How do I enable Podcasting?

There is nothing stopping you doing what you suggest with non-podcast methods. You describe a system that means users must visit the site and click a link to manually download a file. That isn't really what makes a podcast.

What makes a podcast different from a regular audio file is that new episodes (of subscribed series) appear automatically on iPods, without any real effort on their owner's behalf.

From the end user perspective, a podcast is maintained automatically. When they start iTunes, any podcasts that application is subscribed to will be automatically searched for new episodes. If there are any, they will be downloaded. Next time their iPod is connected, the episode will be transferred automatically.

From the podcaster perspective, the episode files have to be created and uploaded as you describe - but must also be added to an xml file that iTunes is connecting to. That's how iTunes gets to know about new episodes.

If I understand your needs correctly, you are looking for the functionality to allow podcast creators the ability to upload their files as they would upload any other file. To make it a podcast, though, someone (either you or the podcast creator) then needs to maintain the xml file (always the same URL!) that listeners can set their iTunes towards.

It doesn't sound so hard to set your website up to do that. It sounds like you have it set up to receive uploads. The main thing to do is to read up on the xml feed - which would be the same for any system (not just Drupal).

I just Googled for "create podcast xml" and got this page:
http://www.podcast411.com/howto_1.html

It looks like it might help you out.

Finally, you have to tell people the address of the xml file - effectively the "podcast address" - for their iTunes.

alaken,

Could you tell me where you found Narkoba's podcast module? I can't seem to find it anywhere

Regards

Patrick

Edit:
OK, I've just seen Narkoba's new module is here:
http://www.narkoba.be/narkoba/?q=node/185

I'm going to try running that on my dev site, as he says it's fully iTunes-ed up. Should be be 4.7 ready too, I guess.

Orig post:
Sorry for not seeing your post earlier.

I've never learnt any php, so all I know is what I've gained by looking through other people's code.

I didn't bother to comment my code as I made changes, so I don't know what I added. It also seems that the site that originally hosted the module is gone, so I've not got an original for comparison. Ooops.

NB: There's quite a lot of this module that I don't use as I don't need it, and quite a lot that I don't use because it doesn't deal with items the way I would like to.
I'm about to relaunch my site, new theme, new functionality, etc - so I'm looking to change the way I do this too. As easy as it ought to be, I just can't find anything that will handle podcasts 'properly' in Drupal.

(And yes, I'm more than willing to be asked 'what do you want that Drupal can't do?' - as someone will probably be able to tell me exactly how to do it!)

Still, here's some bits that should help you get you on your way:

Search for this line:
$channel = array_merge($channel_defaults, $channel);
and follow it with:

  $output = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>\n";
  $output .= "<!DOCTYPE rss [<!ENTITY % HTMLlat1 PUBLIC \"-//W3C//ENTITIES Latin 1 for XHTML//EN\" \"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml-lat1.ent\">]>\n";
  $output .= "<rss version=\"". $channel["version"] . "\"  xml:base=\"". $base_url ."\" xmlns:itunes=\"http://www.itunes.com/DTDs/Podcast-1.0.dtd\">\n";
  $output .= format_podcastrss_channel($channel['title'], $channel['link'], $channel['description'], $channel['developer'], $channel['pubDate'], $channel['lastBuildDate'], $channel['image'], $channel['itunes_author'], $items, $channel['language']);
  $output .= "</rss>\n";

Also, make sure that the following is a few lines below, in the section:

  $output .= ' <itunes:author>'. check_plain($itunes_author) ."</itunes:author>\n";
  $output .= ' <itunes:image href="'. check_plain($image) .'"/>';		
  $output .= ' <itunes:subtitle>'. check_plain($title) ."</itunes:subtitle>\n";
  $output .= ' <itunes:summary>'. check_plain($description) ."</itunes:summary>\n";

The xml / rss works much more nicely if you find:
* Displays an RSS podcast feed from podcast with nid = $nid.
and then in the next section change or add these:

  	$channel['link'] = "http://freshdynamics.net";
	$channel['itunes_author'] =  "Produced and presented by Rob";  

and edit to your taste.