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How to... Publish |
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Simply put, podcasting is the act of publishing a series of audio files on the internet. Usually, podcasts are conceived of as a "show", much like a TV show, where the individual audio files are the various episodes in the show.
In order to have a podcast show, you need to have a web site where your show "lives"; this is the physical site that hosts your podcast, and it is the access point to your show for the general public. The web site might be one that you have set up yourself, or it might be a commercial site that rents "prefabricated" space to many customers. In the first case, the implication is that you have purchased a unique domain name that is your own. So you might have a site called www.bigbluequilts.com, or www.bigtrucks.net. This address is called the Universal Resource Locator (URL) to your web site. If you are renting space on a shared site, your URL is probably in a slightly different form, perhaps something like www.blogaudio.com/bigbluequilts or www.podwarehouse.com/bigtrucks. In either case, you bear the responsibility for designing the look of the site, and for providing links to your podcast audio files so that members of the general public can download it.
An additional feature of podcasting is that you can provide a means for others to "subscribe" to your show, meaning that they will be alerted whenever you post a new episode to your site. The way this happens is through a mechanism called RSS, for "really simple syndication". You create an RSS file that contains information about your show. Every time you add a new episode, you update the RSS file to include information about the new episode. To subscribe to your show, the listener uses a program called an aggregator to point to your RSS file. Every time the listener runs the aggregator, it goes out on the internet and checks all the RSS files that it has been pointed at, thus alerting the user to any new additions to any of the subscribed shows.
Let's step back for a moment. At this point it should be apparent that a podcast is more of a concept than a particular thing. You might think of it as a distributed entity. It consists of a number of audio files (one for each episode), one or more optional image files, a web site, and a single RSS file that ties them all together.
The internal structure of the RSS file is quite specific. First of all, it is written in a language called XML, for "eXtensible Markup Language". In RSS, your show is called a "channel", and the individual episodes are called "items". A given RSS file describes only one channel. Minimally, the channel contains general information about your show (it's title and a summary description), a link to your web site, and at least one item. Additional descriptors can include a copyright notice, your name (the author), keywords, classification scheme, and an image that the listener's aggregator displays, to mention just a few. Similarly, each item in the channel contains descriptors about the particular episode, minimally a title, summary and a link to the audio file itself. Every time you add a new episode, you add a new item with all of its descriptors, but the descriptors in the channel remain relatively fixed once you have defined them.
The process of publication is essentially a three-step process.
- Your audio file is compressed to MP3 format.
- A new RSS file is generated that includes the new item you are publishing.
- The audio file and the new RSS file (and optional image files) are uploaded to your web site.
Podcast Station maintains a copy of your current RSS file, and also stores your compressed MP3 files in a special folder called "Exported Podcasts".
Uploading files to your web site involves a process called FTP (File Transfer Protocol). You log into an FTP server with a username and password, and then you initiate an upload to a specific place on your web site. Some sites, especially the shared commercial sites where you just rent space, have their own FTP mechanism built in which you generally have to use to upload your files. However, if you have an FTP site and you know it works, you can enter the URL into the Publication Wizard and Podcast Station will upload your compressed audio file and RSS file to your site.
Now that you have a general layout of the terrain, it's time to podcast!
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![Easy to use [Podcast Station] made our segment sound live and fast paced because the operator / podcaster has control of all the sound events he requires from his user library of snippets, soundscapes, applause and laugh tracks, voice overs, commercials, whatever the user chooses.](/images/page_right/test-oko.gif)
