blogcasting
How To Podcast Using Just Blogger.com
Create a new blog or use an existing one. Use this code in your blog's Template, this should be the ONLY code in the Template, if there is anything else things might go bad for you on some podcasting apps. To reiterate, clear EVERYTHING ELSE out of your template and place this in there. This will turn the output of your blog into a straight up podcast ready bit of RSS. If you love how your blog looks now you may want to start a new blog just for the podcast, blogger.com being the never ending supply of blogspaces.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0" dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<channel>
<title><$BlogPageTitle$></title>
<link><$BlogURL$></link>
<description><$BlogDescription$></description>
<language>en-us</language>
<copyright></copyright>
<lastbuilddate></lastbuilddate>
<blogger>
<item>
<blogitemtitle><title><$BlogItemTitle$></title></blogitemtitle>
<blogitemurl><link><$BlogItemUrl$></link></blogitemurl>
<description><$BlogItemBody$></description>
<pubdate><blogdateheader><$BlogDateHeaderDate$></blogdateheader></pubdate>
<blogitemurl><enclosure url="<$BlogItemUrl$>" length="666" 
      type="audio/mpeg"/> </blogitemurl>
<guid><$BlogItemPermalinkURL$></guid>
</item>
</blogger>
</channel>
</rss>

1) In the Settings/Publishing section give the blog filename a .xml extension. For example nameofyourpodcast.xml When you need to give people or podcasting apps the url for the podcast feed you give them http://nameofyourblog.blogspot.com/nameofyourpodcast.xml
2) On the Settings/Site Feed sectoin ensure "Publish Site Feed" is set to OFF. You heard right, we do not want this to go thru the Feed process becuase the code we put in the Template is doing that already.
3)In the Settings/Formatting section of your blogs setup make sure the TITLE and LINK options are turned on.

Now you are ready to start making some podcasting magic. When you make a new blog entry...

  • TITLE will become the title of the podcast item
  • LINK will become the url that will get stuffed into the Enclosure and Link tags
  • The body of your blog entry will become the podcast item's Description.
  • The date of the blog entry will become the pubDate
  • The PermaLink number will become the podcasts item GUID

    The header will include some values that come right out of your blogs Basic settings.


    A few things to take in mind

  • I had to fudge the file size in the enclosure tag, I set it to 666 in honor of our reelected bubaya.

  • We can use the blogger interface to generate the podcasting file and have it hosted for free on blogspot with a little bit of ugly cruft at the top of the file. This is from the banner code that is inserted by the blogger.com servers/ The good news is it does not see to bother bashpodder and a few other podcasting apps I have had reports of from others; I would be interested to hear of other podcasting apps ability to handle it or not. An example of this to test your podcasting app on is my Jean Shepherds Fathead Podcast.

  • Some of my blogs have the option to turn off the banners. Why? It might be because I paid for adfree blogspots way back in the pre google buy out era. The banners can also be turned off if you host the resulting file some where else via FTP or SFTP. If we host it on a non blogspot site, or use one of the blogs on blogspot with the magic bit set to turn off the banners, we get crystal clear podcasting code. An example of this to test is the orginal podcast test I did up while working out this template. But as I mentioned above, all the podcasting apps I have heard used on the resulting code worked even with the banner code in it. Sure Dave Winer might come and smack you with a trout for abusing the purity of his idea, but I say whats life without some excitement.

  • There are other tags that can be added to the template. Go crazy, have fun and please post back your versions here.




    Friday, January 21, 2005
     
    A couple of feedback have mentioned the generator tag. Sounds like a good one to add to the template.

    Another feedback mentioned that the lastBuildDate tag is empty. Well yes it is. Lets see what blogger templare variable we can stuff in there.


    - posted by Unknown @ 4:21 AM 36 comments

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