The Podcast Suite is a useful podcasting component (plus plugin and module) for Joomla 1.0 and 1.5. As I recently deployed it on a client’s site, though, I encountered some limitations. While I’m sure these will be addressed in future releases, I decided to share some quick code modifications that others may find useful.

First, the module.

Strangely, the module is lacking any way to hook on with CSS, and also forces you to enter HTML code for the image (including alt text) rather than merely taking a link to an image and alt text and dropping them into HTML for you. The quickest and easiest way to make this module behave more like others in Joomla is wrap the output in a div: <div id="mod_podcast" class="module">. What would be better is, of course, if the module pulled the specified class from the module configuration pane (for which there is an option, and which would probably be easily accomplished).

Regarding the component, the XML that it outputs for the podcast validates fine, but is missing an image element, which displays when people view the feed in their browser—an useful extra bit of branding. To add this, just a small bit of extra code is necessary in the com_podcast/views/feed/view.raw.tmpl file:

$xw->startElement('image');
$xw->writeElement('url', $params->get('itImage', ''));
$xw->writeElement('title', $params->get('title', ''));
$xw->writeElement('link', JURI::base());
$xw->writeElement('width', '144');
$xw->writeElement('height', '144');
$xw->endElement();