Whether you want to listen to an audiobook or want images, synchronized with the audio, to be displayed. Or you may want to listen to the conversations on the current events. Podcasts are a great tool for consuming and sharing information. A question on Drupal Forum read, “How do you embed something like a podcast?”. Drupal 8 can offer a top-of-the-line platform for podcasting.

Podcasts are an incredible way of letting your online users consume your content. They can be of tremendous use when you consider different options of delivering your content. Someone posed a question on Quora asking “What are 5 Drupal strengths that other CMSs or frameworks don’t have?”. Ability to create content types like podcasts was highlighted on one of the answer.

Podcasting is really top-notch for your website and Drupal 8 can help you make a fabulous platform for podcast.

Podcasting and its importance

There were days when you used to be tuning into the right frequency to listen to your favourite radio channel. Adjusting frequency for clearer audio still exists. So is the internet radio which flings audio content with much better and clearer voice quality.

Innovative minds led to the invention of podcasts. You can not only stream audio but even download it. They give you access to the episodic series of digital audio or video content.

It’s a win-win situation for both the site owners and the users when you incorporate podcasts in your website.

You can even have a subscription to get them delivered to your device and automatically get them downloaded in your device. This gives control to the users and let them use their features like rewind, stop and pause.

You can get your hands on different sorts of podcasts. Podcast novels are a way of listening to series of literary works delivered to your device. Enhanced podcasts go an extra mile.They display related images in relation to the audio you are listening to. Flinging web series as a video podcast is also a very popular way of getting an audience hooked to your content.

This also boosts your SEO. Podcasts improves social bookmarking and makes online visitors stay longer on your site. There is also extra web traffic directed to you with the help of podcast focused searches.

How can Drupal make you embed podcasts into your website?

Drupal modules for podcasting

You can integrate podcasts in Drupal using its amazing modules.

What are some of the cool modules that can help you in the process?

Simple Podcast, as the name suggests, is something that you would like to explore to swiftly set up one or more podcasts for your Drupal site.

It saves your time and reduces developmental efforts as you do not need intensive coding or have to make a lot of configuration changes. You can build itunes-compatible xml feed in no time. 

Since it skips Drupal theme layer and incorporates its own simple theming system, rendering xml feed is done in a super fast speed.

RSS SimplePodcast lets you create simple podcast RSS. It needs custom content type for the field configurations namely title, description or enclosure file. It has been tested with mp3 files.

Cincopa’s Drupal module, Cincopa Video and Multimedia Galleries, provides video hosting platform. Whether you want to add an image, an audio, a video, or a slideshow, this all-in-one module comes with more than 100 templates to fulfill your every need. This module helps you in adding podcasts into your pages.

You can use these modules to a great effect for adding podcasts. But how?

Drupal as a platform for podcasting

You might be a sports company or a political organisation. Having podcasts in your site can be of colossal help. Badcamp 2017 discussed the Drupal 8’s out of the box capability and its potential in letting us embed podcasts into the site without much hassle.

The discussion also consisted of a demo that walked through the process of building website with podcast embedded in just an hour!

It showed how to get your audio files hosted on AWS S3 and used few simple modules to demonstrate how it is used to add podcasts.

myDropWizard, Drupal based company, developed a simple module, Drupal 8 RSS SimplePodcast, to create RSS feed that itunes would need for podcasting. It did not conform with Drupal’s flexibility and complexity. Rather it was meant for simple usage.

It created an itunes RSS link at the bottom of the site where a user can subscribe to the content.

It was done through Configuration web interface of Drupal 8. They had to add content types with link fields to populate the feed. Amazon S3 was used to store episodes.

Moreover, only one podcast was used per site to make it as simple as possible.

Best Drupal podcasts

You might want to get the Drupal oriented content delivered to you directly. You can know everything happening around it using some of these Drupal podcasts.

Talking Drupal

Every episode, they take up one topic to discuss from different perspectives. With its curated
“Module of the Week”, it discusses their use cases for different scenarios.

Modules Unravelled Podcast

This delves into interviews of noted tech enthusiasts from the Drupal Community and involves Q&A based on their specialization.

Lullabot Podcast

This popular podcast has shows on Drupal, content strategies, open source communities etc.

Drupal Easy Podcast

This includes interviews with guests from the Drupal Community. They discuss on recent Drupal related news and upcoming events.

Summary

Podcasting is a great way of delivering audio and video content presentations to your online users. Subscriber can stay in tune with all the updates from your site. Drupal 8 provides an awesome platform for podcasting. 

Drupal 8 comes with out of the box modules that helps in embedding podcasts quickly into your site. 

Get closer to your online visitors using podcasts. Contact us at [email protected] to know how you can integrate podcasts in your Drupal website.