If you’re a podcast creator, you might already have the perfect microphone and learned all the ins and outs of RSS feeds. However, knowing how to make a website designed for hosting podcasts is another story. If your site isn’t optimized for your podcast, you risk substandard performance and lost listeners. In this article, we’ll check the best option for creating a Fireside podcast website.
Fireside.fm is a podcast hosting platform that let you create podcast shows and distribute (by generating a public RSS feed) those to providers like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts etc.
In this post, we will introduce Fireside and show how to create the perfect Fireside.fm podcast website, walk you through the process of connecting your website to your Fireside-hosted podcast. Let’s get to work!
An Introduction to Fireside
Fireside is a hosting service that provides a publishing platform for your podcast. It offers many features that help you host your podcast –
Fireside hosts your MP3 files, generates your RSS feed, and helps you create a website. It comes with built-in security, the ability to import content, and quick file hosting. You can also use monetization and membership platforms such as Patreon with Fireside.
While those are all standard podcast hosting features, Fireside has a few more offerings. For example, it includes a statistics engine that allows you to track every download, and provides you with accurate analytics. It also has an embedded podcast player, a bookmarklet, and automatic publishing features.
Where Fireside Might Come Up Short
While Fireside is a reliable hosting platform, you’ll probably want to choose a more advanced platform to create a professional website for your podcast. Fireside does have a website feature included in their plans, but it’s too limited for most podcasters.
With Podcastpage.io, there are dozens of advanced podcast-focused features, such as subscribe buttons, automated episode timestamps, guest intake forms, automatically import podcast reviews and much more. That aside, with Fireside you aren’t able feature multiple podcasts on the same website like we offer on Podcastpage.
Podcastpage lets you create unlimited custom pages, unlimited blog posts, unlimited episodes, and integrate marketing and analytics tools. We take care of all the heavy lifting, including syncing your new episodes, hosting the website, doing most of the SEO work for you, and much more.
With our platform, you can receive audio messages from your visitors and import your podcast feed from any host (including Fireside!) in one simple click – keeping it synced forever.
How to Create a Podcast Website with Podcastpage (In 2 Steps)
No matter where you’ve chosen to host your podcast, such as Fireside or other hosts, you can use Podcastpage to build it a website that can help it succeed. This step-by-step process is easy, and allows you to optimize the power of your podcast through our advanced features. Let’s see how it works.
Step 1: Create Your Account and Launch Your New Site
First, you’ll want to head to the Podcastpage home page and click on Get Started in the top right-hand corner:
Next, create your account using your Google account or full name, email, and password. After that, you can select Get Started and enter in the name you want to use for your podcast website. This can simply be the name of your podcast or some variation that your audience will recognize:
Click on Continue. From here, you can connect your podcast by searching for its name (or paste your RSS feed URL):
Step 2: Customize Your Website
After completing the above steps, you’ll be taken to the Select Theme page, where you can choose between numerous options. Your theme will control the look and layout of your site, letting you define its visual identity. This is also something you can modify later, so you can try one out to see if you like it:
Once that’s done, you’ll be taken to the dashboard for your new website:
From here, you can customize your website’s appearance further, create key pages, and upload episodes. In the left-hand sidebar, you’ll see all the options you have to modify your site.
For example, in the General tab you can connect your website to a custom domain or change the subdomain URL:
You can also change your email settings, add SEO tags, and customize language preferences in this tab.
Under Podcasts, you can add episodes, edit your podcast, and sync your RSS feed:
You can also view the archive of past episodes.
If you want to edit your site’s visual appearance, you can select the Customize tab. This will take you to a preview of your site and a left-hand sidebar of all the features you can modify:
Under General Settings, you can upload your logo and change your theme:
This tab also lets you edit the many different details of your site, such as the background color, main font size, and voice message settings.
You can also completely customize what the audio player looks like for your podcast’s episodes. In the Audio Player tab, you can choose the Play icon color, tailor the sound wave bar’s width and spacing, and enable or disable audio player images, social sharing buttons, and speed rate buttons.
The Customize tab has many other features you can edit. We recommend that you take some time to look through all the details you can refine, such as pages and blogs, home page episodes, and custom CSS.
Then, go back to your dashboard once more and select Team Members. This tab lets you add collaborators, such as clients or other members of your team who can co-manage your site with you.
At this point, you have a fully-functioning website for your podcast. You can continue to go through the other tabs on your dashboard, such as Blog, Pages, and Links, to edit and customize your site as you see fit.
Conclusion
Being a podcast host can be a full-time job – there are many tasks to manage, and keeping up with all of them can seem overwhelming. Both Fireside and Podcastpage can take some of these essential tasks off your plate by helping you create a site that is optimized for your podcast.
However, while Fireside is a good place to host your podcast, Podcastpage offers more advanced capabilities for website creation. It only takes a few moments to set up an account, and your podcast site will be ready to go. Then, you can customize it as much as you want and upload your episodes.
Do you have any questions about creating a podcast website with Podcastpage? Let us know in the comments section below!
