Been running my own podcast on Castopod for the last year and it has been quite the learning experience. First, realized that part of running the show was making it available through mainstream platforms, but started with basic RSS feed and fediverse integration (for Mastodon users and such).
op3 analytics easily allows anyone to have basic understanding of their audience. Added basic podcasting 2.0 support, which also allowed IPFS support, but still haven’t dug too deep into this (beyond knowing it is working). Added transcriptions with local-only Whisper and chapter support with ChapterTool, because people expect this in podcasting 2.0 clients.
Setup a chat on matrix.org and got a friend to help with a Draupnir moderation bot (which we were also testing for a community Open Source project chat). Decided to migrate my domain to a new registrar supporting Let’s Encrypt certificates natively (I was maintaining them via a cron command unofficially, otherwise not supported by the domain registrar). Transition was smooth and no problem.
Created a dedicated podcast email account for people to contact the show and migrated my email smtp/imap to a dedicated service I could trust (and use as a relay once I eventually begin selfhosting the email server as well). Added a Flarum forum, since somewhere is needed for longer form conversations. Plugged in Uptime Kuma for monitoring and added all of my services to FreshRSS in order to keep tabs on all of my work. These days I’m wishing I’d simply used a wiki, or even a collaborative chat platform like HedgeDoc. Found LimeSurvey a bit too much for my needs, but Nextcloud Forms has worked just fine for people to send in their anonymous feedback.
Things are fairly quiet in terms of the show, but working out just fine. No doubt I’m forgetting tons of steps in regards to all of what I’ve learned, but it has been a fruitful year. Been using flat VPN network approach to connect to any servers and homelab applications being tested. Looking forward to more progress this next year. You can checkout the show here if you are curious.
I use Castopod for when I’ve uploaded my radio show. At the moment it’s hosted on my site that’s on Hetzner. It only costs me a tenner a month, so I’m wondering whether it’s worth trying to work out how to host it all locally so I can have far more storage and it not cost me anything.
Hetzner is a good host, so definitely a solid choice. I suppose the main question is in terms of uptime vs Hetzner.
I’ve listened to a few episodes over the last few months and enjoyed some of the topics, especially the interview with that Nextcloud fellow.
Except for the interview, I do find an hour is more than I can take at once, though. I lean towards Joe Ressington’s “make them want more” half-hour podcasts every week. Just my 2 cents.
What do you think of cutting the episodes to half-hour and releasing all of the detailed breakdowns as premium subscription? The reason they are long is because I will talk about how something is to use at length, rather than mentioning it and moving on.
You cover a lot of topics in each episode. Maybe cut them down to get a shorter episode, and budget the time to expand a couple of the more interesting ones. Use the more in-depth topics to drive a Premium, no-ads channel.
I look at Linux Unplugged as way too long, but really they don’t cover very much in an episode. They spend more time reading their boosts and usually I just skip out at that point. But I guess that’s where they get paid from, so I get it.
I’m not sure that the Linux landscape is a place where you’re going to pay for the time of running a podcast, but as long as you enjoy helping people with bringing them information and pointing them at new things, at least you’ll be getting that satisfaction.
I have another Nextcloud interview from this morning. It went almost three hours. I hear you on an hour is a lot, because it is a lot. Haha.
Just subscribed. I’ll listen to a few of your episodes. I’m always looking for good content on privacy, data sovereignty and Linux everything. Thanks for sharing.
Cool, hope you enjoy.
Followed… I’ll take a listen.
Where else is it available other than castopod?Cool, thanks. I’ve added support for Podcast Index, Apple Podcasts, Fountain.fm, Spotify. These mostly relay to a few dozen other places. Should also be able to follow directly from the fediverse.
