Digital World

How to Make a Podcast

A podcast is an easy way of distributing media files

over the internet, and this article will tell how to make a

podcast. The first thing necessary is a domain, and a

host on which to store the media files for the podcast.

Getting a domain is simple and easy, there are many

domain registrars that can register a domain for

someone for a small fee. Some of these domain

registrars are GoDaddy.com, Dotster, or Network

Solutions are some that provide domains. The domain

registrar will, for a small fee, enter the chosen domain,

provided it is not being used, into the computers that

form the backbone of the internet. These computers will

be told where the domain is located on the internet;

what host it is that holds the domain's information. In

order to give them that information, the name servers

that are held by the host need to be associated with the

domain. Once the domain is in place, a good host

should be found. The host that is chosen should offer a

large amount of both disk space and a much larger

amount bandwidth. Disk space is neccessary because

the site which holds the podcast will be storing large

media files; audio or video files that take up a lot of

space and are difficult to compress. The large

bandwidth is necessary because transferring these large

files many times to many different people will use up

the quota quickly. A good amount of diskspace would

be several GigaBytes, bandwidth should be in the tens

or hundreds of Gigabytes. Once the host is set up, it

should offer you a couple of addresses called

nameservers. Inputting these server addresses into the

site where the domain was registered will complete the

domain setup and allow the site to be found on the

internet.

The next step for people who want to know how to

make a podcast is installing the software necessary to

maintain the podcast. A small piece of coding called

dircaster.php can be used to set up a basic level of

podcast. Dircaster.php can be found easily by searching

for it in any search engine. Once it is located, it should

be edited to reflect the particulars of the domain and

uploaded to the site. Dircaster.php will generate an RSS

file, or feed, that tells the subscriber about the new files

available for downloading. To begin podcasting, create

the audio files that should be podcast, fill in the

information about the file such as date, author, etc, and

upload them to the same directory that contains

dircaster.php. You now have a podcast, and all that is

needed is to publicise the address of the file

dircaster.php. To update the podcast with new

information, just upload the new files. Other things to

make the podcast better might be a site that contains

information about the podcast, but it isn't necessary.