podcast stuff

For some reason podcast 101 and 102 do not show up on feedburner. feedburner

I am unsure as to if this is an issue with who posts them or if it has something to do with feedburner. I know very little about this other than I like to consume podcasts.

redundant post removed

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/uncontrolled-airspace-general/id185237578

Any more news about this? I see 293 episodes.

Kane seems to have hit a dead end. He fiddled with things enough that he was able to get the new stuff to show up in itunes. But now the first 17 are missing.

He said the error the feedburner was showing was "Your feed filesize is larger than 576K. You need to reduce its size in order for FeedBurner to process it."

I know that the code for the embedded player used to be really big. Maybe the thing to do is to go through all of the podcasts and replace the embedded player with the newer, much smaller embedded player.

Then, that might get us up to podcast #110 or so. I could then rename the first site to "permaculture podcast season 1" and then start another called "permaculture podcast season 2".

Thoughts?

Yay! 101, 102, and 103 are now on feedburner!

I've stopped making podcasts until this is fixed. I really don't like the idea of a new podcast bumping an old podcast. And I don't have the time/inclination to figure this out. And the 103 podcasts I have now feels "pretty good" or "good enough".

Good news, Paul. I just got back from my short trip and am delighted to inform you that Jack, producer of the Uncontrolled Airspace Podcast, is happy to help. This, by the way, is his profession, not just a hobby, so I'm sure you both can get to the bottom of it. I've just sent him an e-mail cc'd to you that lets him in on the issue and so you two can work it out, possibly with Kane's help.

Kane emailed me and gave me instructions on how to tinker.

So, the first thing ....

Currently itunes is showing episodes 14 through 103. Suzy Bean went and and changed all the old podcasts to use the new player which is about 20 times smaller than the old player. This should make feedburner not gag on the total feed size.

Next, with Kane's instructions, I changed the feed number from 90 to 160. So that should include everything and the size should now be smaller so it should (crossing your fingers goes here) get all the way through and tide us over for a few more podcasts.

Timothy Ettridge wrote:Good news, Paul. I just got back from my short trip and am delighted to inform you that Jack, producer of the Uncontrolled Airspace Podcast, is happy to help. This, by the way, is his profession, not just a hobby, so I'm sure you both can get to the bottom of it. I've just sent him an e-mail cc'd to you that lets him in on the issue and so you two can work it out, possibly with Kane's help.

I replied and conveyed a big gob of info. Hopefully he will have the magic words which will take us far past 150.

crossing my fingers.

progress!

It says there are 100: 001 through 103

I see that #13 is missing #22 and #30

I'll owe Jack one case of beer now. If 13, 22, and 30 reappear, it will be two cases.

Just went to #s 13, 22, and 30 and fixed them (I hope). I added the mp3 download button back in. Must have deleted it by accident.

Timothy Ettridge wrote:I'll owe Jack one case of beer now. If 13, 22, and 30 reappear, it will be two cases.

Well, so far, we are doing all the stuff we dreamt up in this thread. I emailed Jack and told him about the plans we have in place now. But I think these changes might safely get us to about 140 before it dies. I asked Jack if his podcast descriptions were super short - because if they are, then he might run into troubles soon, while we will still cap out at 140. If his descriptions are long, then he DOES have magic powers and that will help solve everything!

103 are now showing up!

Paul, Thanks for explaining the importance of Redit in your last podcast. I will add more of your stuff there instead of Facebook.

Chad Ellis wrote:Paul, Thanks for explaining the importance of Redit in your last podcast. I will add more of your stuff there instead of Facebook.

Thanks Chad! That would be excellent.

I think that if I saw a lot of my stuff out at reddit, that would make me feel less like I need to spend more time pushing stuff, and then I can return to making more new content.

What are the keys to successful reddit submission? Paul, I have tried to submit links to your stuff 5-6 times for every time I have been successful. Any tips?

Chad Ellis wrote:What are the keys to successful reddit submission? Paul, I have tried to submit links to your stuff 5-6 times for every time I have been successful. Any tips?

Hey Chad, I know my name's not Paul, but what I think Paul would say is this: Go to a subreddit you are interested in submitting to, and click on the tab at the top "hot." Take a look at the personality of the posts that have had the most upvotes. Different subreddits will have different personalities, and a successful post plays along with what people have liked in the past. For example, some subreddits get lots of upvotes for sarcastic humor. Some are very political. Some negative. Some lollipop-sweet positive.

Also, it's good not to submit several permies.com posts in a row because reddit will think you a spammer.

Hope this helps!

What Suzy Bean said!

It's all in the title.

I find that if the title is "this guy ..." or "some guy" or more about a person, that helps.

Another thing is that about one or two minutes after you submit, check to see that it is showing up. If it doesn't show up, find the link to message the moderators. I always say "submission not showing up" as the subject. And then "My submission about _________ isn't showing up. Maybe it is caught in the spam filter?" Usually about five minutes later it appears.

I heard that kindles can get podcasts. Do I need to try and connect my podcasts to amazon?

Also, it is time to set up "season 1" which I think I will do at wordpress. I very much want somebody to do this for me, but I'm guessing that that won't be possible. Maybe there is somebody savvy that can at least be on the phone with me as I try to do this? I think it would be a collection of wordpress stuff, feedburner stuff and itunes stuff.

Still need help with this? I would be happy to setup a podcasting wordpress for you if you are looking for something.

Here is what I already have set up:

http://paulwheaton12.wordpress.com/

I think that this would be where I would want to start putting my "Season 1" podcasts. While "Season Zero" will be at http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/

Issues:

201: when we hit a certain size, feedburner chokes and won't process
202: we want all of the podcasts to be found on itunes - not just the latest 100 or so
203: the current setup might handle five or six more podcasts before it dies

I think paulwheaton12.wordpress.com would have a podcast category. That way we could put other stuff out there before feedburner chokes.

So it seems that we need to put one podcast up on paulwheaton12.wordpress.com, and then rig it up on wordpress->feedburner->itunes so that it ends up as a different page from the existing itunes page.

paul wheaton wrote:Here is what I already have set up:

http://paulwheaton12.wordpress.com/

I think that this would be where I would want to start putting my "Season 1" podcasts. While "Season Zero" will be at http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/

Issues:

201: when we hit a certain size, feedburner chokes and won't process
202: we want all of the podcasts to be found on itunes - not just the latest 100 or so
203: the current setup might handle five or six more podcasts before it dies

I think paulwheaton12.wordpress.com would have a podcast category. That way we could put other stuff out there before feedburner chokes.

So it seems that we need to put one podcast up on paulwheaton12.wordpress.com, and then rig it up on wordpress->feedburner->itunes so that it ends up as a different page from the existing itunes page.

You need a actual wordpress.org installation on your host. Wordpress.com is very limited and not a good solution for podcasts. The best podcasting solution for wordpress is a plugin called PowerPress. It will allow you to show up to 10,000 podcasts. If you like I can setup a wordpress site for you on my network so that you can see what your site could look like. I can also give you admin access to it so that you can play around after I get it setup. I could probably have the site setup, themed, and filled with content today.

I think our current wordpress (richsoil.com/permaculture) will allow thousands of podcasts, but the trick comes with getting them onto itunes - all at once like. We could have thousands on wordpress, but only the most recent 110 or so would show up at itunes.

We could get the current set up to send about 400 to itunes, but we would have to delete all of the descriptions. And probably remove the player.

Further, we're having some sort of SEO weirdness at richsoil.com/permaculture: the pages there rarely show up for any search. So if I search for "rocket mass heater podcast" you would think the first result would be http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/182-rocket-mass-heaters-permaculture-podcast-019/ but it doesn't even make page 1.

So it seems like a good time to try something else.

I guess I just figured there was a simple rss thing that goes on at paulwheaton12.wordpress.com - feedburner takes that in. And then feedburner feeds that to itunes.

That's what I thought was happening. But you're saying that doesn't happen, or that paulwheaton12.wprdpress.com doesn't do rss?

It sounds like the reason you are having issues with getting enough podcasts to show up on itunes is because of the RSS feed built into wordpress. This is why powerpress is so great. Powerpress creates a different feed specifically for iTunes that bypasses the wordpress feed limitations. That is why you can have 10,000 podcasts show up in itunes. It is a free plugin you install that adds the features to each of your posts.

paulwheaton12.wprdpress.com does do RSS just not with the setup you need. Feedburner is great for post feeds but not the greatest for podcast feeds the iTunes needs to read. PowerPress steps in and creates its own advanced feed that iTunes can easily read. You can still keep your current feedburner and / or wordpress feed but those should be for people who want to subscribe to you feeds on a news reader like google reader. What you want iTunes to read is your powerpress feed which is customized for iTunes.

Breaking this up a little ....

issue 357: powerpress is a wordpress plugin that I could plug in to richsoil.com/permaculture, but I cannot plug in to paulwheaton12.wordpress.com - yes?

issue 358: powerpress has the ability to take 10,000 wordpress pages and make it so 10,000 podcasts appear on itunes, thus fixing our current problem - yes?

issue 359: some people like to get stuff from the raw rss on wordpress and some like to get it from feedburner. In either case, they probably like "the latest 5 things" instead of the current "lastest 160 things" - yes?

issue 360: i could set up paulwheaton12.wordpress.com to do the podcast thing much like I am doing it now and I will, once again, have a limit of about 100 podcasts before I will have to move on - yes?

issue 361: any ideas on the SEO issue?

issue 362: There are two things that I like about paulwheaton12.wordpress.com: they update all the time, so there is good security and new toys automagically show up; there seems to be some sort of subscription thing that can happen there that I don't see happening on richsoil.com/permaculture. So I wonder if I post lots out there if I might develop a new audience, much like I have a huge youtube audience (that I never would have gotten if I hosted my own videos).

I think you should use the feedburner feed. Just tell it what feed to pull from, this way when you move to a different host for your podcast files you can change the feed in your feedburner feed options so that you don't lose all your subscribers.

Here's some videos that would be very helpful. http://podcastanswerman.com/learn-how-to-podcast/

I believe part 5 in particular would be helpful.

issue 357: Correct

issue 358: Correct

issue 359: Doesn't really matter. People who use news readers for rss will get any and all content on the feed whenever something is added. The only difference this makes is in how many previous posts they will see from the time they sign up to the feed. The feed reader they use will archive any older posts for as long as the user has decided. Example:
I use Google Reader. Google Reader is the most popular RSS reader and most RSS reader applications use the Google Reader account. When I subscribe to richsoil.com/permaculture it loads the last 10 feeds automatically and automatically lets me scroll through all of your content. I am looking at it now and I have scrolled down starting at "podcast 107 fluorescent lighting" and it ends at "Heat yourself and not the whole house and save 80% on heat" which I assume is your first post on that feed (the first and oldest post). If my reader didn't find all of this older content it would most likely show the last 10 - 50 posts (depending on the settings) you have made. It would keep those 10 - 50 posts in archive and download any new ones you post automatically. So then the person would see the last 10 - 50 posts from the time they subscribed and all posts that have come after that (unless manually deleted by the person reading the feed or the persons feed reader itself).
As far as the feedburner feed you have setup now it is doing a great job for people that want to read that the http://feeds.feedburner.com/PaulWheatonPermaculture feed using their feed reader.

issue 360: I strongly recommend not using wordpress.com to host any feeds. If you setup a link to any RSS feed on a wordpress.com site (paulwheaton12.wordpress.com) I recommend that link be to your main feed (richsoil.com/permaculture or http://feeds.feedburner.com/PaulWheatonPermaculture. DO NOT use paulwheaton12.wordpress.com feed with iTunes.

issue 361: What SEO plugin are you using for richsoil.com/permaculture? There are a LOT of different things that can be done for SEO. There are a lot of things that effect the google (and other search engine) page ranking.
First thing make sure you have a good SEO plugin on your wordpress installation. The top two are All-in-One SEO and Wordpress SEO by Yoast!. I personally use All-in-One SEO because it integrates nicely into many of my other plugins.
Second - Google may be giving richsoil.com/permaculture a lower page ranking because it is not the top level domain. Richsoil.com is the top level domain. This is probably not that big of a deal but something that might be worth looking into. A better domain would be a subdomain like permaculture.richsoil.com.
Third - Do you have "rocket mass heater podcast" as one of your keywords?
Fourth - I highly recommend checking out Scribe SEO. It is a plugin for wordpress that makes it easy to make sure you are doing the best practices you can to make your posts rank the highest they can on google. It scans your posts content, meta keywords, meta description, and tags to ensure you are maxamizing you SEO properly for each post. It gives you recommendations for making changes and even gives you a % to look at for how well you have done on each post. The only problem with Scribe SEO is that it is a premium plugin (meaning you have to pay for it). I think it is worth it to use it for at least a month so that you can learn the best ways to increase your SEO. After you have learned it well enough you wont even need Scribe SEO any longer. You will have a good idea of how well you have done by then.

issue 362: The only thing that wordpress.com has that would be of any use to you is for having your site listed on wordpress.com. That means means that people on wordpress.com can do a search within wordpress.com and easily find your site. Most people search with google.com not wordpress.com. So having something on wordpress.com would be a good idea to capture those people but I would not spend a lot of time on it. If you are going to use it I suggest posting maybe 20 articles (your highest viewed articles) onto it and constantly tell the readers on it to goto permies.com or richsoil.com to learn more. That is all of the effort I would put into wordpress.com. A good way to get your name out is to post a lot on social sites like Stumbleupon, Reddit (I understand you have been having problems posting your own content there), Digg, Delicious, Facebook (you already do), Twitter, LinkedIn Groups, etc etc. The best way to get your SEO up is to have your website linked on many other websites. This makes google pay much more attention to your site. They figure the more people are linking to it the better it must be (unless those links are on junk auto websites). I could spend hours talking about SEO. It is a big conversation. I would tell you the best way to get good SEO coverage is to have good content and a lot of it. I am not going to tell you that because you already have it!

paul wheaton wrote:Breaking this up a little ....

issue 357: powerpress is a wordpress plugin that I could plug in to richsoil.com/permaculture, but I cannot plug in to paulwheaton12.wordpress.com - yes?

issue 358: powerpress has the ability to take 10,000 wordpress pages and make it so 10,000 podcasts appear on itunes, thus fixing our current problem - yes?

issue 359: some people like to get stuff from the raw rss on wordpress and some like to get it from feedburner. In either case, they probably like "the latest 5 things" instead of the current "lastest 160 things" - yes?

issue 360: i could set up paulwheaton12.wordpress.com to do the podcast thing much like I am doing it now and I will, once again, have a limit of about 100 podcasts before I will have to move on - yes?

issue 361: any ideas on the SEO issue?

issue 362: There are two things that I like about paulwheaton12.wordpress.com: they update all the time, so there is good security and new toys automagically show up; there seems to be some sort of subscription thing that can happen there that I don't see happening on richsoil.com/permaculture. So I wonder if I post lots out there if I might develop a new audience, much like I have a huge youtube audience (that I never would have gotten if I hosted my own videos).

issue 360: I would recommend hosting a wordpress installation on a server instead of on wordpress.com. I believe that your wordpress.com installation is limiting your feed length to save themselves bandwidth. If you set it up on a server you can control everything and have an (almost) unlimited feed length with powerpress. Use your wordpress feed in feedburner and then pass the feedburner feed to your podcast directories and your subscribers. This is important because as your podcast gets more and more popular (and I am almost certain it will) you will need to upgrade to more powerful hosting to deal with the bandwidth issues.

issue 362: maybe you should setup wordpress on the same server that hosts richsoil.com or permies.com. you could put it in a subdirectory called permies.com/blog I do not think you will get a larger audience by hosting at paulwheaton.wordpress.com and if you do you will run into limitations with their free service. I agree that you should not host your own videos, but for your podcasts and blog you should host your own wordpress installation.

Another nice feature of PowerPress (if you wanted to do this) is that you can setup multiple podcasts (feeds) for a single post. You can have one for Audio and Three (or more) for video. That is how I use it. So lets say I have both a video and an audio podcast for the same post. On the post there is a option to listen to the audio and play the video. So for that post I actually have four or five feeds happening. One feed is for my readers. One feed is for Audio, one for HD video, and one for SD video. All three of these feeds are published in iTunes so that people can subscribe to the Audio podcast or the HD Video podcast, or to the SD Video podcast. When I create my post in WordPress I tell wordpress to use "this audio", "this HD video", and "this SD video". I choose which one is visible to on the WordPress page and the readers RSS feed as well as which ones I want pushed to my separate iTunes podcasts. I don't have to create three or four different posts.

Does that make sense?

I just spent an hour on the phone with josiah. Uhhhh .... wow, there are two josiahs in this thread. So Mr. Wallingford.

I gave him access to the wordpress stuff we have now and it sounds like he's gonna get it all fixed up right as rain so I can make 10,000 podcasts that will all show up on itunes. And it sounds like he has a lot of thoughts on how to fix the SEO problems with the podcasts. This could lead to more downloads which would inspire me to make more podcasts.

We talked about a whooooooooole bunch of other stuff. While he fixes that, I'm gonna go fix some other things. I think Mr. Wallingford is gonna do a lot of really cool stuff for my empire.

Thank you Mr. Wheaton. I see a lot of cool things we can do to get the word out on the podcast and articles. Ill be working on putting those into place and will update this thread with the changes made so that everybody can follow along.
By the way that phone call was 2 hours and 4 minutes long. We talked about a lot!

I have spent a large slice of the night doing the stuff I said I would do. Confusing stuff, but we'll get there eventually.

Okay. Here are some of the changes made so far to richsoil.com/permaculture:

1. In the process of migrating the audio player on the website. Doing this will greatly reduce the code on the site making it load faster for you and help with the servers bandwidth. This will also greatly increase the SEO results in iTunes.
2. There currently isnt any meta data applied to any of the posts. Installed some tools to make this happen. That should increase SEO quite a bit.
3. We now have a broken link checker that tells us if there are any broken website links on the site.
4. Added a smart links function that will make it much easier and more efficient to create links.
5. Working on a Cache feature that will make page loading faster and take a lot of strain off of the servers cpu, memory, and bandwidth.

Thats all for now. I will let you know when more features are added.

1. I thought I saw it last night, but I don't see it now.

2. Could you spiff out 019 so that I can see what is good stuff to put in there?

3. How do I find it? Did you run it?

4. What is that? How do I make it go?

5. Is this the thing that requires the PHP stuff to not have "safe mode"?

1. You did for a little bit. I took it down once all was configured properly. It's waiting for the big feed move in iTunes. We will have to coordinate this.

2. Yes I can. I will have this done tonight.

3. You can find it in the backend. Go to Settings -> Link Checker. Right now it doesn't work with PHP Safe Mode running.

4. This is very cool. Okay go to Settings -> SEO Smart Links. In there scroll towards the bottom where it says custom keywords. In that box you can enter a keyword followed by a URL. Whenever that keyword shows up in your content it is automatically linked to the URL you specified. Example:
Let's say you had a article on Rocket Mass Heaters. You would enter this into custom keywords
Rocket Mass Heater, http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp

Now any time you enter the words Rocket Mass Heater into one of your posts it will be auto linked to that url.
If you would like to watch a video tutorial you can at Jack's site: http://www.jackspirko.com/episode-21-using-the-seo-smartlinks-wordpress-plugin

5. Yes this required PHP Safe Mode.

Episode 019 has been seo'd. I still need to do some work with the keywords but googles keyword tool is down at the moment and that is my favorite