Podcasting/Distribution

Podcasting for producers

RSS feeds

Several websites can create and publish RSS feeds, either free, for a fee, or paid for by advertising. However, creating a feed is not complicated. Below is an example feed.

• Text coloured grey is required, does not need to be modified and can be ignored – you do not need to understand why it's there so we won't complicate things.
• Text coloured red is an explanation of the feed and should not be included in an actual feed.
• Text coloured blue should be replaced with your own data.

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">

<channel>

This section is the header, it includes information about you, and your website or series. This section should only appear in the feed once.

<title>The title of your series</title>

<link>A link to your homepage or programme index</link>

<description>A description of your series</description>

<language>Language code. This is a two or four letter code based on ISO 639, e.g. en-us, en-gb or fr (see list of ISO 639 codes)</language>

<copyright>Optional: Copyright info, e.g. author and year or license (such as GNU Free Documentation License)</copyright>

<lastBuildDate>Date of the last update</lastBuildDate>

<webMaster>Optional: admin contact</webMaster>

The section that follows, between <item> and </item>, specifies a single programme. You could choose to modify it every time you make a new programme, but this will mean that new subscribers will only be able to download the latest episode, and if somebody isn't quick enough they may miss an episode. Creating a new item section will keep an archive of episodes available and avoid this problem. Newer episodes should be placed above older episodes in the file. There is no theoretical limit to the number of episodes you can list, though many podcasters choose only to list a handful of recent episodes.

<item>

<title>Title of the programme</title>

<description>Description of the episode, e.g. contents. This can be as long as you like.</description>

<pubDate>Recording or publishing date.</pubDate>

<enclosure url="path to the recording" length="file size in bytes – this should be digits only" type="audio/mpeg" />

</item>

</channel>

</rss>

Studying an RSS file, such as the Spoken Wikipedia RSS file may help in understanding the workings and other optional fields.

Example RSS feed

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<channel>
  <title>Example blog podcast</title>
  <link>http://www.example.com/blog/</link>
  <description>An example website</description>
  <language>en</language>
  <copyright>None</copyright>
  <lastBuildDate>Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200</lastBuildDate>
  <webMaster>example@example.com</webMaster>
  <item>
    <title>Example news</title>
    <description>This episode features an example sound file.</description>
    <pubDate>Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200</pubDate>
    <enclosure url="http://www.example.com/podcast1.mp3" length="18001" type="audio/mpeg" />
  </item>
</channel>
</rss>