Current Version: Podcasting 1.64
Created for the Google Summer of Code 2007, Podcasting brings complete podcasting support to WordPress. Taking advantage of the latest and greatest in WordPress 2.5, WordPress podcasting has never been so easy.
Features
- Full iTunes support (both feed and item tags).
- A dedicated podcasting feed that can stand alone or be applied to any archive, category, or tag page.
- Support for multiple formats (or podcasts) with each format receiving their own dedicated feed.
- Offers a podcast player that can be included in any post.
- A simple, easy to use interface.
- Fully integrates with WordPress’ existing enclosure support and takes advantage of WordPress 2.5’s new plugin API.
A full rundown of the features with screenshots is available.
Installation
- Upload the podcasting folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
- Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress.
- Configure your podcasting feed through the Options > Podcasting menu in WordPress.
- Begin adding new episodes to posts!
Usage
Feed, iTunes, and format options can be configured in WordPress’ Options > Podcasting page.
Episodes can be added, edited, and deleted via the Podcasting options box displayed on posts’ edit screen. The box appears below the image uploading section and can be rearranged with the other options boxes.
Download Podcasting
Current Version: 1.64
Released: 2008-04-23
WordPress 2.5 or Greater Required
Frequently Asked Questions
Help, the podcasting feed is resulting in a 404!
WordPress 2.5 slightly changed the upgrade procedure. Stored rewrite rules (such as Podcasting’s) are dumped after an upgrade to prevent issues. From now on, rewrite rules must be refreshed as part of the upgrade procedure.
Alternatively, if the pretty feed URLs aren’t working period, you can also use the following URL structure:
http://example.com/?feed=podcast
http://example.com/?feed=podcast&format=xMy m4a/m4b files disappear after saving the page!
Most web servers do not recognize m4a/m4b as an audio file by default, therefore causing Podcasting to ignore the URL. Thankfully, this can be corrected easily. Open up the .htaccess file in your WordPress installation’s root directory and add the following two lines:
AddType audio/x-m4a .m4a
AddType audio/x-m4b .m4bVersion History
1.64 - Bug Fix
- Adds missing image showing the audio player’s colors.
- Fixes a bug where changing a format’s slug would forget the format’s explicit setting.
1.63 - Critical Bug Fix
- Corrects typo preventing 1.62’s fix from working.
1.62 - Critical Bug Fix
- Resolves an issue where an episode would not be saved once navigating away from the page.
1.61 - Bug Fix
- Resolves an issue where certain URL characters such as spaces would cause a failure creating an enclosure.
- Resolves validation issues with the RSS feed.
1.6 - Minor Update
- Adds options to configure the audio player’s colors.
1.52 - Minor Update
- The player is no longer replaced with the text “Download Podcast” in feeds to prevent that text from showing up in iTunes descriptions when the player is inserted first in a post.
1.51 - Bug Fix
- Fixes the Send to Editor button when the visual editor is disabled.
1.5 - Major Update
- Fixes compatibility issues with WordPress 2.5.
- Updates to the user interface to reflect the changes in 2.5.
- Episode addition interface is now fully AJAX. Add and delete episodes without having to refresh the page.
- Converts [podcast] tag to new shortcode API.
- Fixes Send to Editor button not working on the visual editor.
- Note: Version 1.5 requires WordPress 2.5.
1.02 - Critical Bug Fix
- Fixes a critical Javascript error affecting Internet Explorer and possibly other browsers.
- It is recommended to install this update as soon as possible.
1.01 - Bug Fix
- Fixes a conflict with the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin.
- Resolves AJAX errors when managing formats.
1.0 - Initial Release
104 Comments
I’ve installed podcasting 1.0. I’ve uploaded a podcast, but I’m not clear on where to go from there. I put in the url in podcasting and then punch “add” and nothing happens. Could you give me some additional instructions? We want to add the player to a post also.
Great plugin! Is there an easy way to provide a link to a downloadable file on the single post page? I’m thinking something similar to pulling the file url as if it were a custom field? Thanks again.
We’ve gotten the “add” button working, but there is no “Send to Editor” button appearing after we’ve added the podcast url.
We’ve gotten through the editor and it gives this in the post:
[podcast]http://petersmythe.org/audio/RFPodcast10032007.mp3[/podcast]
but the post is blank. No player. Could you help? (We’re pretty new at this).
Peter and Drew, I’ll be happy to help you guys. I just got home from a long day of classes, so I have to grab something to eat. When I get back I’ll look over your specific issues. Hang tight.
Peter, I’ve found two potential problems. First off, it doesn’t look like all the podcasting files were uploaded, or if they were, they were uploaded to the wrong directory. The plugin directory structure should look as follows:
/wp-content/plugins/podcasting/Inside of the podcasting directory should be the plugin files, and a folder called player which will containing the player files.
Next, I see your using the Audio Player plugin. That may or may not conflict with Podcasting. I don’t think it would, but it wouldn’t hurt to disable it for a moment.
I’m not sure I’m following you. You can simply link to the file in your post and that will serve as a download link. Or, are you looking for a button which will automatically create the link for you?
Ronald, thanks so much for responding. I reinstalled Podcasting pursuant to the instructions, but still have the same problem (I did disable Audio Player). The editor is still putting the code in the post, but nothing shows up. Also, iTunes says that no episodes have been loaded.
If you’re 100% positive the plugin files are in the correct location, something is misconfigured on your web server. In order for the player to function, this file must be exist: http://petersmythe.org/wp-content/plugins/podcasting/player/player.js. Currently I’m receiving a 404 on that page, and that should not be the case if your plugin files are saved in the correct location. (BTW, I’m seeing the same problem with other plugins you have installed.)
I’d double check everything is saved correctly, and if everything looks in order, contact your host for assistance. Most likely the problem is with the .htaccess files, so if you know what you’re doing, you can probably fix it yourself.
Regarding your iTunes feed, currently your rewrite rules are sending all feeds to Feedburner, thus your specific podcasting feed is being redirected to your main Feedburner feed. That should not be the case. Again, look over your rewrite rules, or if you’re using a Feedburner plugin, ensure it’s configured correctly.
Hopefully these observations will help you find the source of the problem.
Ronald,
Thanks for the heads up, but we still are experiencing problems. We re-installed WordPress 2.3 and also the plugin. Now the plugin crashes the site when it is activated (reinstalled it 3 times - same every time). I called Bluehost and they went through everything and said that something is wrong with the plugin and that the site is clean. They also looked at the .htaccess files and said everything was in order. They suggested that I email you to advise you of the problem and also to ask if you had any specific instructions about the .htaccess files.
Peter
Peter, sorry to hear about your troubles. I have to go to class now, but here are a few quick things. When Podcasting is activated, do you get a specific error message now?
Second, you do agree with me that the player.js file is not displaying, correct? As I said before, that file is necessary for the player to function. I see you’re having the same problem for the Audio Player plugin. In fact, you’re entire wp-content/plugins directory throws a 404. Here’s two things you can try to stop the entire directory from 404ing:
- CH-MOD wp-content/plugins to 755
- Delete any .htaccess files found in wp-content or wp-content/plugins/
While the error message you’re now receiving is most likely a problem with Podcasting, this player issue is a much larger issue. Any plugin you install which requires an external file will have problems. I’m not trying to throw this problem on someone else’s shoulders, I just want to make you aware of the scale of this problem.
When I get back from class later this afternoon I’ll do some more research on the issue and help you with the specific error message. Thanks for being patient.
Ronald, thanks for taking the time to respond. I’ve contacted the hosting company more than a few times and they cannot figure out the problem (even after I read your email to them). They say everything is in place, no .ataccess in the plugin directory and everything is clean (we re-installed WP 2.3 this morning). The 404’s are a big mystery to them (and of course to me). Any help would be appreciated. We’re looking forward to using the plugin (when we can).
Would you mind emailing me (ron at cavemonkey50 dot com) your main .htaccess file and a list of the plugins you have installed on your site? I’ll look over the .htaccess file and I’ll see if I can find anything out of the ordinary.
I also just thought of something you can try. Visit your WordPress admin > Options > Permalinks and click Update Permalink Structure. That will regenerate your .htaccess file.
Yeah…I’m looking for a way to automatically create that link after someone adds an mp3 file to the post.
If I made an option for the “Send to Editor” button to include both the player and a download link directly under it, would that work for you?
Ron, the plugin is working fine. Greatly appreciate it. From the forums I understand that Podpress’s stats option doesn’t appear to work well. Do you have any plans in mind for podcasting to keep statistics on subscribers? Not a big thing, but thought I’d ask.
Not at the moment. There are many other podcasting-specific statistic services out there, and I don’t want to make Podcasting too bloated.
Ron, I was running 1.0 with the corrections this morning and it was working fine on Mac, but I got an email stating that my site has been crashed on IE since installing the plugin. I went ahead and installed 1.01 and the site is crashing on Macs now.
When you say crashed, what do you mean? An error message? A blank page? A person’s browser actually crashing and closing?
The side bar feeds show up in the middle of the page with nothing else. Apparently, that’s all that IE users have seen for the past few days. It was looking fine and working with the Mac. I thought it might be another that didn’t seem to work so I deactivated that and also reinstalled WP 2.3. Now when podcasting 1.01 is activated, I am experiencing on the Mac the very same side bar feeds showing up in the middle of the page.
That sounds like a HTML/CSS error unrelated to Podcasting. Would you mind reenabling Podcasting so I can see the error myself? I’ll be by my computer the next hour or so, so I’ll be able to check out the problem right away.
Ron, we activated it. Now it looks like it is working (at least for the Mac).
I have been able to reproduce the problem in IE6. Looking into the issue now.
Well, I can’t find anything that stand out. However, you have tons and tons of coding errors on your page. Several of the errors are fatal, where a tag isn’t closed properly or even started correctly. Internet Explorer is extremely picky to begin with, and most likely those errors are messing up the rendering.
Ron, are the coding errors in the theme? I called the hosting company and they said everything looked fine to them.
Your host would have nothing to do with coding errors. Any coding errors would be in the theme you’re using, code plugins are adding, or stuff you added to posts.
I linked to the wrong page in my previous comment, so here’s what I intended. That page shows you all the problems and gives you pointers on how to fix them.
I only glanced over some of the errors, but most of them are related to your theme and the video player you added. But focus on the theme first.
Ron, it appears that podcasting has some problems with Internet Explorer. We changed themes this morning (Brian Gardner’s Revolution) and IE can’t pick up the site every time we activate podcasting (we’ve checked out every other plugin and they are all good). Apparently, there is no problem with any of the browsers on Mac or even Firefox on Windows.
If you remove the player from your posts does that solve the problem? I know that’s not the solution, but it will help me figure out where to look.
Ron, no. We struck out the code and then looked it up on IE and the site went down (with that middle counter thing). I guess it is the activation of the plugin itself.
Could you reactive it again? I want to look over it again in Internet Explorer.
Sure. Hope you can figure out what it is.
You can disable Podcasting again. I have what I need to see what’s going on.
Just want to let you know I have been able to reproduce this on my own site. So I agree with you completely, Podcasting is the problem. Now to figure out what’s the problem.
Glad we got it narrowed down. Hope you can figure out what the problem is. We really like the plugin.
The problem has been fixed in version 1.02. I’m still not exactly sure why Internet Explorer was dying since the fix is extremely minor and valid in both instances. Regardless, I’m confident the problem has been fixed.
Thanks again Peter for helping discover bugs. If you happen to find any more, just let me know.
Hey, quick question, how would one subscribe via iTunes? I threw the feed address into the podcast section of itunes and it’s not updating with new podcasts.
Just clicking the subscribe button in the iTunes directory should do it. Why, is the feed not updating for people subscribed or is the iTunes directory behind on your episodes? If the iTunes directory is behind, they only update the directory once per day, so it won’t always have the latest episode. However, anyone subscribed should receive any new episodes automatically.
I don’t see a button. In iTunes I went to podcasts/advanced/subscribe to podcast then I entered the feed url the plugin gave me. There are currently eight podcasts on the site and zero are showing up in the iTunes. I has been about a week. I love the plugin BTW, I know this is just something I am doing wrong.
nick, what site are you using Podcasting with? The site you linked to in your comment doesn’t appear to have it installed. If you let me know, I can take a closer look and see if something is out of the ordinary.
It is a site I am starting to work on for a client, can I email it to you?
Sure, you can use my contact form.
I am having a problem with the PODCAST feed. Will not come up.
I have the plugin uploaded to the plugin dir under wp-content and the POD casts uplaoded to a root directory.
Any ideas?
Thanks.
Hi WindowsObserver, sorry for not responding sooner. I’ve been quite busy as of late.
Anyway, I just looked at your feed and it all looks fine on my end. Specifically, what’s not coming up on your end?
Cave Monkey - just checked after I got your reply and it is working now - thanks for the check. Not sure why I could not get it before.
Great plug in though!
Thanks. Enjoy Podcasting!
This is a great plugin. So easy to use and straightforward to set up. And it worked straight away on my local test site (unlike another popular podcasting plugin).
I would like to use it to publish mp3s of sermons on my church’s website which I built and maintain. At the moment I write the podcast feed by hand and put the Bible reference into the item description tag. However with your plugin there doesn’t seem to be a way to write a description, and what comes up in iTunes just says “Download plugin”, which isn’t all that helpful for the iTunes subscriber. Is there a way that the plugin could be modified to allow an item description to be added?
Re: my previous comment. I just looked and I actually write the Bible reference in the item itunes: subtitle tag, not description, but the same question applies!
Hello Vicky, thanks for using my plugin. Regarding your question, Podcasting should populate both the description and itunes:subtitle fields with the contents of the post the podcast is attached to. The fields should not contain “Download plugin”.
If you can provide me a URL, I’ll look over your feed specifically. There may be a bug with the plugin, in which of course I’ll fix it.
Hello,
Any ideas how to conver podpress db to your db?
wordpress.org/support/topic/164765
Without this will be impossible to include it in WP, because most users using it right now.
Thanks in advance
Hello Dave,
I will try to incorporate an importer in the next version. I had originally not included one as most podcasts tend to only keep about 15 episodes in their feed, enough to go back and manually convert. But I do agree, an importer would certainly make the process easier.
Just note, I’m moving into the last month of my semester. My work load increases greatly right now, so I probably will not get around to creating an importer until early May.
I’m curious, is there a way to customize the colors of the player, as you can with podPress and using the similar free-standing player?
Thanks!
You can edit the source of the <embed> by following this guide, but how about I make that easier. I’ll see if I can add the color options tonight and push out a release.
Alright, the new version with color options is now out. Enjoy!
You are my hero.
I just thought I would throw out there I released the first alpha version of 2.0 tonight. The alpha adds a video player powered by Flowplayer. This is the first of many great features planned for version 2.0. Testers are welcome to download the alpha and report back via email.
Just a quick note, there is currently no UI for adding the video player. So, to mess around with the new player use the following shortcode:
Hello there,
I recently installed and configured your podcasting plugin with WP 2.5.
The problem I seem to be facing is that the url: http://url/feed/podcast/ does not exist. http://url/feed does correctly resolve to the default WP feed, however.
I have several (3-4) formats I need to have in separate feeds, and all the media content (video podcasts mainly) are on a different server.
I tried making a post, and adding the url’s of the files in three different formats, but still no luck.
- Dids
Help, keeping getting this error
Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: add_shortcode() in /home/maritorg/public_html/wp-content/plugins/podcasting/podcasting.php on line 48
It sounds like you’re having issues with your rewrite rules. Try going to Settings > Permalinks and click Save Changes. If that doesn’t work, you can alternatively use the following URLs:
It sounds like you may be trying to install the new version of Podcasting on a non-WordPress 2.5 install. Are you using WordPress 2.5?
Ronald, thank you very, very much.
I did indeed have to refresh the permalinks, hence save the settings after installing Podcaster.
Thanks,
Dids
Hi Ronald!
Great plugin. I saw that a guy named Drew requested a download link for each entry in the podcast right under the flash player. It would be a great feature if you could just add so that the user can “send” a link to the editor just as you suggested.
Ola, I’ll look into adding that feature in the next release.
Hey Ronald,
I’m having issues getting the /feed/podcast/ to show entries. I’ve uploaded an mp3 to my server, added the podcast to the bottom of the post (the flash player comes up and plays just fine), and I can edit the Title and Podcast Tagline of the /feed/podcast/ feed. The regular /feed/ works fine and shows the posts. Is there some step I’m missing to get the podcast specific feed working? I’m using WP 2.5
Henry, if you revisit the post that contains the episode, does the Podcasting section list the file or did it disappear? If it disappeared you’re with a whole bunch of other users experiencing this problem. I will be working to correct the issue this weekend, and should hopefully have a release fixing the bug shortly.
OK, yeah, it disappeared. Sounds good. Thanks for your continued labor on this project!
Henry and others experiencing the missing episode bug, try the latest version (1.62). I believe I fixed the problem. I would appreciate your feedback to make sure the bug has been fixed.
No, it seems the error still remains. It even got worse here since the edit form is messed up.
I just realized a let a type slip through in 1.62. Try 1.63.
However, that still doesn’t account for a message up edit form. What’s wrong with your edit form?
I am so sorry man, it still does not work! 1.63 fixed the broken edit form, but the problem remains: no enclosures.
Just to make shure the problem is not sitting in front of the PC, here is what i do:
1. Add an absulte (even tried relative) URL to podcasting form leave it Default Format and click on “add”.
2. The edit form shows up but i dont add data (of course i did to try out).
3. I click on “send to editor”, and a shorttag appers in the editor.
4. I click on publish or save.
5. If I click at the rss-feed in the frontend, it is empty.
6. If I go back to backend and edit the post i cannot edit any data of the episode i just added. The whole edit-post-thingy looks like before but the shorttag in the editor.
7. I go to this page and post bugs
To help me figure out where the issue lies, could you do the following:
1. Create a new post.
2. In the editor, create a link to the MP3 file. Make sure the link looks something like this:
3. Save / publish the post and navigate away from the page.
4. Go back to the page. Does the podcasting section contain the episode you linked?
If the episode appeared, then the problem still lays with Podcasting. If it did not appear, then the problem is with WordPress; either the MP3 file is not being picked up an enclosable, or something else. Either way, I will help you figure out this problem.
By the way, regardless, could you give me the exact URL you’re using. I don’t care if I don’t have access to the URL; I just want to see what kind of URL you’re using.
Ok, i did as you asked me to: Link the mp3 directly. That really made wonder but i did. As an result the page justs shows a link to the mp3. No Player an still no editable infos in the podcasting section.
Here is the URL (unfortunatly i cannot grant you access):
http://dev.gefangenimnetz.de/wp-content/uploads/podcasts/ImYours.mp3
Okay, I now see the problem. The MP3 is behind a password protected directory. WordPress cannot access that file to enclose it, as it does not have the username and password. You have two options to enclose that file:
1. Enter the username and password in the URL like so:
2. Move the MP3 to non-password protected part of your website.
Once WordPress has access to the file, everything should function as intended.