Saturday, March 23, 2013

Libsyn Podcast Player, New Logo and Site Redesign

Libsyn Gets a New Logo and a New Look

Libsyn, short for Liberated Syndication, is one of the most popular podcast hosting services around. Recently they redesigned the front end of the Libsyn website and updated their logo. I think the new logo looks great, don't you?


Libsyn Logo



I switched my podcast feed for iTunes from Audioboo.fm to Libsyn back in October of 2012. I decided to use Libsyn as my podcast host after listening to an episode of Ray's podcast when he interviewed Rob Walch from Libsyn and they talked about the stats dashboard.

The other featured that appealed to me about Libsyn hosting is the OnPublish feature with Blogger. In case you don't know, I am using Google's Blogger platform for The Ms. Ileane Speaks Podcast so I was really pleased to hear that Libsyn is integrated with Blogger.

Most bloggers who use self-hosted WordPress (wrongly) assume that they can host the media files for their podcast with their blog host. However that is not a great idea, you need to get additional webhosting, because when you end up getting more traffic as your audience begins to grow your blog host might shut your blog down. 

I found out years ago from listening professional podcasters like Dave Jackson from School of Podcasting and Ray Ortega from The Podcasters Studio that it's best to obtain separate web hosting for your media files. That applies to both audio and video podcasts.


Switching the Libsyn Podcast Player


There is one thing I didn't like about using Blogger for the podcast. The default podcast player that Libsyn uses with their OnPublish integration isn't very attractive. I ended up finding a way to make the player more attractive and engaging and I recorded this tutorial for it.



If you use Libsyn this tutorial will be helpful for you even if you don't use Blogger, because it shows how to switch to any of the available Libsyn podcast players. (click to enlarge image)


Customize the Libsyn Podcast Player on Your Blog


UPDATE: This image reflects the new Libsyn Four Interface

Here is what you can discover from watching the video:

  • How to Login to Libsyn and set the dimensions of your player
  • Generate the code you will use for Libsyn's Standard podcast player 475 x 45
  • Go to "Destinations" and select the episode to get the embed code for the player you want to replace
  • Edit the blog post in HTML mode and take out the old  "iframe" code from the legacy player
  • Replace it with the new "iFrame" code for the nicer looking podcast player
Let me know what you think of using Libsyn for your podcast webhosting and if you changed the podcast player on your blog.



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