WordPress Podcast Plugins: Start a podcast with WordPress

Podcasts are as popular as they’ve ever been. WordPress offers the pos­si­bil­i­ty to integrate a podcast on an existing website. For this purpose, you can use special WordPress podcast plugins. We’ll show you which simple steps are needed to integrate a podcast to your site via WordPress.

The foun­da­tion for a podcast is the concept behind and editorial planning of each in­di­vid­ual episode. This ensures that topics can still be found months later and makes it easier for listeners to decide whether they will listen to future episodes. Ad­di­tion­al equipment such as mi­cro­phones or recording software is required for the record­ings, depending on pro­fes­sion­al standards.

Plugins simplify pub­lish­ing audio files on WordPress. This way, in­for­ma­tion about the podcast is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly passed on to external service providers such as hosting providers. In addition, many of the plugins give you ad­di­tion­al features, such as custom audio players that you can adapt in­di­vid­u­al­ly to your WordPress design.

The most important thing to note right from the off is that WordPress itself does not offer a function to create a podcast. The available plugins with podcast function aim to realize the in­te­gra­tion and analysis of a podcast easily and com­fort­ably in WordPress, not to cut and edit one. To integrate a podcast with WordPress, you first need a finalized podcast file. For recording and editing, there are a lot of tools and programs that also allow you to record high-quality audio for free.

To put a finished podcast online using WordPress, there are two main methods, both of which are done using WordPress podcast plugins. This is done either by podcast hosting through your own WordPress server, or through a podcast hosting service.

1. The podcast is hosted on its own server. This can be either the server through which the already existing pages are published on WordPress, or a separate server through which the podcast is provided. With this method, you have to organize and update the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the podcast yourself, for example via a WordPress RSS feed. This works via WordPress podcast plugin like Pow­er­Press.
    
2. A special podcast hosting service is used for the dis­tri­b­u­tion and or­ga­ni­za­tion of the podcast. In this method, a finished podcast episode is in­te­grat­ed via a WordPress plugin on the existing WordPress site and syn­chro­nized with the hosting service.

Besides special WordPress blog themes for online stores or dedicated blogs, there are also a few WordPress themes that support a podcast feature. These themes are designed to help increase the reach of your podcast. With these themes, audio files can be embedded so that they can also be accessed from mobile devices.

To get started with a podcast, a worth­while concept is essential to establish before the first recording. A podcast needs to have a recog­ni­tion value, and ad­di­tion­al­ly regular material for episodes so that listeners always have reason to visit the WordPress site. In addition to a catchy title and a thematic hook for each episode, con­sid­er­a­tions about the potential “lis­ten­er­ship” should also be in­cor­po­rat­ed into the concept. Who will be listening to the podcast, are there already similar podcasts and how can previous content on the WordPress site be expanded by a podcast?

As an ori­en­ta­tion for the listeners, it is important to decide on certain topics and the type of mod­er­a­tion. For example, should the podcast interview experts on topics such as tech­nol­o­gy, will the podcast present the line-ups and results of football or baseball matches, or is it about travel to different countries? Focusing on a topic area helps to plan in­di­vid­ual episodes in advance and give potential listeners a preview of what to expect in the podcast.

A pro­fes­sion­al­ly designed podcast requires a good mi­cro­phone and recording and editing software. This allows longer con­ver­sa­tions to be edited into crisp and to-the-point episodes.

For beginners, there is a wide range of good and in­ex­pen­sive mi­cro­phones that can simply be connected to a computer via USB cable. For con­ver­sa­tions “in the field”, portable recorders that record con­ver­sa­tions directly with multiple audio tracks are also a good option. The recorded data can be trans­ferred to the PC via SD card or cable.

Regarding recording software, there is a large selection for creating high-quality record­ings and then editing – and all this often for free and without having to have lots of prior skill and tech know-how.

For the first episodes, a script helps to keep the overview. The in­tro­duc­tion and the end of the podcast can be pre-for­mu­lat­ed, the rest of the episode is best laid out in sub-headings and topically relevant keywords. This way, the in­tro­duc­tion and con­clu­sion are always guar­an­teed, and the remaining content lives from spon­ta­neous sentences and thoughts within the episode.

Once the script and the technique are in place, you can record the first episode. Before that, one or two re­hearsals won’t hurt to get into the right flow. Not com­plete­ly pre-for­mu­lat­ing the essential content ensures an authentic mood in the podcast. Ex­pe­ri­ence shows that otherwise passages sound memorized and the ease of a normal con­ver­sa­tion is missing in the long run.

If the podcast is not intended to be uploaded in a single take, the in­di­vid­ual tracks should be edited together af­ter­wards. This is also the stage of pro­duc­tion where music or other sound effects are in­cor­po­rat­ed as part of the podcast. There are numerous providers that offer royalty-free sound files for this purpose — if a podcast is more pro­fes­sion­al­ly designed, it is also worth sub­scrib­ing to one of the premium providers, as they often have more extensive databases with very in­di­vid­ual sounds available.

When the first podcast episode is finally edited, nothing stands in the way of dis­trib­ut­ing the podcast. As described above, WordPress and podcasts use an RSS feed for this purpose. You only need to submit this once to Spotify, Google, Apple, etc. With each update of the feed, the new content is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly forwarded to the audio platforms. Depending on the chosen method, this is done by reg­is­ter­ing with the services, or even au­to­mat­i­cal­ly at the push of a button when using a hosting service.

In addition to uploading the podcast and dis­trib­ut­ing it via RSS, a pro­fes­sion­al design also ensures more vis­i­bil­i­ty on the various audio platforms. For this purpose, you can design your own cover with the name of the podcast, a logo, or a photo of you.

Re­gard­less of whether your podcast is on a dedicated server or hosted by a hosting provider, many WordPress podcast plugins work in a similar way.

To enable the in­te­gra­tion of a new podcast in WordPress, the WordPress podcast plugin has to be linked either to the feed of the separate server or to the WordPress podcast hosting. How this link is set up is normally doc­u­ment­ed ac­cord­ing­ly with the re­spec­tive plugins. When using a hosting provider, for example, the API key of WordPress is shared with the hosting, so that the as­so­ci­at­ed RSS feed is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly linked to the WordPress dashboard.

First, create a separate post for the new podcast episode — just create a WordPress page. The podcast is then uploaded to the WordPress dashboard. Sub­se­quent­ly, the installed WordPress podcast plugin accesses the uploaded episode and thus receives in­for­ma­tion, which in turn is displayed on the website. Depending on which WordPress podcast plugin you use, you can make specific spec­i­fi­ca­tions in the settings as to which in­for­ma­tion should be displayed in which places.

In the variant with hosting service, the plugin transmits the in­for­ma­tion that you have pre­vi­ous­ly entered for the podcast episode. As a rule, the plugin provides all the necessary details — the hosting service, on the other hand, cannot change any in­for­ma­tion within the plugin.

This guar­an­tees in the long run that all in­for­ma­tion is stored correctly with the service provider. So that the in­for­ma­tion is syn­chro­nized ac­cord­ing­ly, the interface between WordPress podcast plugin and hosting service is updated with every upload.

After the upload, the episodes are directly available on the website and can be played there. At the same time, most plugins allow a separate and detailed analysis within the WordPress dashboard. This means that all in­for­ma­tion on accesses, runtimes, etc. can be accessed in one central place without you having to integrate further analysis tools.

You can sub­se­quent­ly manage all produced content via the dashboard in WordPress. In this way, you can con­ve­nient­ly control all inputs relating to the podcast and website from a central location.

To make the in­te­gra­tion of new podcast content as easy as possible and to give potential listeners direct access to the latest episodes on the WordPress site, it is a good idea to use a WordPress podcast plugin. When choosing one, make sure that the selected plugin is optimized for both desktop and mobile devices. Here are the most popular plugins for WordPress podcasts at a glance:

Pow­er­Press has been installed more than 50,000 times so far, making it the top WordPress podcast plugin. The extension offers different settings to customize podcasts to in­di­vid­ual re­quire­ments.

Features include easy syncing ca­pa­bil­i­ties with most hosting services, so you can quickly dis­trib­ute your content or ensure com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with the most popular audio formats, such as MP3 or OGA. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Pow­er­Press offers different sub­scrip­tion options to increase listener retention as well as make SEO-relevant ad­just­ments to the podcast content for a wider reach.

Since the plugin is provided by Blubrry, this means that a well-known podcast hosting provider can op­tion­al­ly be added to the plugin. The plugin itself is free to use, but some of the features are only available in con­junc­tion with hosting through Blubrry.

Seriously Simple Pod­cast­ing is described by the provider Castos as a plugin that is suitable for both podcast novices and pro­fes­sion­als and has been installed more than 30,000 times so far. The plugin is free of charge, only when in­te­grat­ing a podcast host will ad­di­tion­al costs be incurred.

The WordPress podcast plugin is quick to set up after in­stal­la­tion, and the features can be used entirely from the WordPress dashboard from that point on. So you also create podcast posts with the help of a new menu item. This is es­pe­cial­ly useful if you generally publish a lot of content on the WordPress site.

Since Castos itself offers hosting services, the syn­chro­niza­tion with hosting service providers works ac­cord­ing­ly well.

The plugin from the provider Podlove aims to dis­trib­ute podcast content in a simple and easy-to-learn way. This is intended to appeal to podcast newbies in par­tic­u­lar.

The plugin offers extensive analysis functions as well as template struc­tures that allow you to organize podcast content in­di­vid­u­al­ly. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the plugin comes with an in­te­grat­ed web player that includes a direct sub­scrip­tion feature.