contains enclosures in the iTunes format.

If you want to avoid some of the hoops you’d have to jump through, PodPress sure makes it easier. But even with that you still gotta sign up thru iTunes, agree to their terms, and get your iTunes ID to put into PodPress.

My answer would be yes. You can podcast either way, with or without a plugin such as PodPress.

Really what you want to make sure is, get your enclosures (podcast attachments) into your RSS Feed that’s generated by WP. You can then use the RSS feed to get the podcast into many services like iTunes, Yahoo, Odeo, Podcast Pickle, etc.

I finally got back to check everyone’s responses, and I still have a question about COMBINING text blog entries with podcast blog entries.

If we do this, can we get into iTunes, etc. with the podcasts, or does having text blog entries in between mess it up?

In other words: is it okay in terms of iTunes, etc. to mix text entries with podcast entries in the same blog?

Hope that is clear now.

Thanks!
Ruth

Yes, that’s fine, iTunes doesn’t care.

On the posts that have audio: iTunes will pay attention to your post text and can display it as a Description of the audio episode.

On the posts that don’t have audio: iTunes will just overlook them, and they will not be seen in iTunes.

Note that iTunes is getting everything from your Feed, so it depends on which Feed you gave them, and what’s in your Feed.

For example if your WordPress settings limit your feed to the latest 10 posts, and you have 1 post with Audio, then you post 10 times with just text — at that point your Feed will only contain 10 text posts. All the posts with audio will have gotten out-dated, and fallen off the feed. Then iTunes won’t see those old ones anymore.

Therefore you may wish to create a Category, for example “Podcasts” category. Every post with Audio, add it to this Category. Now get your Category Feed, and give that to iTunes. This way each post that’s in that feed has an audio attachment. Maybe you even want to adjust this Feed so that it shows more posts – for example if you wish to continue having the latest 50 audio episodes appearing in iTunes.

You’re the best! I just got a chance to read your response to my question. Thanks so much for such a clear explanation. I did set up a Podcasts category for my client. Now I can move forward with the iTunes part.