If you use podPress to add podcast episodes then only as part of an article. An episode will not be a part of the content but something like an attachment of a post. podPress can show a player or a link at the beginning or the end of the posts content (If you don’t write something into the post editor then there will be e.g. only the post heading and the player on the blog page.). You can choose on the “General Settings”- and “Player Settings”-page of podPress how the episodes should appear at the posts.
There are at least 2 ways to upload and store your podcast episodes:
You can upload the episodes with the WP media uploader (the buttons above the post editor). The file will be stored as all the other images and media files automatically. After the upload you copy the complete URL of the media file and paste it into the “Location” field at the “Podcasting” box below the editor frame.
The other way is that you decide to use one specific folder on the server to keep all podcast episodes. To do that you have to specify the folder name at the “Local path to media files directory” field on the “General Settings”-page. For the upload you have to use an FTP client. All media files which are uploaded to this folder will be listed by podPress in a select box at the “Location” field at the “Podcasting” box below the editor and you can simply select the file.
Of course you can upload the media files via FTP to the usual upload folders, too without using the option “Local path to media files directory” (Then you would have to specify the URL in the “Location” field manually).
In general: if you upload the files via FTP without the WP media uploader the files will not be listed in the media library of your blog (and these files are not getting a WP attachment ID automatically).
podPress adds the podcast elements to the regular RSS feed and creates a new RSS feed which contains only the podcast posts with their audio/video files. This feed has the address e.g. http://www.example.com/?feed=podcast or http://www.example.com/feed/podcast.
With podPress all RSS feeds contain the news feed elements which are necessary for iTunes and probably for other podcast client software, too.
If you want to have a feed without the podcast posts then you could set up a further RSS feed which does not include these posts or to exclude posts of a certain category from the feed. There many ways to do that.
One way is to use the built-in RSS widget of WP. There you can input a custom feed URL and the blog visitors can subscribe to it by simply clicking on the new icon in the sidebar of the blog. The custom feed URL should look like this http://www.example.com/?feed=rss2&cat=-4 or http://www.example.com/feed/?cat=-4. In this example 4 is the ID of the category of the podcast posts and the minus excludes this category.
But there are several plugins which make it probably easier to exclude categories from the all the feeds (search for “exclude” in the plugin repository).
Hi ntm,
Thanks for your help so far. I still have to play around with the settings based on your answer.
But I do have another question, I don’t want to have a feed without the podcast posts at all. IThis is the scenario I want to create:
1 feed with podcast posts + writing blog posts
1 feed with just podcast posts
Hi stephmon,
probably I have read your initial post a little bit to fast.
That:
1 feed with podcast posts + writing blog posts
1 feed with just podcast posts
is part of the default output of WP + podPress. The default RSS feed contains all posts and http://www.example.com/?feed=podcast contains only the posts with podcast episodes (which have been added via podPress).
BTW: If you want to add files which were uploaded e.g. via FTP to the server to the media library of WP then you could use Add From Server plugin.
I’m having almost the opposite issue to the above. Is it possible to create a podcast without ever attaching the media to a post? That is, I’d like to upload the mp4 files to a folder, which I have specified in the plugin interface as the folder for the podcast media, then generate a podcast from those media but I don’t want to have to write new posts for each of those media items.
Thanks in advance,
Rob
Hi Rob,
what you want to achieve, is not directly possible with podPress. podPress generates the news feeds on the basis of the posts. That makes it necessary to add the media files to posts.
But it is not necessary that these posts have a content. A title would be enough. Further you could put these special posts into a category and define that posts of this category are not visible e.g. at your (main) blog page.
see http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop#Exclude_Posts_From_Some_Category
I believe there are plugins or themes which can free you from programming this.
But with podPress you would have to create posts and add the media files to the posts.
Regards,
Tim
Hi,
I have recently installed podpress and reading the feature is that it will have a rss feed ONLY with the podcasts.
However, I don’t know what I may have done wrong, but both my default feed and the podcast feed contain ALL the posts.
Any idea what I can check to get the podcast feed only load the podcasts?
Thanks!
regards,
YawEng
@yaweng: Which version of podPress do you use?
If you are using the latest (8.8.9) then there is section with the name podPress Feeds at the Feed/iTunes Settings page. This section contains the settings for the additional Feeds which podPress may add to your weblog. These podPress Feeds contain usually only posts with at least one media file which has been added with podPress. But in 8.8.9 exists a new option which is called “Include only posts with podPress attachments in this Feed”. That option should be active if the Feed should contain only posts with podcast episodes. Otherwise and if none of the other filters is active, the Feed will contain all posts.
What is the URL of you podcast Feed (or your blog)?
Regards,
Tim
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the reply. I saw podPress 8.8.9 was available few days ago, but I checked again today and could not find the update, so did not able to upgrade.
Does this mean that 8.8.8.5 is not able to do this?
My podcast feed is at http://puchong.cdpc.org.my/feed/podcast.
Yaweng,
Thanks for posting the URL.
Your podcast episodes are .m4a files and it seems to me that the file type filter of your podcast Feed is active and set to a different file type.
To de-select file types hold the Ctrl key and click with the left mouse button while the cursor is over a selected file type. Afterwards save the settings.
In 8.8.8.5 the podPress Feeds contain always only the posts with podPress attachment except if there are no posts with podPress attachments of the right file type.
Regards,
Tim
Thank you for the note about the missing version 8.8.9. Yesterday, I have set accidentally back the tag of the stable version. That is why 8.8.9 was only visible at the “Other versions” page: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/podpress/download/
But I have corrected the mistake and 8.8.9 should be available via the plugins page of your blog and the usual page http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/podpress/
Thanks,
Tim
Thank you so much! It is working now.
One other thing that I have difficulty changing is the email address. Earlier I have use my personal email, but now that I have set a generic email (i.e. webmaster) for the admin email address. However this is not reflected in the feed xml. Any advice what I need to do?
Thanks again!
Which email setings have tried to change? The one of the main Feeds of the blog or one of a podPress Feed?
Please, try a different value. Maybe insert only “webmaster” with the @ and the domain name (if it is the email setting of one of the podPress Feeds). It should work.
The XML code of the RSS Feeds should contain the tags <managingEditor> and <webMaster> and in between the value of the email input field.
Maybe it appears only as this value would not change. Some Feed reading software programs are saving Feeds in a cache memory and update the content only after a certain time span or if you clear the cache before you click on the relaod button.
Regards,
Tim
