This post is part of series on Podcasting, beginning with Podcasting 101: Turning an audio file into a podcast ready audio file.

Warning: Technical post

This article will cover creating your very own podcast feed; which is to say, creating an XML file which will be your RSS feed. What I will not being covering, however, is recording the actual audio.

With that being said, let's make sure we're on the same page and define exactly what a podcast is. A podcast, is simply an audio file with an RSS feed attached to it. So, in other words, a subscribe-able audio file.

Now, let's dive into how to create your XML file.

Ideally you''ll use a web authoring program, but you can also use a simple text editing program such as Notepad for Windows or Text Edit for the Mac.

Here's an example of the code you'll use within the file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<channel>
<title>Enter the title of your podcast</title>
<description>Enter general description of your podcast</description>
<link>Enter the URL for the website of your podcast</link>
<language>en-us</language>
<atom:link href="Enter the full URL for your XML file" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
<copyright>Enter current copyright</copyright>
<lastBuildDate>11 Feb 2009 11:30:00 -0500</lastBuildDate>
<pubDate>11 Feb 2009 11:30:00 -0500</pubDate>
<webMaster>email for podcast owner</webMaster>

<item>
<title>Enter title of your individual podcast</title>
<link>Enter URL of your podcast</link>
<guid>Enter the URL to your mp3 file</guid>
<description>Enter the description of your individual podcast</description>
<enclosure url="Enter the URL to your mp3 file" length="15389705" type="audio/mpeg"/>
<category>Podcasts</category>
<pubDate>11 Feb 2009 11:30:00 -0500</pubDate>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

Red text is information that you need to enter for yourself, black can be copied. Now for some explanation behind some of the tags.

<description>
When this is used closer to the <channel> tag, then you want to enter a general description of your podcast as a whole. When it is used later on under the <item> tag, then this is where you would describe the individual podcast you are uploading.

<atom:link href="Enter the full URL for your XML file" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
Enter the URL of your xml file. Example: http://www.zzz.com/rss.xml, inside the quotations.

<copyright>Enter current copyright</copyright>
Such as "Copyright 2010"

<lastBuildDate><pubDate>
What works on both of these is entering the date and time of the last time you updated your XML file.

This must be entered in the exact format you saw listed above.

day = "Mon"  / "Tue" /  "Wed"  / "Thu" /  "Fri"  / "Sat" /  "Sun"
month  =  "Jan"  /  "Feb" /  "Mar"  /  "Apr" /  "May"  /  "Jun" /  "Jul"  /  "Aug" /  "Sep"  /  "Oct" /  "Nov"  /  "Dec"

<webMaster>
Email address for the person responsible for the technical piece of the podcast.

*With that you have completed all the information needed for the <channel> section, after this, begins the first <item> section. Outside the dates and times, this information shouldn't change much. The <item> section will be about the individual podcast you are adding. Each time you add your new podcast, you will add another <item> section.

<title>
Title of your individual podcast.

<link>
Here you enter the URL to your podcast. Some people keep links and show notes for each individual podcast, if you do that, enter that URL here. If not, you can just enter the podcast's website that you entered earlier.

<guid>
Enter the URL to the mp3 file for the individual podcast.

<description>
Enter description of the individual podcast.

<enclosure url="Enter the URL to your mp3 file" length="15389705" type="audio/mpeg"/>
The <enclosure> tag is unique in that there is no closing tag to match it. Enter the URL again for the mp3 file inside the quotation marks. Next, enter the "length" (actually size of file) in bytes. You can find this by looking at the properties of your mp3 file by either right-clicking (PC) or ctrl-clicking (Mac).

<pubDate>
The last <pubDate> tag is for the publication date/time of that particular individual podcast. Each time you add a new <item> with a new podcast, this should be updated as well.

Now, save that file as .xml, and that's it. You have your XML file. Note that iTunes has many specific tags that you will want to add into this XML file for publication in their system. I'll post more on those later.

Each time you want to post a new podcast all you do is add a new <item> section.

Unfortunately, you'll still not done with your XML file though. The last thing you need to do is validate your feed. There a few different feed validators out there but here is probably the most common, Feed Validator. Validating your feed simply means that you are going to run your feed through a program that scans it for any errors. If you have some errors, it'll let you know. Once you've got a validated feed, you are now through with Podcasting 102.

Look for more posts coming soon taking you the rest of the way through publicizing your podcast.