Generating the RSS File

Preparing your podcast for syndication

The RSS file is what will make a "podcast" out of your ordinary audio files by sending out the information for updates to your podcast. There are two parts to the RSS file for a podcast: channels and items.

The channel is the main information about your podcast. If you think of this in terms of radio, this would be analagous to your radio station. The channel includes all the information about your podcast "station" including the name of the podcast channel, the link to it, who owns it, etc.

The second part of your RSS file are the items. The items are the actual files that you want to send out. If we continue the radio analogy, the items would be the list of songs that you play. For each item in your podcast, you will include information like the title, the description, the running length, and a link to where users can download the file.

To create an RSS feed, you will need to generate an XML file. This looks a lot like HTML, the code used to build pages for the web. Since most users are not going to be web developers, the form below can be used to generate the RSS code for starting your podcast.