If you’re a podcaster and use the Podpress plugin on your WordPress blog to deliver your podcasts, you’ve probably been having a frustrating time of it during much of 2008.
The last release of Podpress was version 8.8, released in December 2007. That’s a year ago, a very long time in blog platform time scales as WordPress has released ten versions (including betas) since then. Significantly, Podpress says it works on WordPress up to version 2.3 which was released in September 2007. There have been 13 versions of WordPress since then (we’re currently on WordPress 2.7); running Podpress on anything greater than WordPress 2.3 has been hit or miss for many people (who talk about Podpress a lot) including me.
Amazingly, Podpress version 8.8 is still being downloaded hundreds of times a day.
Whether a new version of Podpress is in development or not – and according to Mark Blevis, PodPress is still a going concern – I finally pulled the plug in November on my use of Podpress as I wasn’t willing to continue relying on something in which my confidence decreased every time I cross-posted the latest FIR podcast, something I do here twice a week, every week. That confidence vanished entirely at the end of November.
Since then, I’ve been using Powerpress, a plugin for WordPress from Raw Voice, the company behind the Blubrry Podcast Network (of which FIR is a member), among other things.
Powerpress works fine on the latest version 2.7 of WordPress. It also worked fine on previous versions 2.6.3 and 2.6.5 that I tried Powerpress with.
Here’s a summary of Powerpress’ features:
- Easily add/modify/remove podcast episodes from blog posts and pages
- Integrated audio/video media player
- iTunes RSS tags
- iTunes album/cover art
- Standard RSS Feed album/cover art
- Podcast only RSS feed
- Ability to upload new cover art
- Ping iTunes
- Media size detection
- Duration length detection (mp3 only)
- 3rd party statistics integration
Powerpress is easy to install and will inherit your Podpress settings so as to enable your existing posts with podcasts to work with Powerpress.
Blubrry has detailed help on installing and configuring Powerpress.
I have no hesitation in saying to you that if you use Podpress on a WordPress blog – version 2.5 or later (and it really should be ‘later’) – I’d switch to Powerpress for more peace of mind.
The only legacy I now have from Podpress is the need to edit nearly 400 posts to remove Podpress-specific codes.
Anyone know of a reliable MySQL batch process string I can run? The thought of manually editing all those posts is not attractive.
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11 responses to “Powerpress: A viable alternative to Podpress”
Thanks, guys, appreciate your comments. I think you have a winner with Powerpress, especially as it enables Podpress users to easily migrate.
Angelo, that conversion feature you mention looks very interesting indeed and I look forward to more news when you have it.
Thanks for this write-up Neville, it’s re nudge I needed to remind me to move the podcast I manage across to Powerpress – no time like the present!
We're glad you like the Blubrry Powerpress plugin. As far as editing previously created Podpress episodes, if you can wait a few more weeks, a future version of Powerpress will have a convert feature. We do recommend though if you're going from Podpress to Powerpress to leave the previous episodes in Podpress format that way if you decide to revert back to Podpress you can easily.
Converting from Podpress is tricky if the podcaster attached multiple media files to each post. For that reason, coding a conversion feature in Powerpress is much more difficult. We will have a conversion option soon though which will also include an option to clean out all Podpress settings from the database as well.
Neville
Part of the reason we developed PowerPress was due to some of the same frustrations you were having. We also needed tighter integration into products our podcasters were using. The team here at RawVoice remain committed to keeping the plugin current and patching any issues in a very timely manner when they come up.
We have talked about the Road Map ahead for PowerPress here internally and without hesitation some of the features we are adding now are ones being requested by podcasters using the plugin today. The goal though is to keep the plugin highly optimized so that unlike other plugins out their it does not over utilize server resources.
Thanks for the review and let us know if their is anything that you think the plugin needs in the way of features.
Todd…
[…] out this endorsement of PowerPress by Neville Hobson and listen to what he has to say on his Podcast about […]
@Todd and Angelo – I've been testing Powerpress on my local dev instance of my blog and like it a lot, especially compared to the apparently-dead PodPress. I haven't been able to bring myself to manually update about 3 dozen podcast entries (Neville, you win!), so I've held off migrating/upgrading in the hopes you guys would be releasing something that would make my life easier. Thanks in advance!
By the way, is it Powerpress or PowerPress? The help page (http://help.blubrry.com/blubrry-powerpress/)has it written out with one P, but the icon on that page uses the CamelCase
Extremely useful information. Thank you.
I’m new to podcasting, couldn’t get podpress to work until I came across your site and switched to powerpress on your suggestion. Worked the first time.
However, I have one question. Do you need quicktime to make powerpress work? I use a mac and it works fine on my home computer, but when I went to work and showed someone the podcast, it didn’t work. My work uses windows media player. Would switching to the audio 2.0 that is mentioned help with people seeing it on non quicktime computers?
BTW, My site isn’t the only one that doesn’t work on my company computer. I went to the podcasting blog with ken walker and his podcasts weren’t coming up on my computer either. He was using podpress. We are able to view youtube at work, so I’m not sure what the problem is.
Thanks for any help.
Thanks for the Powerpress suggestion. I spent all day trying to get podpress to work (unsuccessfully). In 5 minutes, I had my podcast feed/links working perfectly. You rock!
Hobson: Powerpress: A viable alternative to Podpress: If you’re a podcaster and use the Podpress plugin o.. http://tinyurl.com/9g5cmw
Thanks for this post it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. I am interested in using Thesis & Powerpress for my podcast website and was wondering if you have tried that combination?