Host a Podcast with WordPress Using PowerPress
Are you looking to host a podcast with WordPress? If that’s a resounding yes, you’ll definitely love this post. Today, we show you exactly how to create a successful podcast on your WordPress site using a nifty plugin known as PowerPress. Why PowerPress? Well, the plugin ships with a million and one features that help you host podcasts like a boss.
In addition, PowerPress helps you to distribute your podcasts to Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes Podcasts), Spotify and Google Podcasts among other places. As such, the plugin allows you to reach millions of listeners without bending backwards. The best part is the plugin is free and incredibly easy to set up and use.
That being said, grab yourself a hot mug of coffee and let’s roll. Oh, please don’t hesitate to ask questions and share your thoughts in the comment section at the end of this post.
How to Use PowerPress to Host a Podcast with WordPress
Without wasting another second, let us set up PowerPress to create and host a podcast with WordPress. Don’t worry one bit; you can configure the plugin even if you’re the perfect beginner without any coding knowledge. Let’s get down to business.
Installing PowerPress
PowerPress is available at WordPress.org plugin repo meaning you can install it right from within your WordPress admin dashboard. How? On your WordPress admin menu, navigate to Plugins > Add New as shown below.
Next, enter PowerPress in the search box and once you find the plugin, hit the Install Now button as we highlight in the image below.
After that, hit the Activate button.
Activating PowerPress add a new item to your WordPress admin menu. Click this PowerPress menu item as we highlight in the screengrab below.
Configuring PowerPress
On the next screen, configure your podcast basic settings. You can add settings such as your podcast title, set up Apple Podcasts, integrate Blubrry services (media hosting and statistics), and link your blubrry.com account (if you have one) among other things.
Configure your settings (I promise it is easy as A, B, C), scroll down to the bottom of the page and hit the Save Changes button.
Creating Your First Podcast
With your basic settings ready, you’re ready to start creating podcasts. Click the Create a blog post with an episode link as shown in the image below.
Clicking this link redirects you to the familiar WordPress post editor. See? Didn’t I tell you PowerPress makes it easy to host a podcast with WordPress?
What next? Enter your podcast title and content the same way you create a blog post. But a podcast is not complete with the audio/video file. How do you add that? It’s simple, scroll towards the bottom of the page until you see the following section.
At this point, you should have your podcast file ready. The best part is you can host your files on any media hosting site.
Uploading huge files to the same server where your WordPress site lives could lead to slow page speedsdepending, of course, on your host.
For purposes of this tutorial, though, I uploaded a music file to my WordPress media library. Then I pasted the file URL as seen in the screenshot below.
At this point, copy-paste your file URL into the section above, check everything is okay and hit the Publish button. Let us see what we’ve achieved so far.
Not bad at all. What do you think? Was that easy or what?
Submit Your Podcast to Podcast Directories
Now that you have a podcast ready, it is time to get it to more eyeballs. Obviously, you need to put together a marketing plan for the podcast, the same way you promote your other content.
Additionally, you can submit it to podcast directories. Now, PowerPress makes it incredibly easy to submit your podcast to various directories. How do you do that?
Navigate back to the PowerPress admin dashboard and click the Submit your podcast to iTunes and other podcast directories link as we highlight below.
You will be redirected to the Blubrry website. If you don’t have an account already, you will be prompted to create one. If you already have an account, you will be redirected to the following page.
On the above page, you can submit your podcast to Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music, TuneIn, and Stitcher Podcast Radio. All the links you need to submit your podcast to these directories can be found on the navigation menu to the right (see image above).
That is not all, you can do so much more in your Blubrry podcaster dashboard, so don’t hesitate to explore.
What’s More?
PowerPress comes with more features that make podcasting not only a reality but also extremely fun. For instance, you can import podcasts from SoundCloud, LibSyn, PodBean, Squarespace, Anchor.fm and RSS feed. Additionally, you can import settings and episodes from podcasting plugins PodPress and Podcasting Plugin by TSG.
Moreover, you can import podcast episodes from other blogging platforms such as Blogger, Joomla, Movable Type, and TypePad among others. And since Blubrry offers media hosting, you can migrate your media files to their service in a few clicks.
Worried about SEO? PowerPress SEO is a new feature that helps you to optimize your podcast episodes for search engines without breaking a sweat. On top of that, you can fully customize the PowerPress audio and video players to suit your theme.
On top of that, you can define MP3 ID3 tags (title, album, artist, year, etc.) that appear alongside your podcast episodes. PowerPress comes with many other tools that make the plugin the podcasting solution of choice for more than 60,000 WordPress users at the time of writing.
Conclusion
Having a website that allows you to host your podcast and publish it to multiple podcast directories is essential. Not only does the site give your listener the chance to listen and subscribe, but it also gives your community a platform to discuss each episode.
You can use each post that links to a podcast episode as an area for detailed show notes or further information. You can use the comment section of each post to get feedback from your listeners about each episode. On top of that, a website offers you an archive for all of your podcast episodes without relying on a third party service.
Having a powerful plugin such as PowerPress to host a podcast with WordPress leads to tangible results. Why? This bad boy does a lot of heavy lifting for a free WordPress plugin. Honestly, I don’t think you can get a better podcasting plugin for WordPress.
