User:PeterSampson/Sand-Box
My experimentation page
Sand-Box for when I have to make tricksy edits.
Export and Publish your MP3
Once you have edited your recording in Audacity, you need to export it as an MP3 which is a universal compressed audio format that will play on iPods and other portable devices (and will also be suitable for others who may just want to listen to it on their computer) and which will also be small enough to distribute via the web.
To export your Project to an MP3, you need to add the Lame MP3 encoder to Audacity which is an "optional extra". Follow the instructions at Lame Installation to download and install Lame.
Then you click which will mix your voice and music tracks to an MP3 file. When you do this, a dialogue will pop up asking you to edit the ID3 tags. These are tags which most audio players can read which give information such as the Title and Genre of the track. There is a short podcast tutorial here explaining about tagging MP3s in Audacity: Template:External.
When you have your MP3 exported to your hard drive, you upload it to your website and create a link for it. You can create a simple download link which is just the web address of the file e.g. Template:External.
However, if you give a plain text link like this, what happens when the user clicks on the link depends on their setup i.e. whether this downloads the file to their drive or launches their default MP3 player.
If you instruct your user to right-click the link, this will always enable them to download the file to their drive.
On the other hand if you embed your MP3 in your webpage using "embed tags" you can choose if your MP3 plays in the background or if the browser's media plugin appears in the webpage, which will give the user an on and off button to play the file in the browser. You can also choose whether to autoplay the file on page load or not, and so on. This page shows you how to use embed tags: Template:External.
If you want to make a plain text link from which users can stream your MP3 into their default MP3 player, you can just create a text file with .m3u (or .pls) extension and paste into it the full web address of the MP3, then upload the .m3u file to your webpage.
Many podcasts are distributed with what are known as RSS feeds, instead of (or as well as) offering downloading or streaming of the podcast content. When read with a feed reader program, these feeds offer a summary link to (or direct downloads of) recently updated podcast content. You can read about creating .RSS feeds for podcasts Template:External.
If you do not have your own server or access to a website, there are other ways to put your podcast on the internet. Online services like BlogMatrix, AudioBlog, Liberated Syndication, PodBus and Podblaze offer space to upload and store your podcast. Some of these services offer free hosting while others will charge a small fee for different storage limits. Please refer to the different web sites for more information. To use a hosting service, simply sign up for an account and upload your MP3 files.
Finally, don't forget to promote your podcast on the major podcast directories and search engines, such as Template:External, Template:External, and Template:External.
