How to Survive Podcasting Catastrophes (Part 2) - Rainmaker to the Rescue

As mentioned last post, Internet Archives had suddenly dumped all my stuff and locked me out. They didn't like my bit.ly affiliate links, apparently.

So I was left with all these podcasts to re-upload somewhere.

I was looking to Rainmaker to solve this. And it will, once it goes live. This will essentially move that Blogger blog over to Rainmaker with all the text and everything. (Then I'll reset the iTunes feed and do a final post there - not yet, though...)

Meanwhile, I was stuck with the problem that people subscribing through iTunes were stuck - if I only hosted through Google Drive (to replace Enclosure Links from Internet Archive.)

What pulled me along was that Rainmaker is basically built on Wordpress. That means that the MP3 files are in there somewhere and can be directly linked. Rainmakers main benefit is that they've made it so nice to develop in with their interface - but that hides some of the "under the hood" action we geeks are used to.

The Search for File Hosting Begins

At first, I recreated a post, by copying the text and uploading the files from Blogger. Since I was working from late May posts (the first actual podcasts) - I quickly saw that this would be a very long series of actions if I had to do this for every file I wanted to host.

As well, since the site won't be live for a few days yet - I needed to see if I could simply host the files there right now and get around all the waiting. (Plus I didn't want to have to do these Enclosure Links twice.)

Right off, I figured there had to be a way to mass-upload all these audio files, just like Google Drive.

Sure enough, there was - just get into Edit Media -> Add New, and you can select and drag these files right over:

Now, what was that place they put them all? If I had the folder path for one, only the file name would be different.

Selecting one file, I hit "Edit Media" and found that the URL was there already. Go to the right column and look under Save:

Selecting that file gave me the direct link and folder structure to all of them. Simple.

Now I only had to use my original file name, matching these up with what was originally linked - then fixing the folder path, and I was really cooking.

Here's the original compared to the new:

• https://archive.org/download/20150530PublishebookPodcast/20150530-publishebook-podcast.mp3
• http://livesensical.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/20150530-publishebook-podcast.mp3

So it's simply replacing that folder path for each one, since I uploaded the same files and the names wouldn't change.

While I have that post open for editing, I also had to replace the Archive.org player - which broke when they nuked my files.

So I used the simple HTML5 player from last time - as I haven't found where there's an embed code for Rainmaker's built-in player (yet.)

Again, just copy that Rainmaker link and paste. Simple. Voila! Fast updating with simple editing.

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Just finished updating all the episodes - took over 3 hours for about 20 or so episodes. Most of this was waiting for Blogger to come up. That was probably my own satellite broadband rather than Google.

Now I'm up to date and you won't get interrupted with earlier or future episodes.

The only problems I ran into was where Archive.org and Rainmaker had different opinions about how to handle spaces in file names ("%20" or "-"). I would then look it up on Rainmaker and copy that exact file link. Only happened about 3 or 4 times.

So - now we're done.

What did we learn from this?

Never sharecrop if you can afford not to.  What you're saving is money, but you could be saving time.

This is what the Rainmaker.fm podcasts are drilling into my head these days. I listen when I'm doing mundane things - and have even figured out how to listen when I go check my cattle twice a day - about an hour each time to make the rounds of my herds and pastures.

You leverage money in order to save yourself time. But at the beginning, all you have to invest is time. So:

• Work smart, not hard. 
• Get efficient as your middle name.
• Begin with the end in mind.

and - 

• Be flexible.

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Be sure to opt-in above or over at livesensical.com, so we can continue this and other conversations. And so you don't miss a single episode of these white-knuckled, hair-raising, cliff-hanging real-life adventures in self-publishing.

See you next time.

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