Author Topic: Migrating from Podpress to Powerpress  (Read 6997 times)

Tom

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Migrating from Podpress to Powerpress
« on: February 18, 2009, 02:56:53 pm »
Hello everybody. I am the new one. I hope my questions fit in here.  ;D I did a search on this forum and wondered that I could not find info about people who switched from Podpress to Powerpress. I will change my Podcasting Software this weekend on my website to Powerpress and try to find out a few things in advance so I hope somebody with experience can help me out. Right now I am using Wordpress 2.5 with Powerpress 8.8. I did not upgrade Wordpress after 2.5 because it did not work anymore with the abandonded Podpress version and in the last months I was hoping the development would be continued but I can't wait forever and miss upgrade after upgrade on Wordpress. I have a site with a bit more than a dozen radio shows people can stream, download via mp3 direct download or subscribe via Podcast. Each show has it's own category podcast so I have many of them up and running. Because of this, I am a bit paranoid about doing the change. I read the installation instructions and will follow them but I would like to hear some details about what will be migrated and what not.

1. Is category podcasting compatible with Powerpress?
2. Will the already posted blog entries with the attached Podpress podcasts be migrated and still work or do I have to edit/redo the show postings?
3. Will the podcast links change?
4. Will my iTunes Feed and other entries from Podpress/Feed/iTunes Settings be migrated or do I have to redo this manually?

Thanks a lot for your help in advance.

angelo

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Re: Migrating from Podpress to Powerpress
« Reply #1 on: February 18, 2009, 03:50:44 pm »
I've herd 3 people now refer to 'category casting' that is part of Podpress. My answer is, categories are part of Wordpress, if you're using a category feed with Podpress installed as a category podcast feed, then you can do the same with Powerpress. There is a setting in Powerpress to apply the feed settings to all feeds, which if not set would then remove itunes attributes from both your category and tag/keyword feeds. When you do configure Powerpress you will want to select 'Apply to all RSS2 feeds' for your category feeds to work.

You don't have to edit Podpress episodes, there is a setting in Powerpress to include previously created podpress episodes. In addition, you can give Powerpress a try and if you don't like it, simply disable Powerpress and re-enable Podpress and you don't loose any data.

Podcast links should not change. Keep in mind that Powerpress stores episodes in the format Wordpress expects, which means the enclosure value will be added to all feeds managed by wordpress. Powerpress simply adds the itunes tags to the feeds.

Everything migrates over, we setup our settings page to pull your Podpress settings for you.

I started my own podcast that covers Wordpress plugins and in my first episode I go into great detail explaining how to setup Powerpress. You may want to take a listen before you start: http://www.pluginspodcast.com/2009/01/07/plugins-001-blubrry-powerpress-podcasting-plugin/ Also, if you're going to PodCamp Toronto this weekend, please feel free to hunt me down if you have any questions or suggestions.

Tom

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Re: Migrating from Podpress to Powerpress
« Reply #2 on: February 19, 2009, 12:33:00 pm »
Many thanks for your answers Angelo...really appreciated. Now the level of my Paranoia has significantly decreased.  ;) I will listen to your explanations before I start upgrading to WP 2.7.1 and install Powerpress for sure. Toronto is no option though..I live in Frankfurt Germany. That would be quite a distance for a weekend trip.  ;D   

Tom

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Re: Migrating from Podpress to Powerpress
« Reply #3 on: February 21, 2009, 09:00:58 am »
I have just installed Powerpress and so far it looks very good. I can't see the podcasts in the existing postings though. On the site they are visible and the streaming and downloads still work but when I edit a posting, I can't see the podcast episode in it, the media URL window is empty though there should be a link in. Is that normal? When I make a new posting, I can see the link to the file when I go back to i after submitting it.

Biggest downside is that the page load time has increased dramatically. As soon as I turn Powerpress off and the podcasts are no longer included the site loads fast as normal (and as fast as before when Podpress was enabled). Any hint to decrease the page load time? This is my website: www.mcast.mercuryserver.com

Edit 1: Tried a few things. I disabled all other plugins to see if this is the reason but it wasn't. Then I set Powerpress to ignore existing Podpress posts and then started making new postings. One posting had no impact on the loading time but as soon as more than one blog entry is online, the loading time increases and the more I put online, the higher the loading time is. I was able to reduce the loading time a bit by setting Wordpress to only show 9 entries per page but it still loads three times longer than with Podpress. I am trying out a different player now to see if this is changing anything.    

Edit 2: It is the player in the Powerpress default causing the load on my page. I installed the recommended Audio Player and site load is back to normal. But the new player does not show up on existing posts sadly. Continuing trying things out...

Final Edit lol: Besides that I still have to redo about 100 existing posts and enter the media link again so the Audio player shows up instead of the default Powerpress player, I am done and very pleased with Powerpress. Not one bug seen so far and it's also working just fine with Wordpress 2.7.1. I have two questions left though:

1. Is there an option to use ONLY the Audio Player? Even when I make new posts, the default Powerpress player shows up as well no matter if I disable or enable the "Replace [audio] syntax" option. What I did is that I set the "Player Function" under Presentation settings to "New window only" so it's not displayed on the site so the load time remains low. But when I open a new window, the default Powerpress Player is used. Isn't there like a total replacement of the default player possible? It would not be a problem to continue like this but I wonder why I can't only use the Audio Player instead of having both displayed. Maybe I did something wrong.  :-\

2. When I edit a posting in Firefox and scroll down to the Podcast episode, I can just enable the check box on "Modify existing podcast episode" and the Podcast options come up. With IE 7.0, nothing happens when I click on the same check box.  When I hover the mouse over "Podcast episode" and do a left click, I see the option menu opening for a milli second but it's collapsing directly again. Only when I click a second time on it, the option menu opens and remains in this position. Is this a compatibility problem in Wordpress or in Powerpress? This is a luxury problem though, just wondered.   
« Last Edit: February 23, 2009, 04:43:44 am by Tom »

angelo

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Re: Migrating from Podpress to Powerpress
« Reply #4 on: February 23, 2009, 01:23:17 pm »
Page Loading Issue
We're aware of the page load time issue, which occurrs when you have a lot of episodes on one page. It is because of the player. There is a different way to display the player on your pages which will load faster, but it requires that your theme have the wp_footer() function call included in your theme's footer.php. If you do have the wp_footer() call somewhere in your footer.php, then add the following define to your wp-config.php, it can go anywhere in the config file:

    define('POWERPRESS_USE_FOOTER', true);

Because there are many themes out there that do not include the wp_footer() we decided to process the player's javascript on a per-post basis. When there are many posts/episodes on a page, you will observe the slow loading as you've described. We're working on a future solution that will work in either case but for now please feel free to use the define above in your wp-config.php.

Disabling Powerpress Player
As for disabling the Powerpress player, you need to set the 'Display Player' to 'disable'. Remember, this disabled the player from loading in the page, freeing you up to use the WP Audio Player. As for how the player functions on your site, you need to adjust the "Player Function" setting as you've noted. There is no other plugin available that provides a link to play media in a pop-up window, so unfortunately you either have to use the Powerpress player for pop up player functionality or not at all.

Bug in IE
We're looking into the IE bug that you've reported. If we're able to duplicate the problem we'll fix it in the next update.

Thanks,
Angelo

Tom

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Re: Migrating from Podpress to Powerpress
« Reply #5 on: March 01, 2009, 02:42:36 am »
Thanks a lot for your answers again, Angelo. If I have to use the Powerpress Player for streams in pop-up window, I will leave everything as it is right now. I am really happy to have found a new tool to keep my website up to date with Wordpress updates. If there is an option to donate a little something to support development, let me know. I did not see a Donate button so far on the Bluberry website. 

angelo

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Re: Migrating from Podpress to Powerpress
« Reply #6 on: March 01, 2009, 11:43:36 pm »
We're not accepting donations for the plugin. We made the plugin for the podcasting community. Enjoy! :)

Tom

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Re: Migrating from Podpress to Powerpress
« Reply #7 on: March 17, 2009, 03:42:51 pm »
Then let me at least say thanks again. Most of the time when I asked something on the Wordpress or Powerpress support forum I was left alone so your help is really appreciated.   

 

angelo

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Re: Migrating from Podpress to Powerpress
« Reply #8 on: March 17, 2009, 04:36:53 pm »
Well this is the PowerPress support forum. Perhaps you submitted a PowerPress question somewhere we aren't aware of? If that's the case, let us know the URL and we'll monitor the site for posts to reply to.

Tom

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Re: Migrating from Podpress to Powerpress
« Reply #9 on: March 18, 2009, 02:08:06 pm »
uppps my bad..I meant Podpress forums. This was my 1st question I posted here at all. I have another one but I am making a new thread for it because it's a different problem.

angelo

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Re: Migrating from Podpress to Powerpress
« Reply #10 on: March 18, 2009, 02:52:07 pm »
LOL Ok cool. For a second I thought maybe we weren't monitoring something. :)