What’s Podcast Free America about?

Ryan Irelan: It’s a website I created for my political action group, which seeks to outlaw podcasts in all 50 states and make it a federal crime to create, distribute or listen to one. I’m currently working with a group of influential Washington insiders to get a bill before Congress.

Seriously, though.

Podcast Free America is a site that provides information on podcasting to people of all technical levels. It doesn’t matter if you’re a geek and former President of the high-school A/V club or a computerphobe who is scared of your own reflection in the computer screen, there’s something for you. This includes podcasting news, how-to articles and podcasting conference coverage.

I created the site in the Fall of 2005 after seeing a real lack of resources online that helped people who weren’t web geeks get started podcasting. I didn’t want to create yet another insiders-only podcasting site, so when writing for the site I always try to keep my audience in mind, most especially the multitude of non-technical users out there.

What’s something most people don’t know about podcasting, but should.

Ryan Irelan: Most people don’t know that podcasting is more than just talking into a microphone. A great podcast takes a bit of planning and a little legwork to get started. You can certainly get started podcasting with just your laptop and some free software - and it’s an excellent place to start - but some the most well-produced podcasts out there take time and maybe a touch of talent.

Another thing people should know is that podcasting isn’t a fad. It has been embraced by large corporations. For example, The Disneyland Resort has a monthly podcast that features news about Disneyland and an insider look into the resort. There are many people earning an honest living from just podcasting. It provides people in journalism, audio engineering, software development and marketing a new way to extend their service offerings to clients.

What’s your favorite thing about podcasting?

Ryan Irelan: My personal favorite thing is that it lets me do two things I enjoy: audio and the web. Of course I also like being able to listen to colleagues, strangers and industry leaders share their thoughts and expertise.

What’s the most frustrating thing about podcasting?

Ryan Irelan: Too many people doing too much of the same thing. The podcasting honeymoon is officially over. It used to be that you could just create a podcast about nothing and people would listen. Now there are so many podcasts - so many _great_ podcasts - that it is a lot harder to rise above the noise and get heard. Additionally, most large media companies now put their content out in podcast form (NPR, for example) and competing for listeners becomes even more difficult. However, if you’re goal is to just podcast as a hobby and you’re not too concerned with listenership, then go for it!

Why did you choose ExpressionEngine for Podcast Free America?

Ryan Irelan: Podcast Free America is the first site I built with ExpressionEngine. I chose it because I heard so many good things about the software. The first iteration of PFA was built using a very popular free blogging tool and, well, I didn’t really want a blog. Have you ever tried building a website with blogging software?

I chose ExpressionEngine because it is flexible, extensible and a good bit of fun to use. Since this was my first site with ExpressionEngine, I learned a lot and recently went back and reworked much of the site to meet my current way of thinking about producing websites with ExpressionEngine.

Are you using any add-ons or is ExpressionEngine customized in some way?

Ryan Irelan: I’m using plugins like the Magpie RSS/Atom Parser, Widont, and Word Limit Plus. The site doesn’t have any of my own plugins. I now work with all of my ExpressionEngine sites using Subversion (a popular version control tool) and a deployment tool that lets me make changes locally, roll them out to a development server for testing and then out to a production server for final deployment and, if needed, rollback to a previous deployment if I screw something up. This works great for files, like templates, plugins, images, CSS and any other customizations, but it’s more challenging when there are changes in the database.

What podcasts do you listen to regularly?

Ryan Irelan:

Macbreak Weekly
ROI Radio
KEXP Song of the Day
The Talk Show

Anything else you want to tell us about?

Ryan Irelan: On a personal podcasting note, I’ll be speaking at the Portable Media and Podcast Expo at the end of September. My session will be on creating and automating your podcast workflow. I’m also involved in a few of writing projects. Two of them are podcasting-related and the first will be announced soon (pssst, stay tuned to the website for information).