Top 5 Free Podcaster Tools
I talked with a woman recently that is planning to start a podcast in the coming year. We setup a blog and went through how posts are made. She already had a web site so adding the podcast would cost next to or exactly nothing.
How is that you ask? With the Top 5 Free Podcaster Tools below.
#5 – Wordpress w/Podpress
Wordpress is the software that powers many a blog. It is free software that’s distributed by Wordpress.org. Any $3 web host with PHP and MySQL can host a Wordpress blog. With the addition of the Podpress plugin, which adds podcasting and, more importantly, iTunes support, you have a very powerful and capable podcast server. One caveat though, the latest version of Wordpress introduced a feature that keeps multiple revisions of posts. This broke the Podpress plugin. So far the creator of Podpress has not issued a patch for this problem. However there are two work arounds. One is to add another plug-in called No Revisions and the other is to add a couple lines of PHP code to the Podpress code. Even though this incompatibility exists, I have not found a better combination of software to create a podcast site.
#4 – Feedburner
Feedburner is a free service from Google that will keep track of subscribers to your podcast, downloads and provide some other great services. If you don’t have another way to get iTunes compatible tags in your feed, Feedburner will also take care of that for youl. One of my new favorite services is the subscribe to podcast/blog by e-mail. Readers/listeners can enter an e-mail address at your web site and they’ll get an e-mail every time you post an episode of your show. Very slick. It also integrates with Worpress with the use of the Feedsmith plugin.
#3 – Audacity
Audacity is the defacto standard for podcast recording. You can purchase more powerful programs, but for the price, FREE, you can’t beat it. Audacity has filters/effects for normalization, compression, noise removal, amplification and oh so much more. Being free has it’s ups and downs. While I have found the program very reliable, there are multiple stories of shows being lost because of program stability. Overall thought, Audacity is a solid piece of software.
#2 – Google Analytics
When you’re trying to find out where your listeners are coming from, nothing beats Google Analytics. This is also a free service from Google. By inserting a small chunk of supplied code into your web pages, you’ll gather a plethora of information about the people that visit your site. And another bonus, Google Analytics will integrate with Wordpress by using any number of great plug-ins. My current favorite plug-in to integrate the two is called Ultimate Google Analytics. The plug-in puts that Google created code on each and every page. That creates a complete picture of how each person visiting your site is using it.
#1 – Google Docs
Probably not an application that you’d expect to see on a podcast tool list, but Google Docs do one thing better than any other service out there. That thing is share documents. Each my co-host and I collaborate on show notes on Google Docs. Links, comments, e-mails, literally the complete show layout is input in a Google Doc. It is a marvellous tool.
That’s it. Get recording!
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Comments
I have to say that the I would recommend AmadeusPro as a better solution for the audio editing.
I use it daily and because I liked it so much I contacted the developer of AmadeusPro, Martin Hairer and interviewed him for my podcast Mac 20 Questions.
I asked Martin to donate a copy of the software to Mac 20 Q. It is still available to win as of 23rd May and will be possible to win until 30th May, when I draw from the winning answers.
I have a few podcasts running and use a Samson B2 mic with a Xenyx 1002 mixer. I also use a Samson C03U Usb mic.
Would love to hear from other Podcasters, especially if you use a Mac too.
Don’t forget Ardour. It’s a free, open-source audio editing program that competes with high-end commercial software such as ProTools.
I have another tool like podpress that needs no modification. Its from the guys at blubrry. It’s called Powerpress (google powerpress). It has all the features of Podpress I liked (the ability to play in a pop up, download, or stream, plus iTunes tagging, and more). I never used Podpress stats (I get mine from Libsyn, and the one time I used them it broke my blog). With that in mind, I still loved Podpress (I just turned off what didn’t work). However, I am now a big fan of Powerpress. The only big difference is no way to change the color of the player.
Dave Jackson
http://www.schoolofpodcasting.com