Amazingly, I have never had to deal with podcast or audio files before in a WordPress blog or site. But a recent client needed a way to easily and attractively add mp3 files to her posts.

At first I tried the Podcasting plugin, but I didn’t have much luck. Then I tried the Audio Player WordPress plugin, which worked great – it’s easy to activate and configure, and isn’t complicated for the blog owner to use.

There are various ways to use it, but here’s the way that I like best:

  1. Upload and activate the plugin.
  2. Go to Options > Audio Player.
  3. Under where it says “How do you want to use the audio player?” select the second option: Enclosure integration (for podcasters). This option detects if there is a link to an MP3 file in your post, and automatically adds a player for that file to the end of the post.

There are a few advantages to this format:

  1. You don’t have to set up a special folder for the audio files. You don’t really have to for the other options either, but if you don’t you make the user’s life a bit more difficult.
  2. The user doesn’t have to remember to use any types of brackets or code
  3. The post can include a flash player and a download link, so that people have the choice to listen the file online or offline. The other options that the plugin offers take the link and create a flash player from them, which means there isn’t a link to download the podcast.

Here’s an example: I really like this song by Yael Naim, an Israeli singer, which was used in the new Macbook Air commercial. You can download the link by right-clicking on Yael’s name above, or enjoy the song here in my snazzy new audio player (I hope).