Podcasting 101
Podcasting is pretty straight forward. All you need is a web server to store your files, an mp3 files and a RSS file.
We have an instructor at Chabot who records his classes so he can publish them online. When I heard this I nearly fell over backwards. How cools is that! The mp3's are all available on his web site but he doesnt have any way of automatically notifying his students when a new mp3 is available. Podcasting is the perfect solution to this. I've written a simple RSS file to solve this problem. Now you can actually SUBSCRIBE to his podcast.
I'm not actually hosting the mp3s on my site, the RSS file I created points to the mp3s on his site. You can use this as a template and search online for additional tags to add to your own RSS file. I've added minimal information, just enough to be a valid file and populate iTunes with a little information on the podcast. The file breaks down something like this. The top of the file includes a description of the podcast, a link to more information about the podcast and a title for the podcast. Then there are a series of "items". Each item includes a title, a guid (to uniquely identify the item), a link to the mp3 file, and a description of that item.
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<description>Podcast for Chabot College's Photo 50</description>
<link>http://lensvisions.glamorfun.com</link>
<title>Photo 50 at Chabot</title>
<item>
<title>Class 1 lecture</title>
<guid>http://lensvisions.glamorfun.com/Photo50_1/Archive/Photo50_Aug_29_2006.mp3</guid>
<enclosure url="http://lensvisions.glamorfun.com/Photo50_1/Archive/Photo50_Aug_29_2006.mp3" length="10411569" type="audio/mpeg"/>
<description> This is the class lecture for the first day of class.</description>
</item>
...
</channel>
</rss>
To create a link directly to itunes, use the pcast protocol.
<a href="pcast://www.qicboy.com/files/2006/12/11/20061211-1-1.xml">SUBSCRIBE</a>
You can use the online RSS validator to make sure your RSS file is well formed.