Let’s review our checklist for getting a podcast set up. So far, in part 1 and part 2, we have accomplished steps 1 and 2. Let’s cross ‘em out. (I love crossing things off of my to do list.)

1. A digital audio recording of the content you want to be in your podcast
2. A finished MP3 format file of the content
3. A appropriate web hosting service with lots of space for your files (if you make a good choice here, the next steps are easier).
4. Software to upload (FTP) your files to the web server.
5. Software for podcasting (provided by some hosting options)
6. Time to go and register your podcast with half a dozen podcast sites (including Apple’s iTunes)
7. A dedicated volunteer (could be you) who will be willing to post your podcast episodes regularly. It takes a long time to build up subscribers, and you’ll lose them if you’re not consistent.

Web Hosting

Let’s look at setting up web hosting. You may already have a church website, but that may not be the easiest way to get your podcast set up.

If you already have web hosting set up, your web hosting provider may be able to help you podcast. Ask them if they have support for PHP and MySQL. If they do, it may be possible to install WordPress and PodPress, the software we’re going to use. If you’re not tied to a particular web host or if you’re willing to spend an additional $8-$10/month to make podcasting easy, you can follow the instructions below to sign up for DreamHost hosting and set up WordPress and PodPress. (There’s also a way to podcast for free, but it’s more complicated.)

I recommend that you sign up for DreamHost web hosting service. They have a “one-click install” of WordPress, the main software application we’ll be using. It will also configure the database for you. This is good because it’s can be a bit confusing. Next we’ll install the PodPress plugin.

First, I recommend that you go to the DreamHost website and sign up for the “Crazy Domain Insane” web hostign plan. I have a promo code that will save you $50 on the first year – type “churchtech” without the quotation marks when you sign up. You have to remember to type it in because there’s no way to go back and add it later. You’ll get almost 200 GB of web storage space – that’s many years of weekly podcasts! If you sign up for a year at $120, you’ll avoid the $50 set up fee. After the promo code it will only cost $70 for the year. That’s about $6/month. They even let churches pay by check, but you have to wait for them to receive the check before your site goes online.

Domain Names

When you sign up, they’ll ask you for a “domain name.” Those are the web names like “www.yournamehere.com” that you use to get to websites. Registering a name is included with the hosting so pick one! Our podcast is called “Grace in the West” so we registered graceinthewest.com. You migght want something like mychurchnamepodcast.com or whatever you can think of. You maye have to get creative since lots of names are taken already. We couldn’t get “trinitychurch” or “trinitypres” so we’re “TrinityWestSac.org.”

Go ahead and sign up with DreamHost. I’ll wait.

Set Up Your Podcasting

It will take a little while before your site goes live, but you can start setting up your podcast now. We’re going to use an application for setting up blogs (short for weblogs), called WordPress. It’s a free application that’s well-designed and well-supported.

The first thing you’ll want to do is log into the DreamHost control panel. You’ll need to use your e-mail adddress and the password you set up when you signed up. Next, click “Goodies” on the left side of the screen. Now, under the word “Goodies,” click “One Click Install”

The installer asks three questions.

1. What software would you like to install? Select WordPress.
2. What URL would you like your software to be installed to?
   A URL (Uniform Resource Locater) is a web address. Choose your domain name (mychurchname.com) from the dropdown menu.
   If the only thing on your site will be the podcast, just use levae the box afte the slash blank.
   If you plan to use your huge amount of web hosting space for other things too (I would), then fill in a name after the slash. I recommend putting something like “podcast” in the box. That would make your podcast’s web address www.mychurchname.com/podcast.
3. Please choose a MySQL database for this software to use:
   Don’t worry. This doesn’t have to make any sense to you. The three parts are
   Database Name: Just make up a name for the database. I’d call it something like “podcastdb”
   Hostname: You’ll probably have to choose “create a hostname now.” Just select your domain name from the dropdown menu and type “mysql” in the boxto the left of the dot.
   First User: You’ll need to invent a new user name here. Select “create a new user now.” Type “dbuser” in the New User Name box. Now create a password. If you like, this can be the same password as your account. Just type it twice.
4. Click “Install it for me now!”

That may have seemed complicated, but trust me, it was easy compared with configuring everything yourself. DreamHost will now install WordPress for you and will send you e-mail when it’s ready with final instructions on how to configure it.

Shewwww! That part’s done.

The next step will be learning how to use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and installing PodPress.

Watch for it soon!

But first, let’s take a look at where we’re going. Here are the things that you’ll eventually need to get the podcast going.

1. A digital audio recording of the content you want to be in your podcast
2. A finished MP3 format file of the content
3. A appropriate web hosting service with lots of space for your files (if you make a good choice here, the next steps are easier).
4. Software to upload (FTP) your files to the web server.
5. Software for podcasting (provided by some hosting options)
6. Time to go and register your podcast with half a dozen podcast sites (including Apple’s iTunes)
7. A dedicated volunteer (could be you) who will be willing to post your podcast episodes regularly. It takes a long time to build up subscribers, and you’ll lose them if you’re not consistent.

But now, we’re working on getting our MP3 file created.

Disclaimer – I’m using a Microsoft Windows-based PC. If you want to do this on a Mac, some of the tools may be different. (Check out Apple’s Garage Band, for example.) If you use a Mac, feel free to leave a comment with your recommendations.

From a CD

Since my church pulls our audio off of CDs, I’ll share how to do that first. I start with a copy of the last Sunday’s CD and a free program called WavePad. You can download WavePad from a number of sites.

I won’t go into the gory details of using WavePad – check out their docs for that – but you can pull tracks off of a CD with it. I then save them as a .WAV file. I do my real editing in a wonderful program called Audacity – see below.

Creating Your MP3 file

You can just post your MP3 file as is if you like. I wanted mine to sound s bit more professional than that so I bought a cheapo computer microphone from Radio Shack and had my wife Eleanor record introduction and sign-off messages. You can hear our current introduction and sign-off here if you like (they’re in WAV format). You can hear a finished product at www.trinitywestsac.org/podcast/archives/24.  Others use something more elaborate. If you have someone excited about the podcast ministry, they could do what Peace Presbyterian Church (another church in Sacramento Presbytery) does. Listen here to a sample here. This requires someone to record an introduction each week. Very cool, but it has to be a labor of love.

First, let’s download the free tool that you need – Audacity. Grab it from audacity.sourceforge.net (Don’t get the beta version – you want the latest stable release – version 1.2.6 as I’m writing). Follow the instructions to install it.

You’ll need one more piece. In order to convert files into the necessary MP3 file format, you’re doing to need another free tool called “LAME MP3 Encoder.” Audacity uses it to do the file encoding. You can get the instructions for that from audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&i=lame-mp3. (Leave a comment if these instructions aren’t enough.)

Editing Your File

You can plug in a microphone and use Audacity to record your introduction and sign-off. I recommend saving them as .WAV files and keeping them in a folder where they’ll be handy. You’ll use them often. (See the Audacity help for how to record an audio file. Leave a comment if you need help.)

Once you have an introduction, the main content for your first episode, and a sign-off message (optional), you can load them all into Audacity.

1. Run Audacity
2. Under the Project menu, click “Import audio…”
3. Select your introduction file (if you have one)
4. Now use “import audio” again to load your main content
5. Finally, use “import audio” to bring in your sign-off.

Now we’ll need to arrange the files so that they’re sequential. You may need to zoom in a bit with the zoom tool (magnifying glass with a plus sign in it) to see where your introduction ends. Go ahead and do that. Then click the tool with a double-headed arrow in it (). Now slide the content audio so that the end of the introduction lines up with the beginning of your content. Then line up the sign off with the end of the content.

Audacity has all kinds of tools for adjusting volume levels, editing your files, etc. But I’ll leave that to your exploration.

What we need to do now is save an MP3 file. First let me suggest some options for you. I suggest that you capture and save your audio at a frequency of 22.05 kHz. That’s about half the sample rate (and quality) of a CD. You don’t want to pick arbitrary numbers here. If it’s not half or a quarter of the CD sample rate, some players throw up and you sound like the munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. Not pretty. You can set this for recording by going to Preferences (under the Edit menu) and choosing 22050 Hz under “Default Sample Rate” in the Quality tab. You’ll also want to set your MP3 quality under the file formats tab. I use a bit rate of 128 – it seems to be a good compromise between quality and file size. (Note: If you don’t see the MP3 Export Setup section under the “File Formats” tab or it’s grayed out, you still need to install “Lame MP3 Encoder” see Audacity’s page on that at audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&i=lame-mp3.) Or click “Find Library” and browse to the location where you unzipped the Lame MP3 Encoder.

Saving the MP3

Now you’re ready to create your MP3 file. Go to the file menu and click “Export as MP3.” You’ll need to choose a file name and folder. I recommend creating a separate folder for your podcasts and naming your files with the date in this format: 2007-02-18-Worst-Military-Strategy.mp3. The date will make sure that the files are always listed sequentially, which becomes important when you have a large number of files. I then use a shortened version of my sermon titles for the remainder of the filename.

Audacity will ask you for some information on the file using a system called ID3 that embeds information about your podcast in the MP3 file. It helps people to manage files on their computers and MP3 players so I recommend that you use it. See below for an example. (“Grace in the West” is the title of our podcast.)

Once you have clicked OK, you’ll have to wait for some time as the computer encodes your file. But that’s it! Go ahead and listen to it to see what you think. You can always edit it in Audacity.

I personally like to save an uncompressed version as a .WAV file in case I want to make some editing changes later. The compression that helps to make MP3 files small also loses some of the details in your sound. You don’t want to go keep editing a file and saving it as MP3 again and again. Eventually, the sound quality will degrade noticeably.

Next time, we’ll look at setting up web hosting for your podcast.

Before you can create a podcast, you’ll need to know what one is. Lots of churches post audio of their weekly sermons on their websites. If you do this already, congratulations! You’re halfway there already. But a podcast is more than a bunch of links to sound files. A podcast is kind of like a radio show with different episodes. The most common format for a church podcast is a weekly sermon. Each week, the church produces a new “episode.” People with iPods or other mobile audio players can download the latest episode and listen to it anywhere. It’s very cool. We’ll cover how this works later. But for now, you just need to know that it works.

The first step to podcasting is recording the audio you’ll need. At Trinity, we make our podcast, Grace in the West, from the CDs we record each week. We have a CD recording deck in our sound system. Then we “rip” the CD into an audio file, edit it, and post it. (These will be covered in later posts.)

There are two other popular ways to do this. Some churches use an MP3 recorder. You plug this baby into the audio output form your sound system and just start and stop it at the right times to get the audio you need. You can do it with a separate microphone, but you’ll catch a lot more coughing. (Laughter is nice, though!) Check out the December 31st episode of Grace in the West and compare it to another episode to see the difference. (By the way, this would be an excellent time to subscribe to Grace in the West in Apple’s iTunes. )

A variation on this theme is to use a computer to record the audio. You still need to plug it into the sound system’s audio, but a computer may be available for free. Hardware MP3 recorders – not so much. The best free software I’m aware of for this is Audacity – available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It’ll record it for you, let you adjust the levels, and let you edit the show and save it as an MP3 (after you install the free lame MP3 encoder).

That’s it for this time. Note: I do these things much faster if I think anyone’s going to read it. Leave me a comment!