Why I Am Building My Own Podcast Platform, Part II
by Bob Bloom
category: "podcast"
A month ago to this day I published my blog post "To Host, Or Not To Host, My Podcast".
Now that I have Phase One of my podcast admin done, I want to explore this question further.
My experience podcasting many years ago has infused my thinking today. Yes, I want to host my own podcast. The idea that I have my show and episode data in my own hands is very important to me.
I did a podcast, that I am reviving, called "LaSalle Software News". I used SoundCloud to host this podcast. Every time I entered in episode information, I cringed that I was entering this info into someone else's database, using their admin, and having them generate my RSS feed. I will sleep better knowing that I have my own data.
By the end of this month, the baseline admin, website front-end and back-ends, and RSS feed generation will be done. Then I can start developing the exciting custom stuff.
I want podcast management.
A while ago I podcasted interviews. There was a lot of prep involved. It sure would be convenient to get some of these steps automated. There was a certain "on boarding" with new interviewees, a process well suited for automation. I just have to figure out exactly what this process is.
I am re-starting my LaSalle Software News podcast.
I am starting a new podcast, sort of along the lines of my previous "The Bob Bloom Show".
I will start a separate "long form" interview podcast. It will be a separate podcast. I want to put some prep time into this one, including building some podcast management features first.
When I was podcasting quite a bit, I hit a wall: volume. Doing one monthly podcast at a time is one thing. Planning out a bunch of interviews, researching upcoming shows, jotting down ideas for topics. Losing track of actual scheduled interviews sadly happened. Podcast management would be a help.
I absolutely had to get my "Podcast Links" and "Podcast Research Notes" database tables into my podcast admin immediately in the initial release, because these two tables are just that critical to helping plan episodes. Having a list of links display in an episode's webpage is very important.
Actually, I did more than that. I already built a profiles database with my LaSalle Software. So I associated my links, notes, and episodes with my existing "Companies" and "People" database tables. Sponsors are usually companies, not people. Guests are usually people, not companies. So I had a database relationship sitting right there. The problem is that these two database tables are not built with the ready-made "client" user permissions that I created for my podcast admin. Consequently, only "owners" are allowed to use the "Companies" and "People" (actually, "persons", for those keeping score) tables. This was the "extra feature" that was one too many, so I'm deferring it.
Podcast website publishing was an issue as well. With all my show and episode data resident in a podcast host's database, entered in their admin to sit in their database, I had to reconstruct the same data for my own websites. Not happy ☺
Being able to construct my own podcast hosting, management, and publishing software is quite exciting ☺ It'll take time, I know. But having my LaSalle Software -- built with the superb leading PHP Laravel Framework -- it took me mere weeks to get Phase One of my podcast management done. At the end of this month my website front and back-ends should be done, as well as my RSS feed package.
My guess is that once I figure out Nova actions working in conjunction with AWS Lambda functions, I will be able to get a lot of features done relatively fast. I am seriously mulling over doing Twitch streaming whilst figuring this out, or perhaps when I have figured it out, because it's pretty interesting stuff. I anticipate using Bref, not Vapor, for those wondering, because I plan on using small targeted Lambda functions rather than deploying a fully functional Laravel app onto Lambda. I am avoiding using the word "micro" on purpose. Probably a great topic for a future podcast... hmm....
Now that I have Phase One of my podcast admin done, I want to explore this question further.
My experience podcasting many years ago has infused my thinking today. Yes, I want to host my own podcast. The idea that I have my show and episode data in my own hands is very important to me.
I did a podcast, that I am reviving, called "LaSalle Software News". I used SoundCloud to host this podcast. Every time I entered in episode information, I cringed that I was entering this info into someone else's database, using their admin, and having them generate my RSS feed. I will sleep better knowing that I have my own data.
By the end of this month, the baseline admin, website front-end and back-ends, and RSS feed generation will be done. Then I can start developing the exciting custom stuff.
I want podcast management.
A while ago I podcasted interviews. There was a lot of prep involved. It sure would be convenient to get some of these steps automated. There was a certain "on boarding" with new interviewees, a process well suited for automation. I just have to figure out exactly what this process is.
I am re-starting my LaSalle Software News podcast.
I am starting a new podcast, sort of along the lines of my previous "The Bob Bloom Show".
I will start a separate "long form" interview podcast. It will be a separate podcast. I want to put some prep time into this one, including building some podcast management features first.
When I was podcasting quite a bit, I hit a wall: volume. Doing one monthly podcast at a time is one thing. Planning out a bunch of interviews, researching upcoming shows, jotting down ideas for topics. Losing track of actual scheduled interviews sadly happened. Podcast management would be a help.
I absolutely had to get my "Podcast Links" and "Podcast Research Notes" database tables into my podcast admin immediately in the initial release, because these two tables are just that critical to helping plan episodes. Having a list of links display in an episode's webpage is very important.
Actually, I did more than that. I already built a profiles database with my LaSalle Software. So I associated my links, notes, and episodes with my existing "Companies" and "People" database tables. Sponsors are usually companies, not people. Guests are usually people, not companies. So I had a database relationship sitting right there. The problem is that these two database tables are not built with the ready-made "client" user permissions that I created for my podcast admin. Consequently, only "owners" are allowed to use the "Companies" and "People" (actually, "persons", for those keeping score) tables. This was the "extra feature" that was one too many, so I'm deferring it.
Podcast website publishing was an issue as well. With all my show and episode data resident in a podcast host's database, entered in their admin to sit in their database, I had to reconstruct the same data for my own websites. Not happy ☺
Being able to construct my own podcast hosting, management, and publishing software is quite exciting ☺ It'll take time, I know. But having my LaSalle Software -- built with the superb leading PHP Laravel Framework -- it took me mere weeks to get Phase One of my podcast management done. At the end of this month my website front and back-ends should be done, as well as my RSS feed package.
My guess is that once I figure out Nova actions working in conjunction with AWS Lambda functions, I will be able to get a lot of features done relatively fast. I am seriously mulling over doing Twitch streaming whilst figuring this out, or perhaps when I have figured it out, because it's pretty interesting stuff. I anticipate using Bref, not Vapor, for those wondering, because I plan on using small targeted Lambda functions rather than deploying a fully functional Laravel app onto Lambda. I am avoiding using the word "micro" on purpose. Probably a great topic for a future podcast... hmm....