Seriously Simple Podcasting
Get a copy of the transcript of this review (pdf)
What is Seriously Simple Podcasting?
The podcast plugin that I use for the Beach Business Breakfast Show is probably, I have to say, the easiest plugin I could find for setting up a podcast in WordPress. I have used the BlueBerry one before and I found that it was a bit complicated in terms of configuring the settings and all that kind of stuff.
It’s actually named Seriously Simple Podcast plugin and the installation is really quite simple because, essentially, it’s adding a custom post type to the backend of WordPress which gives you the podcasting functionality. It’s got a nice little add-on for stats as well which is also free and fun that works quite well too.
WordPress dashboard: Podcast
From a back point of view, it looks like a whole bunch of posts and, I mean, that’s essentially what a podcast is. It’s a bunch of posts with mp3 attached. So you have all the usual functionality of posts like tags and you can drop in videos and things like that.
Podcast Episode Details settings
Each episode when you’re editing it, imagine you’ve got the normal view of a WordPress blog post.
Listed below are some of the fields that you can edit when you’re posting a podcast:
- Description
- Episode type
- Podcast file (link of your podcast either inside of your media library or outside like Amazon S3)
- Duration
- File size
- Date recorded
- Set featured image
- Explicit (you can block it from going into iTunes and Google Feed Play if you wish)
Depending on what you want to do with it, you can configure the page on the website to show however you wish to show them.
Podcast Settings: General
The settings are pretty basic. There’s not a whole lot to worry about.
Listed below are the general settings wherein you can decide on what to set on your page:
- Podcast post types (posts, directories, field groups, grid builder, scans, events)
- Include podcast in the main blog
- Media player locations (full content, excerpt, oEmbed excerpt)
- Media player position (above the content, below the content)
Podcast Settings: Feed details
Listed below are the feed details settings which will be used in the feed of your podcast so your listeners will know more about it before they subscribe:
- Title
- Subtitle
- Author
- Primary category
- Primary sub-category
- Secondary category
- Secondary sub-category
- Tertiary category
- Tertiary sub-category
- Description/Summary
- Cover image
- Owner name
- and some details which are only optional
It’s really simple and I honestly like it. This just walks you through it pretty easily.
Graph Reports
When you look at the stats, so this is a free add-on for the plugin, it’s pretty simple but it gives you a good idea of what’s going on with your podcasts.
These are some of the details you’ll see in the report:
- Your top episodes
- How many lessons they’ve had
- The percentage that has been played through audio or direct download or even in iTunes.
It’s got all the essentials, I think, for what you want to do a good podcast without getting too distracted.
So, I have decided for the rating that I will give this plugin. It’s 5 out of 5 because I really have not had any problems with it whatsoever and it does exactly what it’s supposed to do. If you’d like to have a look at the podcast that I run with, it’s Beach Business Breakfast. In my podcast section, you’re welcome to have a listen and it’s also on iTunes.
For more information, click the link to visit Seriously Simple Podcast.