My client m|ph’s editors went and made their first podcasts, so I went and fixed up the blog to get it ready, and finally did what I had been dreading for awhile to do – update from WordPress 1.2 to 1.5 while using a highly customized template.
I would normally not worry about it, except that m|ph is a popular blog, and a screw up would be noticed. Also, the template is highly customized, and so I wanted to wait until we could choose a new template first before upgrading the core files to avoid having to deal with that. Week after week of zero response followed however (they were moving office), and I honestly worried about the day that they’d make a podcast, knowing that 1.2 doesn’t really do well with it, and 1.5 integrates it by design.
Well, the day came yesterday, so I read, re-read, and read some more about updating and decided – screw it, I can do this, Let’s go. And now it’s finished! Here are some thoughts:
- It’d be interesting to find a way to count the number of people who subscribe to the podcast. Notch that up at my to-do.
- The wordpress Codex is far more helpful than any documentation, blogs, or even WordPress’s own support forums, where people seem to be just as interested in picking fights as to helping people out. The particular one about podcasts is here.
- Dedicated podcast feeds require editing the .htaccess file. To create a .htaccess file, you’ll need to mess around with Permalinks. To mess around with Permalinks, you’ll need to read up on it, so here’s the Codex page on that, a Godsend if I ever saw one.
- I set up Permalinks to include the date, and as soon as I did that I came across this article discouraging it. One of it’s arguments is that “It is redundant information as date is already part of the post information and need not be additionally within the url”, which is true if you actually go to the URL to begin with. The whole idea I thought was that if you send a link via email, or post it in a forum, for example, “http://blog.m-ph.com/11/14/2005/general/art-ilano/its-out/”, you’ll automatically see the date (along with the category, author and post title in this case), without having to click it, saving you time. At any rate, dealing with the .htaccess file is easy enough, so I’ll just fix that up if I change my mind.
- I also installed Podcast Quicktags, which was a hack to the quicktags.js file in the admin directory. Here’s a tip: At the bottom of the tamba2.org.uk page, there’s an invite to just download the already edited file. Just do that to get it over with, don’t try to follow the instructions as I think they’re wrong. It’s pretty neat, it adds a “Podcast” button like this:
- The “pod” part in the word “podcasts” should be changed, as it is misleading. It’s certainly not the sole domain of the iPod, iTunes, or Apple. It’s just a simple downloadable, subscribable mp3 file, that’s all. If you think about it, the rss feed was more work, and was done by the folks at WordPress and other developers that allowed it. Apple is just along for the ride, yet there’s still a “pod” in there. Unfair. And more to the point – misleading, as some people probably think you need to buy an iPod to hear one.
- Anyway, here’s the link if you wanna subscribe to m|ph blog’s podcasts. I hope they subscribe that link to ipodder.org, podcastbunker.com, etc. Maybe it’s time I create a podcast exchange? hmm..
