Podcasting is the next step up from blogging. While blogging is performed by an army of pajama-clad individuals, podcasting is carried out by a lot of these individuals, but more often, they are in front of a digital recording device or an audio player. The podcasts are recorded in short chunks, then released via RSS 2.0 and Atom on their website which is usually a blog. Viewers and listeners are able to download podcasts through podcast clients. A good podcast client (for example, Juice, CastPodder, or iTunes) allows you to join the RSS/Atom feed of your preferred podcasters and automatically download the content to a computer or to a portable audio player as new podcasts are released.
The majority of podcasters produce their content in MP3 or MP4 audio or video files and upload themto the internet, linking to the file in the blog post. Users can then click the link to download the content even if they're not subscribed automatically to the RSS or Atom feed. The challenge has never been in uploading the content to the web page however the issue is getting the content to function through feed systems. WordPress generally will automatically incorporate the latest podcasting information in your RSS/Atom feed system. This allows you to deliver content and for your users to sign up to that content.


For most users, WordPress 1.5 and above can podcast easily and automatically. When you link to the audio file in your WordPress blog post by using the complete URL, it incorporates it into the feed of RSS/Atom, making it usable as an podcast. Be sure to utilize a complete address.


Wrong: My podcast

Right: My podcast

Your last step is to put a link to your RSS/Atom feed on the page. By default, feeds appear on the lower right the WordPress page. The feeds link should look like this when you're using the RSS feed:

In earlier versions of WordPress, automated links work for only posts, and not on static web pages. Since WordPress requires accurate file size information in case you modify an uploaded file, you should be sure to update the post containing the link. When you've connected to an image that has any reason to not be easily accessible from your blog the podcast will not function properly when it's up since WordPress does not have the correct information about the size of the file.

For Apache servers, as well as others which utilize using the .htaccess file, you'll have to add a directive to the config document or .htaccess file in order for the server to recognize podcast media files (m4a and M4b) correctly. You'll need to add this line to the file you're using: