For 2008 I’m adding lots of new information to the course and have decided to remove the previous first module and provide it here on the blog for free. Below is the first installment of this entitled, What is a Blog?

It gives you a simple. stripped down “what you need to know” about blogging. If you’re reading this in an RSS reader and the video doesn’t appear below, you’ll need to click through to the post to view it.

Download the MP3 Audio Here

Download the Slides as a PDF Here

In my case I have done both. I have this blog on one site and then I have The Podcasting Underground podcast on another site. In the case of the PodCamp NYC site that I set up, it’s all on one site and blog. Same with Internet Business Mastery. Leesa and I both do this by using a category in WordPress to separate out your podcast episodes.

I’m not sure there is a definite right answer. Right now I take the stance that it depends, neither answer is ideal.

Leesa takes the stance that you should use two separate blogs (I should point out that this could also mean two different blog installations on the same site/domain). She points out that if you put them both on the same blog:

1. You have too many chiclets/links in the sidebar offering all the subscription options (e.g. podcast only feed & text posts feed)
2. The podcast posts become hard to find since they get buried in all the blog posts
3. Even if you use a “podcast” category, not everyone is savvy enough to click on that to get the audio content

The problem of too many chiclets/badges for subscription (#1) is one that I have run into myself. I don’t think that I have solved it, but I have tried to simplify it. If you look at the PodCamp NYC site you will see that I have two set of copy and links to get people to subscribe. It’s not ideal, but it’s not horrible.

I have another idea that I have not tried yet, but it would be to use a cool widget that you can see on the TopRankBlog in the upper-right hand corner. When you mouse over the feed icon it gives you all the options. You could have one of these for the blog feed and one for the podcast feed.

The problem of your podcast getting buried in the blog posts so people can’t find them (#2 and #3) can be solved by using a navigation bar link labeled Podcast. You can link this to the podcast category.

I did this on the PodCamp NYC site. Go there to give it a try and see how I handled that. The user doesn’t need to know that this is just a category within your blog, they know that when it’s clicked they see the list of podcast episodes.

The reason I hesitate to take a solid stance on splitting the two up is that I see advantages to consolidating them when it comes to branding and traffic generation. Sure you can simplify the use of site real estate by putting them in two different places, but now you have two different places to generate traffic for and send people to. This may or may not be a good thing depending on your goals and branding strategy.

I’m glad Leesa brought this up. Does anyone else have thoughts on this matter? What are you doing to handle a blog AND a podcast? Do you have them in the same place or do you use separate blogs? I want to here your experience and insights.

However, I’ve still not upgraded any of my WordPress sites to the new version. Apparently there are some compatibility issues between the new version of WordPress and the Podpress plugin that many podcasters (myself included) use to publish their shows. Dan, the creator of Podpress, is currently looking into this issue. You can keep an eye on the situation in the Podpress forums.

It’s typically important to keep your WordPress sites updated with the latest versions for security reasons. However, when a major version milestone of WordPress comes along (such as 2.1), I like to wait a bit before upgrading. There are often theme and plugin issues that need to be worked out despite their beta testing efforts before releasing new versions.

The good news is there is a strong community of WordPress users and coders that get these things solved in a timely manner. In addition, Dan does a great job of updating Podpress despite the fact that he does the whole project for free.

If you decide it’s time to upgrade your version of WordPress, you can find some great tips to help you with the process here on the Lorelle blog.