Sometimes, you may need an easy way to create a URL on your podcast site that automatically forwards to another location. For example, instead of simply asking your listeners to visit your iTunes listing by searching for your show inside of iTunes, you could simply tell them to go to example.com/itunes (example.com being replaced by your own URL, of course) instead. You can achieve this by setting up a 301 redirect on your website. The redirect will automatically tell a web browser to go from your specially crafted URL to wherever you’ve sent the redirect.
301’s are usually added to your website’s htaccess file, depending on what type of software your site is running. I use WordPress for all of my podcast sites, and all WordPress installations include their own htaccess files.
Htaccess files may be difficult to find with typical FTP clients. You may need to alter a client’s view settings or you may need to access your server’s control panel to get to the htaccess file. This may be annoying, but it’s actually a good thing as you can do some serious damage to your site if you were to accidentally delete or damage the htaccess file. But you can easily gain access to your site’s htaccess file by using the free Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin.
It’s always best to mitigate noise in your audio recordings before it can be picked up by a microphone. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen and it’s necessary to soften up that signal noise in post production. Most modern DAW’s (digital audio workstations, AKA audio production programs) use plugins to help with this process. And some DAW’s make finding those plugins a bit of a challenge. That’s why I’ve decided to post a quick tutorial on how to do noise reduction with the ReaFir plugin for