How To Create Your Own Podcast Website

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There are plenty of services available that offer amateurs and professionals the opportunity to share their podcasts with the rest of the web. The very best podcasters also run their own websites, keeping their content in-house. If you're not at this stage, now is the right time to consider building a podcast website in WordPress!

Creating a WordPress site is really not that complicated, and if you're truly serious about your podcast, you should give it a shot. WordPress often gets typecast as being a blog-only platform, but it can do a lot more. Getting to know the platform is remarkably simple too. Anyone can learn its basics in a day or two, then move on to building their own projects.

Let's find out how to build a podcast website in WordPress using the Blubrry PowerPress Podcasting plugin. Firstly, we'll introduce the plugin itself, set it up, then dive into how to create the website itself.

Let's get cracking!

Meet the Blubrry PowerPress Podcasting plugin

The Blubrry PowerPress Podcasting plugin is a one-stop solution for managing your podcast and publishing new episodes. It supports multiple audio and video types, subscription options, and even includes a few Search Engine Optimization (SEO) features.

On top of the free plugin, the team behind Blubrry also offers podcast hosting solutions that integrate with WordPress and podcast analytics. Right now, their directory includes over 350,000 podcasts – so they definitely know their stuff!

If you're new to the world of podcasting, Blubrry offers an in-depth introduction to the subject that covers everything you need to know – so it's worth digesting it before moving on.

Key features:

Enables you to manage your podcast episodes.
Integrates with Blubrry's hosting solutions if you choose to use them, but also works perfectly with other providers.
Supports iTunes and Google Play Music.
Enables you to submit your podcast episodes to the iTunes Directory from your plugin dashboard.
Offer subscription options to your listeners.
Supports multiple podcasts on a single site.
Available in various languages.

How to set up the Blubrry PowerPress plugin

Before we begin, we've previously gone deep on some of the WordPress basics you'll need. To get up to speed, you'll want to bone up on finding a web host and setting up WordPress, then take a look at our guide to building a blog. Once you're finished, you should be able to get a basic WordPress blog up and running, including a homepage.

However, before you start uploading podcasts to your new WordPress website, you'll need to install and set up the Blubrry PowerPress plugin. Once activated, navigate toPowerPress > Settings. There are a lot of options, but all of the important settings are here. First of all, scroll down and fill out the Program Title field:

A screenshot of the program title field.

Ignore the iTunes Settings for now, since they're irrelevant to our aim. Go to the Blog Posts and Pages section, and choose where you want your podcast to appear – either above or below your page content. For our example, we disabled this setting and used shortcodes to place the player exactly where we wanted (we'll explain how to do this in a minute):

A screenshot of the blog posts and pages section.

Save your changes, then head into the Audio Player Options tab. Here, you can choose which kind of player your podcast will use. We went with the HTML5 audio player – Blubrry's recommended option:

A screenshot of the HTML5 audio option.

All that's left is to upload your podcast episode to your WordPress media library and copy its URL – we'll need it during the next section.

How to Create a Podcast Website in WordPress

Now onto creating our podcast website in WordPress. Firstly, we'll be assigning each episode to a new blog post to keep them separate, and we'll also need to set up a header, an introduction to the episode, and insert the Blubrry Player. For this example, we'll be using our Zelle theme and the WordPress Customizer.

Let's start with the header. In the WordPress dashboard, navigate to Posts > Add New. Give your new post a title – preferably referring to the name of your podcast episode or its number – then click the blue button to publish it. You may need to add your post to a menu, if you don't already have one.

Next, navigate toAppearance > Customizer, find your new blog post, then click on the Sections order tab. Under the 1st section and 2nd section drop-downs, add an Our focus section to the former, followed by Shortcodes to the latter, like so:

The Sections Order tab within the customizer.

Next, navigate toBig title section > Parallax effect. Enable the setting and replace the main image with one of your choosing, then go toBig title > Content and add some text to complement your header:

The content section of the Big Title tab.

From there, move to the Our focus section, and then to Our focus section widgets, add as many as you want, then assign some images and text that describes your podcast and its latest episode:

Finally, go into theShortcodes sectionand click on Zellebelow where it saysEdit the shortcode options.

Here, we'll add [powerpress url="http://example.com/path/to/media.mp3"] into the Shortcode field to display our podcast file on the page. Make sure you replace the example URL with your media file's location:

The Shortcodes section tab.

Once you've saved the changes, that's all the pieces to our podcast page! If you'd like to insert a playlist instead of a single episode, you can replace the shortcode above with[powerpress_playlist], and it will automatically include the latest ten episodes of your podcast.

For more information on what you can accomplish with Blubrry's shortcodes, check out this command cheatsheet.

Let's take a look at our finished website:

Our example of a podcast website in WordPress.

Although the WordPress Customizer is handy for creating your website, you may prefer to use a page builder instead. We recommend MotoPress, which integrates well with Zelle.

Conclusion

The idea of putting together a podcast website in WordPress from scratch might be intimidating, but in reality it's quite straightforward. Our recommendation is to keep things simple at first, and let your podcast do all the talking!

Let's recap how to get your podcast website in WordPress up and running:

Pick a good WordPress web host.
Install WordPress, a suitable theme, and the Blubrry PowerPress Podcasting plugin.
Create a home page, set up a header, and create an introduction for your podcast using the WordPress customizer.
Use Blubrry to manage and insert your podcasts into WordPress.

Do you have any questions about creating a podcast website in WordPress? Ask away in the comments section below!

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