Expression Engine Podcasting

A recent post (justifiable rant) on podcasting problems with Movable Type at Geek News Central inspired me to write on how easy ExpressionEngine has made podcasting.

The ExpressionEngine Enclosures Plugin is so drop dead simple and easy to use it really escaped my mind to write about it. One file to be added to the plugins folder and perfectly clear docs. Install as usual, is a breeze.

Podcasting support in ExpressionEngine shows other publishing systems how it should be done!
For those using EE download the plugin and install using the above link. 1 file added to your plugins folder.

One thing I am still bewildered by is why podcasting sites don’t ad a player for visitors convenience. Almost all have a download link only, the worst have a “pretend player” that when clicked on starts a download. Below is a player added to a remote podcast.
To add an audio, flash mp3 player to ExpressionEngine, see the Media Player download page. This player does video and audio (MP3) and accepts a playlist from rss, xml, or custom made.

The easiest method is to add a custom field for the file. The file path in that field will be multi-purpose:

• It will be used in the RSS for enclosures
• Used in the article for the download link
• Used in the media player for click to play function

Click on thumbs below for larger image.

The easiest method is to use EE’s amazing drop dead simple built in functions for Custom Fields as a container for your media file.

  HereI added a new field “mp3”. In that field I could have:
Use the “File” extension field type and upload any file under 10MB and the link is added automatically.

Using text field type, upload larger files with ftp and put the path here, either automatically using “File Manager” or manually type it in.
Link to any file on the net.
>

Here can be seen the custom fields group with the new field added mp3.

Here is a view of the publishing/editing area in the control panel with the new field.

Now simply add the link to your rss file like this. The tag rel=“enclosure” in the rss file is all that is needed to clue EE into doing it’s magic. In the RSS file add to the custom field rel=“enclosure” as can be seen here.
That’s it!

Result in feed is:
<enclosure url=“http://www.bkdesign.ca/pathto/OuterLimitz.mp3”
type=“audio/mpeg” length=“579341” />

Remote files are handled the same way, no problem.

This is a screenshot from a clients site we did. The fields are for MP3 files - remote location or local, and one can upload the files if under 10MB. Then we added custom fields File type to upload and automatically resize images for the screen and thumbs for the menus. Same for video. Regardless of method used, in the RSS file the enclosures are added and the download link created in the article automatically

If wanted, there is an itunes RSS template available for EE that works with this perfectly.

Adding a player:

I have long been an advocate of having a “click to listen” player on the page. Adding the flash mp3 player to the conditional in the template, one has not only the download link but also the player as seen below. Using conditionals mean that pages with no podcast don’t have the link nor player code inserted, keeping things neat and tidy.

Remote Media?

Many host their media files elsewhere due to high bandwidth requirements. I did an example test using a remote file, (stealing the podcast from GeekNews, with his permission ), below.
I added the url to the mp3 file at geek news as above in the podcast field.
Below is the result:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.