It was August 2005 and I bunch of us had gathered on someone’s Relto in Until Uru. The topic of the night was how we should go about starting a podcast for the Myst/Uru Community. Back then, the idea of a podcast was a little more foreign than today, and plenty of time was spent arguing about what the hand-crafted RSS feed should contain.

Fast forward almost 5 years and The Cavern Today, spurred on by the return of Myst:Online Uru Live (again), has decided to “reboot” and start at Episode #1 again after months of non-production. Have a listen to our latest episode entitled, Something Old, Something New.

My role since the beginning has been to looking after the servers, forum software, and website. this February, I began a major redesign of the website using WordPress.

Initially, I was sceptical of WordPress’ applicability to podcasting, but I was soon proven wrong. With the addition of a couple of simple plugins and a good theme, WordPress can be a podcasting powerhouse!

A couple of tips for using WordPress to podcast:

• Create and use categories from the beginning. In this way you’ll be able to publish multiple feeds, and therefore, multiple shows.
• Choose/Build a simple theme which shows off your content, gives the visitor easy access to an MP3 download, and offers an iTunes Subscribe button.
• Get a plugin to take away the audio-file management headaches. We use Blubrry PowerPress.
• Choose one of the many Twitter plugins for WordPress to auto-tweet when you publish a new episode.
• Allow comments! The whole point of podcasting is to build and serve a community. Allowing comments means instant two-way communication with your community.

Happy podcasting!