Your basic settings page is where you get started with your customization of your podcast. * The setting for “blog page/podcast title” is the text field for the header on your blog page, and the title of your podcast RSS feed. * The setting for “blog page description” goes in the description field of your podcast RSS feed. If you click the checkbox below the text input field, it will also be displayed under the title on your blog page. ** The previous two items assume that you don't have a title image on your blog page. If you do, it will supercede those two items, and be displayed on your blog page. * The “default author” setting MUST be an email address, or your RSS feed will not validate correctly. (This hasn't been automatically checked yet, but will be) * The setting for “copyright” is up to you to fill in, and can be any copyright you choose. * The setting for “language is also up to you, and defaults to English (en).
To change your template, just login to libsyn.com and click the “settings” tab, then click “templates” and find the template you'd like to use. To see a preview of what your page will look like with the new template, click the “preview” link. To apply the template (beware, any customizations you've made to your current blog page HTML will be lost), click the “use this template” link.
Under the Advanced Settings tab you will find a place to enter any RSS feed you'd prefer Libsyn forwards your Libsyn feed to. From this panel you can also-
1. enable raw stats logs to either A. Apache logs or B. XML logs
2. enable spam comment deterrent A. Captcha code B. Comment Moderator, or both
3. choose for either a custom image to display in the header/title portion of your blog page, or for the title from your Basic Settings page to display in text.
4. access the html for your blog page (please see this link- http://docs.libsyn.com/index.php/Change_the_look_of_your_blog_page)
5. a section for additional tags, which is a beta feature. Use the extra tags area to enter any extra things we may be missing in the Libsyn generated feed. For example <itunes:new-feed-url>
Libsyn gives you the option to point domains at your blog page and RSS feed. If a Libsyn customer were to register a domain (for example, mypodcast.com), then their Libsyn blog could be found at http://mypodcast.com and their RSS feed could be found at http://mypodcast.com/rss. There is a one time $5 fee for this service.
To accomplish this, you must set the nameservers for the domain to be NS1.LIBSYN.COM and NS2.LIBSYN.COM. You can set this setting either while registering the domain (using a domain registrar such as godaddy.com) or can be edited after it's already been registered. (For advanced users, who want to manage their own DNS, but still have a domain name resolve to their libsyn account, check out this description of how to set up a CNAME record).
Once this has been done, fire off an email to support@libsyn.com with the domain name, and username that it's to be associated with. (This will be automated in the future, but for now it's still a two-second manual operation for your boy hoopes)
Additionally, be aware that mail can still be forwarded to the inboxes at the registrar. Godaddy and register.com (two common registrars) give instructions on how to set things called “MX Records”. If mail to these domains is desired, be sure to mention this to hoopes in the email.
Libsyn offers “aliases” for your username to be used in the URL for your blog page and RSS feed. For example, if your username is “johnsmith”, but you don't want your name to appear in the URL to your libsyn stuff, you can use an alias to hide it.
So, for an example, if you want “supercool” to be your alias, then email your username and desired alias to support@libsyn.com. (This will, of course, be automated in the future).
Your blog and RSS feed will still be available at http://johnsmith.libsyn.com and http://johnsmith.libsyn.com/rss respectively, but they will also be available at http://supercool.libsyn.com and http://supercool.libsyn.com/rss. Whichever URL you choose to advertise it up to you.
To use the alias option, drop us an email at support@libsyn.com. There is a one time $5 fee and you get up to 3 aliases per account.