Podcast Quick Start
Congratulations on your new Podbean podcasting account! You've just taken the first step to creating and publishing your own exciting podcasts on the web. And because Podbean is so customizable, you'll be able to design a user-interface that's both functional and distinctly unique to you.
Ready to get started with your Podbean account? These how-to's will have you up and running in no time.
- Channel privacy
- Change your logo
- Channel title
- Channel category
- Channel tags
- Channel description
- Publishing step by step
- HTTP Upload (files smaller than 30MB)
- FTP upload
- Monthly Growing Space
- Change your theme
- Use your own header image
- Arrange your sidebar by widgets
- iTunes settings and preview
- Submit podcast to iTunes
- Episode hits
- Subscribers
- Site visitors
- GEO stats
- Embed podcast everywhere
- Embed single episode
- Change your name, password and email
- Change account plan
- Set your own domain
The first thing you may want to do is change some of your basic settings. To do this, you need to login to your account by going to http://podbean.com/login. This will take you to the main Dashboard where you can find links to all the various settings and publishing tools. Click the "Settings" tab located in the upper right menu bar. You'll then see the "General Options" page that looks like this:
From here, you can make a number of changes:
Channel Privacy - Choose whether you'd like your podcasts to be available to the public or just to friends that you invite to Podbean.
Change Your Logo - When you first sign up for your Podbean account, your logo is set to the default Podbean image which looks like this:
This image is displayed prominently on your podcasting website so you may customize it to your own wish. clicking the "Upload your own logo" link to upload your logo image file. Then select it from the drop down menu. Please notice your logo image file size can not be larger than 200K. If your image file is larger than 200K, it will not be shown in the list. After selecting the logo image, click the "Update Options" button at the bottom right of the General Options page and you're done! Your new logo has been added!
Channel Title - The Channel Title is essentially the "name" of your podcast. It can be anything you choose, from your user name or online identity to a phrase, company name or other unique identifying label.
Channel Category - The Channel Category indicates where your podcast account will be listed in the Podbean directory. Podbean defaults to the "General" category but you can change this by clicking the dropdown box next to "Channel Category" and choosing the listing that's appropriate for you.
Channel Tags - Channel tags are like keywords that help visitors to the Podbean site find your podcasting account. If you want your podcasts to be available to the public, then you'll also want to choose a few keywords or keyphrases that are relevant to your podcast. For example, a podcasting site that focuses on blogging and internet marketing might want to use tags such as "blogging", "internet marketing" and "search engine optimization" (without the quotation marks, of course).
Brief Description - The description will be shown in the header of your podcasting site just below your Channel Title.
You can also use this page to update your email address as well as set your local date and time. Once you've made your desired changes, just click "View Site" at the top left of the page and check out your modifications!
Like everything else in Podbean, putting up new podcasts is easy as can be. The first thing you'll need to do is record your podcast using your favorite software and equipment. When you're ready to upload, just go to your main Dashboard and click the "Publish" link in the upper left-hand corner. You'll see a screen that looks like this:
Tags - Tags are "labels" for your post that help people find your podcasts by searching specific keywords or keyphrases.
Title - The name of your podcast
Post - If you want to add an introduction or some extra content to go with your podcast, this is the place to do it. This is a user-friendly composition interface that works similar to most word processing programs, so you can bold and italicize your text, add images, etc.
Add Media File - This section is the place for you to set your podcast media files (ex: audio, video). There are two ways to add your media files: choose files that have already been uploaded from the drop-down box, or click the "Browse" button to upload a file directly, Please note files larger than 30MB in size will need to be uploaded via FTP(see below) first. Once the media file is targeted, you may set its attribute such as type, length etc.
To save this post for later, just click "Save and Continue Editing" if you want to make more changes or "Save" if you're done for now. To publish, click the "Publish" button and viola! You're published!
HTTP Upload - Upload via HTTP is simple. Just navigate to "Upload > Media Manager", click the upload button and follow the steps. The 30MB file size limitation is also applied here.
FTP Upload - To add files via FTP, you'll need your FTP user name and password for your Podbean account. This is not the same as the user name and password that you use to sign into Podbean and it may change periodically for security reasons. Go to your Account page by clicking the "Account" link at the top right-hand side of your Dashboard page and you'll find your current FTP login information.
Now, you can FTP your files with any size. We recommend Filezilla for Windows and Fetch for MacOS.
Once your files have been uploaded, return to your main Dashboard in your Podbean account and click the "Upload" tab in the top left menu:
Click the "Import FTP uploaded files" button to move your files over to your account. Note that you need to import your files within 24 hours of uploading them via FTP. After 24 hours, the files will be deleted from the FTP server.
Monthly Growing Space
To make sure you always have enough podcasting space, Podbean offers free monthly growing space to premium customers. What does that mean for you? Instead of trying to figure out which files to delete so that you can upload more, you can simply increase your space to accommodate all of your podcasting media files.
How does this work?
Instead of just giving you a set allotment each month, Podbean chose to make the growing space responsive to your needs. To do this, we've created a process that allows you to add the amount of space you need when you need it. Here's how it works:
Login to Podbean where you'll see your main Dashboard page. Click the "Upload" tab in the upper right-hand menu. You should now be at your Media Manager page. This is the place for you to manage your uploaded files.
In the box marked "Current Media Files", you'll see a list of the files that have been uploaded to your account. Click the "Archive" button beside a file and it moves to the "Archived Media Files" box. You've just given yourself some extra space! You can archive as many files as you want until the total archived files size is greater than your monthly growth limit. The archived quota will be reset to zero at the end of each monthly cycle.
And don't worry... your archived files are still available for public viewing and can be used as normal files. "Archive" just move the files to a permanent storage space.
Podbean makes it easy to customize your podbean site! From your main Dashboard page, click the "Layout" tab in the upper left-hand menu:
From here, you can modify your theme, your header image, your sidebar, bookmarking options and links. Advanced users can also edit their CSS from this page.
Change Your Theme
When you click the "Layout" button, you should see the "Themes" subsection of the Layout area. Here you can see your current theme as well as all your available options. Podbean has a number of themes to choose from so if you want to change yours, just click on the theme of choice and you're ready to go!
Use Your Own Header Image
Next to Themes, you'll see a subsection link called "Header Image". Click this tab and you'll see your current header image used by the theme of your choice.
If you want to change this, simply upload a new image by clicking the "Browse" button to find your image file. Then click "Upload" to process the new image.
Arrange Your Sidebar
Arrange your sidebar layout is as easy as drag-n-drop. To do this, simply click the "Sidebar Widgets" tab under the Layout menu.
You'll see sidebar components listed under "Available Widgets" - just click and drag them where you'd like them to be on your sidebar "block". If your chosen theme has two sidebars, then you've got two "blocks" to work with. You can add, remove and change the order of these widgets as much as you like.
And if you're thinking you'd like to leave your sidebar just the way it is, go ahead. Your theme comes with a default layout so no changes are necessary to keep your current layout.
Submit your podcast to iTunes gives you more chances to be known by worldwide audience. To do this, you'll need to configure iTunes related settings under menu "Settings > Feed/iTunes"
The "iTunes Preview" window shows you exactly how your podcast will appear in iTunes. The corresponding settings are shown below:
iTunes Settings:
iTunes: FeedID - This is the ID you'll receive after you register your podcast service with the iTunes Music Store.
iTunes: Summary - This defaults to your Podbean podcast description found on your "Settings > General" page, but you can change it for your iTunes listing by editing this box.
iTunes: Podcast Logo - This defaults to your default logo for your Podbean account but you can change it here for your iTunes listing by using the drop down box to choose another image.
iTunes: Author/Owner - The creator/owner of the podcast.
iTunes: Subtitle - Give your podcast a subtitle (optional)
iTunes: Keywords - These default to the channel tags you created when you uploaded your podcast.
iTunes: Category - iTunes allow you to select up to 3 categories.
iTunes: Email - This defaults to your registered Podbean email but you can change it here if you want.
Once you finished those settings, now it's ready for you to submit your podcast to iTunes.
Want to see how your podcasts are performing? Podbean's powerful analysis tools gives you an in-depth dimensional view of your visitors, subscribers, hits and geographical distribution.
Navigate to top menu "Statistics", each submenu represent a specific type of podcast stats. Including episode hits, subscribers, site visitors and geographic distribution.
Episode Hits - Hits for each episode. different type of reach will be categorized three areas: feed, download and streaming. Feed reflects the number of times your content is fetched via a subscribed Feed; Download is the number of times that your content files are downloaded directly through the web; While streaming is the number of times that your content files are played online.
Subscribers - Approximate measure of the number of individuals currently subscribed to your feed. It's based on an approximation of how many times your feed has been requested by many different feed readers (ex:google reader) and podcatchers(ex:iTunes) in a 24-hour period. Request from robots will not be counted.
Site Visitors - Provide the number of visitors to your podcast site. Any number of visitors with the same IP address will be counted only once in a 24-hour period.
Geo Stats - The measure of where the audience comes from.
Each stats consists of graphic view, summary, and raw data, which are generated based on the criteria at the top of the page.
Eager to share your podcast to millions users in Facebook, MySpace, or integrate to your own blogs and websites? The embeddable Player is just designed for this purpose. The unique feature "Embed Once, Use Forever" let you only do a simple Copy & Paste and the playlist will be updated automatically in the future.
Embed Podcast Everywhere - To get the embed code of your Podcast Player, simply click "Manage" tab, then "Embeddable Player" sub-tab. For Facebook user, click the link for Facebook and follow the steps. For other websites, select the color and size of the player and click "Get Embed Code". Note there is a link "MP3 Audio Player" besides the headline of the page. This is an audio player with similar features, but only collect the episodes with MP3 audio format.
Embed Single Episode - To get the embed code of the Podcast Player for a single episode, you click "Manage" tab, then "Posts" sub-tab, click the "embed code" button at right side of the post.
Once a new publish is done, some backend works are needed for player to get updated, such as video encode, generate thumbnail and regenerate the playlist etc, which may take up to 24 hours.
To change your email address, first and last name or to create a new password, click the "Account" tab in the upper right-hand menu bar from your main Dashboard page. Make your changes and then click "Update Account" at the bottom of the page. You can also upgrade your Podbean account from this page as well as set your own domain.
Still have questions? Please check our Support Center
