Making a Podcast with Blogger and FeedBurner

Blogger is not our first choice for weblog-based podcasting. Movable Type and Wordpress are better solutions for many podcasters, because they offer better support for podcasting, more power and greater flexibility.

Nevertheless, many podcasters are finding Blogger to be a good starting place to experiment with podcasting. Blogger is a free service, and getting started is as easy as filling out some forms on the web.

Here's a quick guide to building a podcast with Blogger. You should be able to set up a podcast using Blogger and FeedBurner in about the time it takes for all the images on this page to finish loading!

This how-to assumes that you already have created your podcast MP3 files, and have them stored on a web server. Note that some screens may look slightly different as Blogger updates their site.

Go to the Blogger home page (http://www.blogger.com/) and select Create Your Blog Now:

If you haven't signed up for Blogger before, you'll need to do so:

That's the hardest part. If the Terms of Service part wore you out, now is a good time to take a break.

Back already? OK - now it's time to name your podcast.

We called ours Snorkflum, because it sounds stupid and this is a bogus test podcast anyway:

Next, select a template. We selected Minima, because it reminded us a little of The Matrix:

Once you select continue, Blogger automagically creates your blog. First it makes you wait, though:

Don't you love their casual "warning - excitement ahead" sign?

As long as the Blogger servers don't crash, the Internets go down or anything bad like that, you should get a nice confirmation screen:

This is another good time for a break. You just created your podcast blog! How awesome is that?

Now you need to Start Posting...

From the Dashboard page, click the New Post icon:

Add an entry. To add your MP3 file, create a text link, select it with the link tool, and enter the URL for your MP3 file:

When you are done, select Publish Post, and you should get a confirmation page:

Now check out the podcast blog that you've created. Snorkflum is available at http://snorkflum.blogspot.com/:

 

Now take a quick detour to Settings tab and select Basic. Give your site a description. Forgetting to fill out the description is one of the most common problems with Blogger feeds. Use the description field to explain what your podcast is, entice people to listen, and provide some keywords to make it easier for people to find. Save this and republish your podcast for the changes to take effect.

Now it's time to create your podcast feed. Blogger only provides a Atom newsfeed, and RSS 2.0 is the standard for podcasting. Your Atom feed will be at your blog's address, plus "atom.xml", like this: http://snorkflum.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

There is a free service, FeedBurner, that can be used to translate the Blogger Atom feed into a RSS 2.0 fee.

Go to http://www.feedburner.com/, and enter your Blogger Atom feed URL:

Select Next. FeedBurner will retrieve your Blogger Atom feed and then provide you with an options screen.

Select the SmartCast option, and make sure that the Feed Title and FeedBurner URI (way down at the bottom of the page) are OK with you:

Select Next. You'll be prompted for a user id and password. Next, you should get a confirmation/welcome page:

Note your FeedBurner Burned URL. In this case, it's http://feeds.feedburner.com/Snorkflum.

That's it - the podcast is ready to test with a Feed Validator. Go to www.feedvalidator.org and paste in your FeedBurner URL:

Your podcast should be ready to go. Test it your podcast feed with a podcasting client and get podcasting!