Alternatives to Podcasting

Podcasts are simply a means of distribution for your audio or video files. It’s a great distribution method, but your users must be at least somewhat technically savvy. What if you serve on older congregation? In addition to offering podcasts on your site, especially of the sermons, I think it is also imperative that your sermons are easily accessible by those who tread lightly in the waters of the web.

This article talks about using Audacity to edit and prep your sermons for distribution on your website. We will now talk about the various ways you can offer that content to your users.

You have to have a file to distribute, so make sure you’ve uploaded the sermon MP3 to your website. Make a folder specifically for sermons with subfolders by year. Also, be detailed in your details. Name your file by date or title or both. Before you upload, I recommend right-clicking your MP3 file, choosing “Properties,” clicking the “Summary” tab (and clicking the “Advanced” box if necessary), and filling in all of that information. This will help your organization as well as your users’ understanding of what it is they’re downloading and listening to. Our example file for today will be located at http://www.yourchurchsite.com/sermons/2006/sermon-03-12-06.mp3.

1. Direct Download of an MP3
Due to the increasing popularity of MP3 players, most people know what an MP3 is. Offer your MP3 as a direct download from your website. People can then create their own collections, and most people know how to burn CDs from these MP3s. For example, the HTML link tag would look like this: a href=”http://www.yourchurchsite.com/sermons/2006/sermon-03-12-06.mp3″. Hover over the link and watch your staus bar for the link information.

2. Streaming
For a long time, I created an MP3, then converted it to a Real Media format. While Real Media is great for small file sizes, and highly recommended for those who have little storage or do not want to offer direct downloads, it’s a time consuming process to convert and upload an additional file. There’s an easier and more space effective way to offer streams.

Open Notepad.Type the address where you stored your MP3. This is the only thing that needs to be in the Notepad document. For example, the only line in our example would read: http://www.yourchurchsite.com/sermons/2006/sermon-03-12-06.mp3. No quotes are necessary. Save the document with the same name as your MP3 file, but change the extension (the last three letters) to M3U and save your document. Our example would be called Sermon-03-12-06.m3u. Upload this M3U file to your website. You can upload it anywhere, but it’s recommended to keep them in the same folder as your MP3 files. To make this work, your streaming link would link to the M3U file, not to the MP3 file. Our example would look like this: Stream Sunday’s Sermon. Hover over the link again and view the status bar to see the link information. When a user clicks this link, their default audio player will open and begin streaming the sermon, no streaming servers necessary.

3. Flash Audio Player
If you know how to, you can incorporate a flash audio player into your site, where users need simply to click a play button and the sermon begins. RelevantMagazine.com implements this very nicely for their weekly podcast (Scroll down and look in the middle). Also, for a small sum for such a good piece of software, Wimply Player does a fine job of streaming content, both audio and video, through a flash interface. Once the software is installed, no coding is necessary. You simply upload your MP3s into a specific folder and Wimpy does the rest. Wimpy also comes with a good number of skins as well as a skin maker, so it can easily be incorporated into your website.

4. Podcasting
Finally, podcasting. You should do it, and it’s been talked about here on BetaChurch before.
Apple’s own technical specifications (daunting name, but don’t be fooled) proved incredibly helpful to me. Also, validate your feed (find out if anything is wrong with it). You’ll learn more about podcasting and what your feed should look like by doing so.

The internet is about choice, and by offering your sermons or other audio files via these four different methods, you’re sure to appease a vast majority of your internet congregation.