Part One dealt with recording and manipulating your voice. For those who came in late, you can learn about Audacity’s use for Podcast.

Ok, where was I? I had just finished recording my booming voice, but I didn’t know how to  integrate the podcast into Wordpress?

I asked Google this question and found there to be a few plugins that deal with podcasting.  (If you have experience with any I found, please let me know.)

PodPress: supposedly the perfect plugin to get your podcast out to the world. It features automatic RSS creation for every major arena, including iTunes and BitTorrent, download options, graphical stats, and audio comments to name just a few.

I may give this a shot. To be honest, I overlooked this plugin on my first pass. I think this may be the most suitable solution.

PodCasting: I tried this plugin. It created the white page of PHP death on WordPress version 2.3.3. Supposedly it works for that, but I had to diagnose the error at the server log level. I finally gave up and deleted the plugin folder. The plugin can do some of what PodPress claims to accomplish. It was created during the Google Summer of Code 2007.

Plugin Tune Out

The PodPress solution would have been perfect, but I overlooked it. After fiddling with the Podcasting plugin to no avail, I decided to turn on FeedBurner’s SmartCast feature. This basically allows you to syndicate different forms of media. You have a few options when you configure SmartCast, including creating enclosures for audio, video, or image files, linking in a podcast image file, and entering title, and keywords. This all helps integrating your podcast with iTunes and other services.

So after I activated the SmartCast feature, I created a post, made a link to the podcast, and published. When I tested my feed in Google Reader, the media enclosure worked fine. I had a podcast with the media right there in the feed. Now I only needed people to listen to it. But that part I left up to all of you.

I didn’t wholly understand what a podcast brought to a blog and to an audience. It develops the richness of communication and opens up a whole new level of interaction with site visitors. If you’re thinking of doing a podcast, I encourage you to make the leap. I enjoyed making my first podcast, and hope to continue the practice in the future.