How to Administrate an iTunes Podcast
Apple's iTunes is the most ubiquitous method used to deliver podcasts to an audience. Originally, podcasts were were designed to be delivered as audio files to an iPod, hence the name. Today, podcasts can include audio, video or text files. To administer an iTunes podcast, you must first create an episode or episodes. You must then create a real simple syndication, or RSS, feed for the podcast. Your RSS feed is composed in the extensible markup language, or XML, a text format.
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Instructions
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Create your podcast episodes. A traditional podcast is an audio recording, but iTunes supports other document formats. You can feed a podcast in iTunes with video, audio or text files. The supported formats include .m4a, .mp3, .mov, .mp4, .m4v, .pdf and .epub.
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Post the podcast episodes to a website with a public address. You must have a site to host your podcast and it must be located through a public URL. This means you cannot push podcast episodes to iTunes from your home computer, unless you are hosting a website with a static address at home.
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Create an XML file that conforms to the RSS 2.0 specification and that includes the recommended iTunes RSS tags. You can create this file using a text editor or a specialized utility application or online service. The non-standard RSS tags that iTunes recommends include <itunes:summary> and <itunes:category>. The standard fields that iTunes uses to index your podcast are the title, author, description and keywords tags at the <channel> and <item> levels of your XML file.
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Post your XML feed file to your Web server and submit the URL for your RSS feed to iTunes. Different hosting services such as WordPress, Blogger or Drupal will allow you configure your feed different manners. Consult the documentation for your site's publishing platform. To submit the URL for your podcast feed, open the submission form -- https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/publishPodcast -- in iTunes on your computer.
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Update the RSS feed when you add new episodes. When you create a new podcast episode, add a new <item> section to your podcast feed XML file using a text editor or the utility you originally used to create the XML feed. The iTunes directory reads all feeds once per day and will add new episodes after it updates your feed.
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Tips & Warnings
You will need a valid iTunes account to submit a podcast. Log in to your account before submitting the feed.
