Image Courtesy MightySeek

Dan Kuykendall, the founder and developer of the podPress WordPress podcasting plugin, announced on his Mighty Seek blog in August that, after a confusing and messy hiatus, he will be returning to develop what was once the most popular plugin to podcast with WordPress.

WordPress has supported “podcasting” – the embedding of audio or video files as an “enclosure” in RSS feeds for subscription-based consumption, since version 1.5.Adding a link to an MP3 file in your post or creating a custom field called “enclosure” with the url, file size and file type would automatically add the necessary enclosure tag to one’s feed.

(NOTE: WordPress 2.8, in an attempt to fix a bug with podcasting plugins like podPress, created a problem with using the custom field enclosure method in which the field is automatically deleted upon saving a post. A fix is in the Trac for 2.9, but for now, you need to edit your functions.php file to use this feature. Read this WordPress forum post for more information.)

The podPress plugin was designed to offer iTunes support for WordPress podcasts, and automatically insert a download link and flash player into a post. As seen in the screenshot above, it used a separate box in the Add Post panel to select an audio file, title it, detect the size and duration, etc. Back when it was released in February 2006, it was the first of its’ kind to do so.

However, towards the end of 2007, development of the plugin suddenly halted. Bugs found in podPress were not getting fixed, and new versions were not being released. Users continued to use the plugin, but when 2.7 rolled around, a crisis began brewing for many podcasters: podPress wasn’t compatible!

Since then, use of the plugin has dropped dramatically. Many groups asked to take over the project, but Dan seemed uninterested. Users switched to options like the Blubrry PowerPress WordPress podcasting plugin, Others have started simply using the quick, easy, built-in WordPress enclosures and using Google’s FeedBurner to automatically add the iTunes bits and pieces.

This post was published back in August, and since then, no progress has been made. Even if the developer does spring back into action, it will be interesting to see if podPress will be able to catch up with the developments that have been made while it took a vacation, and if it will be able to gain back all of its previous users. Have you used podPress and switched to something new? Do you plan on switching back, or are you wary of its reliability due to its history?