Hosting Companies


If you're very serious about your podcasting, you may decide that you want complete control over the distribution chain for your podcastits feed, its hosting, and its ongoing management. If that's the case, you'll want to host your podcast and its RSS feed from your own website.

There are numerous hosting companies that can provide you with a home on the Web your podcast needs. You should know that the web hosting business is very competitive. With a little bit of shopping around, you're sure to find a web hosting package that provides a combination of support, capacity, and price that's right for you.

As you evaluate hosting companies, here are a few podcasting-specific matters you'll want to consider:

  • How much storage do they offer? Your podcast files will be large, generally somewhere between 5 and 20 megabytes. With files of that size, your storage requirements are not trivial. How much server space does your host company provide?

  • What do they charge for bandwidth? Bandwidth is the total number of bytes transferred off of your server in a given length of time. Most hosting plans define an allowable amount of bandwidth each month for a particular price. Bandwidth allowances and overage charges can vary dramatically from one hosting company to another. Since podcasting is a bandwidth-intensive undertaking, this is an important issue that you'll want to explore thoroughly before you make a decision. How much bandwidth are you allowed to use each month? What happens if you exceed that allowance?

  • Does the company support blogging software and PHP scripts? If you're going to host your podcast from your own website, you'll certainly want to host the accompanying shownotes blog from the same site. Some web hosts offer installation and support for the more popular open-source blogging packages such as WordPress. At a minimum, however, your web host must offer support for PHP scripting, the technology that underlies most blogging software.

One hosting company that offers an attractive package is PowWeb (www.powweb.com). PowWeb's one-size-fits-all offering is more than adequate for most podcasters. For less than $100 per year, it features WordPress installation and support as well as generous storage and bandwidth allowances.

The Absolute Minimum

Once you've recorded your podcast, you're just a few simple steps from getting it ready for Internet distribution. The first set of steps involves editing the tracks together.

When editing your tracks, be sure to line them up so that a slight overlap eliminates total silence in the gaps between recorded pieces of the podcast. You can set edit points in the individual tracks to mark places where one track will begin getting quieter, so that the next track can come to the fore.

Once the basic tracks are edited together, you can begin mixing to achieve the best sound. Copying a short piece of music over and over, or looping, can provide a music background to long stretches of speech. When tracks meet, reducing the volume of one while raising the volume of the next can create a very smooth, professional-sounding transition. Individual tracks can be cut to make their length exactly match those of other clips. With length and volume established, you can decide on the question of cleaning the tracks.

Cleaning can eliminate stray noises, mistakes, or unwelcome sounds in a recording. Some podcasters clean all tracks; others like the "raw" sound with noises left in. Either can be correctit's your choice.

After the podcast sounds the way you want it, it's time to add the ID3 tags that allow your listeners to sort, find, and organize your podcasts. Setting the tags is simple using an MP3 player, your podcast creation software, or a standalone ID3 editor. Remember that it's better to have complete tags, and that your tags should be consistent from program to program so that all your podcasts will be together when a listener's playlists are sorted. When you're creating the tags, think about the screens that display information on portable MP3 players; virtually all have limits on how many characters they can display, so brevity can be a virtue when it comes time to name your podcast or episode.

Most of the time, you'll use the Internet's File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to place your podcast on the server. If you have to set up the connection yourself, you'll find it easy if you look for the type of connection required (anonymous or authenticated), and think about where your files are going.

You might not have to think about FTP at all if you choose the right podcasting service. You owe it to yourself to check out the possibilities, so that you can concentrate on producing a great podcast, rather than supporting a website.




Absolute Beginner's Guide to Podcasting
Absolute Beginners Guide to Podcasting.
ISBN: B001U8C03Q
EAN: N/A
Year: 2004
Pages: 167

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