Podcasting support for Movable Type just got better. In this most recent release of the Podcasting plugin for Movable Type, iTunes support has been rounded making it easier than ever before to get your podcast listed and listed properly within the iTunes Music Store. This latest release adds the following features:
- a complete RSS feed that includes all of the proper iTunes meta data.
- an enhanced submission form that collects addition information about your podcast including its duration, whether it contains explicit material, a subtitle, summary, keywords and more.
- additional plugin options to capture important information about your blog so that its listing within iTunes can be finely tuned.
- support for basic authentication to access podcasts located behind a username and password.
- enhanced error messaging when linking to feeds.
This release is a necessary and important step to help make Movable Type the premiere self-hosted podcasting platform on the planet. I am excited by this release and am growing even more excited about the next one, which may include any number of the following features:
- download statistics for your podcasts
- iTunes notification pings
- auto-podcast submission to iTunes
But this plugin has been more the result of the feedback I have heard from folks like Bud Gibson, Todd Cochrane and others. So I anxiously await hearing from the Movable Type user community what they would like to see in the next version.
Hi Byrne, thanks for the update. We're really looking forward to upgrading Michigan Innovators to take advantage of the new features in MT 4.x. We might take the route of using custom fields to hold the podcast info as I have suggested on the MTOS mailing list. However, we'll test this too.
Bud
Hey Byrne, thanks much for the basic user authentication, I can't wait to try that out. The other enhancements sure look darn good, too.
My pleasure Ken - your feedback was what led to the support for Basic authentication in the first place. Please try it out and let me know if it works the way you want. If not, let me know and I will fix it.
Hi Byrne,
One thing I'm looking for is that ability to republish a podcast feed. I have a cinch.blogtalkradio.com account that I phone podcasts into (as you know) and would love to be able to easily republish that on an MT blog...
--Steve