OK folks, here it is!  I have recently discovered an easier way to get the little Publisher Audio Commentaries into you sales listing and web pages. Part of how this came about was that Bret over at Tricky Owlbear did a commentary for his Behind the Spells Compendium and I created a player for him that he just couldn’t seem to get working right.  After some tweaking which included upgrading PodPress on my website it turned out mine were not working either!  So I dug in to fix the issue and found an even easier way to get them up there.  This post will show you how you can do it also.

Step 1: Record your commentary.  I find that writing an actual script is helpful.  Keep in mind that people will listen to this months or even years from now and may not have “context”.  That’s why I begin mine with stating who I am and and what the podcast is about.  Keep them short and up-beat and on-topic. I have used Audacity, which is a free product; but there are a number of options out there for getting your voice into an MP3 format.  Google is your friend.  Once you have your commentary file edited and in MP3 format you can move on to step 2.

Step 2: Get the player files and code.  Go get them from HERE.  Download the .zip file and unzip it.

Step 3: Host your files somewhere.  RPGNow does NOT host the audio files or the player; you do.  You will need some place on the internet where you can host files; I host mine using my website.  Make a folder called “Podcasts” or something and put the following files in there:

• player.swf (this is the audio player)
• audio-player.js (this is the JavaScript)

Now upload your .MP3 audio file into the same folder; in this example we will call it “PDFAudio.mp3″.

You should have three files in the same directory of your website similar to these:

• http://www.skortchedurfstudios.com/podcasts/player.swf
• http://www.skortchedurfstudios.com/podcasts/audio-player.js
• http://www.skortchedurfstudios.com/podcasts/PDFAudio.mp3

Step 4: Create the code. Use the following code and change out the BOLD text for code that matches your files.

<script language=”JavaScript” src=”http://www.skortchedurfstudios.com/podcasts/audio-player.js“></script>
<object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” data=”http://www.skortchedurfstudios.com/podcasts/player.swf” id=”audioplayer1″ height=”24″ width=”290″>
<param name=”movie” value=”http://www.skortchedurfstudios.com/podcasts/player.swf“>
<param name=”FlashVars” value=”playerID=1&soundFile=http://www.skortchedurfstudios.com/podcasts/PDFAudio.mp3“>
<param name=”quality” value=”high”>
<param name=”menu” value=”false”>
<param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”>
</object>

You can then paste this code into you sales listing on OBS or YGN. Hope that helps!  I stole borrowed hevily from this tutorial. I pasted that above code into a text document so all I have to do is change out the actual name of the audio file and paste the code into my sales listing.