Title: Hey there
1Hey there! Today Im going to show you how to
make an RSS feed or a podcast! Well be using
RSSeditor.
2- The first step is to set up the preliminary
information about your feed. Think of your feed
as a TV channel. Here are important things we
need to know about a channel along with their
analogies in RSSeditor - Name - Title
- Link - Site for the network (e.g. www.nbc.com)
- Description - Mission statement of the channel
- Feed image URL - Link to the logo image for the
channel - The rest should be pretty self explanatory, and
there is a help pane on the right side of
RSSeditor to help you get started. Observe as I
fill in information for a dummy feed
3Ok, now you have the main information for your
feed set up. You can save the feed like this and
publish it, but you dont have any content in
there. The next step is to add some content,
preview the feed listing, and publishing. Lets
take a look at the screen where we edit our
content.
4- This is where we set up our episodes. Here is
an explanation of the important information about
an episode - Title the name of this episode
- Link the link to the actual media file that
contains the episode. E.g. a video for a
podcast, a HTML file for an article - Author the creator of the episode
- Description a description of this episode. The
HTML tags supported by this section varies, and
the information can be tricky to enter. Practice
with this a few times. - Ill demonstrate how to add an entry
5Now have an entry in our feed. At this point, we
could publish our feed and any RSS aggregator
would show us one entry that has an article
associated with it. BUT, what if we want a
podcatcher like iTunes to access our feed? To
make this entry a podcast, just click the Edit
Enclosure button and enter the link the audio or
video file. You will have to upload this media
file via FTP or some other method so that it is
already on the internet. Make sure your click
the check URL button to make sure that the
podcast will actually work. Observe carefully
6- Ok, now Im just going to add another episode for
good measure.
7Now that you are done adding episodes, you can go
to the preview tab. Think of the preview tab as
a TV guide listing of the episodes on your
channel. RSS aggregators and podcatchers (such
as Firefox, IE, and iTunes) should provide you
with a similar view of your channel as this
preview tab. If everything looks good in this
preview pane, it should look good when you
publish your feed. Well take a quick look.
8Ok, on the final step. Publishing your feed.
Lets proceed to the next screen
9- The FTP settings tab should be called Publish.
In this step, you actually put your channel on
the Internet. - The local RSS file is the file that actually
holds all the stuff we just typed into RSSeditor.
When you put that file on the Internet, its like
youve published a channel. From then on, people
can always access your feed by going to that
file, for example - http//www.myfeed.tv/feed.xml
- Youll probably generate the RSS file each time
you make a change to the feed, and youll make
different files for each feed. - Ill show you what it looks like.
10- Now, use the same information you use to manage
your website and enter it in for your FTP
settings. Click upload file and if it works
you have just published your first RSS
feed!!!!!!! - Point your favorite aggregator to
- http//www.yoursite.com/feed.xml
- And you should see your feed!
11- If you made a podcast, enter
- itpc//www.yoursite.com/feed.xml
- and you will subscribe to your Podcast
automagically on iTunes.
12Well, thats it. Be sure to stay tuned and maybe
there will be a tutorial on actually accessing
your feed. In the meantime, there are
instructions at http//www.etsu.edu/itunesu/index.
jsp for accessing podcasts at ETSU. This was my
first tutorial, so I apoligize if it is a little
clumsy. Please email me at gradapp_at_etsu.edu and
let me know what you think.. This tutorial is
intended as a demonstration of the information
dispersing capabilities of podcasting in a
university environment.