How To: Automated Feeds:
Basic Podcast from a Single Page
The feed you're going to build is a promotional podcast. This will be a Automated
RSS text feed that you will use the Basic interface to build.
In this scenario the Public Relations team regularly records a podcast they
call the FruitCast to promote AMCE's product line. They list all the episodes
on the cast.html page in their directory (06_PublicRelations). Open that file
and you will see that there are two entries in the list. This list has exactly
the sort of content you would want for creating a podcast: a headline or title;
a text summary or story; a link to the audio file; and a date. You will use
this list as the source for the podcast.
Naturally, you will begin by creating a new feed. Press the New Feed button
in the toolbar of the RSS DreamFeeder floating panel. (If RSS DreamFeeder isn't
open you can access it through the Window menu.)
The first step in the basic interface is to select the type of feed (iTunes
Podcast) and to provide the Title and Description of the feed. After entering
that content you click the next button to proceed to the next panel.
The second step is to provide additional descriptive content about the feed.
You can provide as much or as little of this information as you like, but the
more you fill in the easier it will be for aggregators and search engines to
find and organize the content.
Image sizes vary by service, but for iTunes you would want to use a 300x300
image. There is an image in the 00_artshared folder that is ready for your
use.
The third step is to provide the domain name of the website. This is so the
links can be built properly as full urls so they will work on no mater where
your content is republished. If you provided this information when setting
up the website in Dreamweaver's site management tool it will be copied here.
The fourth step is to decide how you want the content for this feed to be
built. The goal is to extract the content of the feed from the releases.html
file. So you'll set the source to be files. Your computer will do the work
so you will select Local Processing.
The fifth step is to specify where the content is that you want to process.
The content is a list within a single web page, and so you will select Page
and then specify the file (cast.html). Because the source is a page and not
a directory searching subdirectories doesn't matter.
The last setting on this panel is one of the more important settings. This
controls when new content is added to the podcast. You want the podcast to
be updated to include any new releases you might later add to the page, so
when the file is modified you need RSS DreamFeeder to look for new content.
Its the default behavior for RSS DreamFeeder when working with a single page
source and its exactly what you want -- add new stuff to the page and it should
be added to the RSS feed too.
Now that you have completed the basic configuration you need to specify what
content elements to extract from the page. To do this you will use the Content
Sampler so press the Launch Content Sampler button.
The RSS DreamFeeder floating panel has now been changed into the Content Sampler,
your tool for sampling the content you wish to extract from the page. The idea
is that you can easily highlight the text you want to use and then sample that
text by pressing the button.
The Content Sampler lists the Content elements your feed is defined to use
and identifies if a match (or Sample) has been defined for that Content. Samples
identify the tag, id, class or template region for that item. Samples with
a dash "-" have not been defined yet (in the current instance, all
of them).
Sample the content for the Headline by selecting Headline from the Content
list in the floating panel, then highlight the text that is the headline (the
big text at the top of the page) and then press the sample button (looks like
an eye-dropper). Notice the sample tells you that you choose a B with class=episodeTitle
(that's the bold tag it is sampling, but only bolds that have
been styled as episodeTitle).
Do the same for the Story (the line after the headline). Notice that it is
sampling the SPAN tags with episodeDescription class that come after the headline
(it should say after the headline in the Sampler list -- you might have to
make the window wider to see).
With Date the default is to simply use the modification date of the file.
That means the date listed will be when you change the page and save it. What
you really want to do is grab the date from the text on the page. You can sample
the Date just like any other piece of content. Try it now and you will see
that it is sampling the TD tag with episodeDate class that comes after the
headline. However, dates are tricky because they have to be real dates that
the computer can easily recognize as a date. If it is unrecognized then the
modification date will be used instead. As long as you stick to basic text
(Jan, January, Feb, February, etc...) and numbers (0-31) and slashes (5/1 or
5/1/2009) it will work.
Now try the Enclosure. You want the Enclosure to use the "Download Episode"
link, so select Episode from the list, then select
the link in the layout and finally press the sample button. Notice that
the sample says HREF from A CLASS=episodeLink. The HREF attribute is the part
of an html link tag that specifies the destination of the link. The Enclosure
in the RSS feed will point to the same content (the audio file) that is specified
in the HREF attribute here.
If the Content Sampler has samples defined for the content entries when you
click on an entry the corresponding text within the document will be highlighted.
Try it by clicking on Headline, Story, Enclosure or Date in the list. Notice
the selection change within the page.
For Author there isn't any content on the page for you to sample. That's OK,
you can just skip it for now. You are done sampling content from the page so
you can click the Done button. The Edit dialog will reopen and your settings
will be transferred back to the RSS feed you were creating.
As you can see you have completed configuring your feed. But when you press
Save it tells you there is an error: Match settings are require for Author.
When you dismiss the error you will be taken to the Advanced interface's Author
panel so you can specify the missing settings. In this scenario the Author
should always be the same thing (a Fixed Value): the text "ACME
F&N". So select Fixed Value and enter ACME F&N for the text.
That is all the Advanced stuff you're going to do in this tutorial -- just
a little taste. You can see that its pretty extensive, but you don't really
need it when you can use the Content Sampler. Press the Basic tab and you will
return to the final panel in the basic set, ready to save the feed. Now press
the Save button and save the feed as cast.rss within the 06_PublicRelations
directory.
The panel you were just looking at had an important reminder in it -- remember
to process your feed. What does that mean? When you were sampling content you
identified what stuff to extract from the page, but the extraction hasn't happened
yet -- you have only been doing the setup work. Processing the feed means extracting
the content from the source page and including it in the RSS feed. This is
also reflected in the RSS DreamFeeder floating panel. It shows your new feed
(FruitCast) in the list and says that it has never been processed, and
that it has 1 file to check (that would be cast.html).
The file must be examined for content and the content must be extracted and
placed into our feed. That is called Processing the feed, and you do it by
selecting your feed from the RSS DreamFeeder floating panel files list (should
already be selected) and pressing the Process button.
While processing you will see a dialog box that informs you about what is
going on.
When the processing is done you will see that your feed has 0 files to check
(in the list in the RSS DreamFeeder floating panel).
Finally, you can try the feed out in your news reader. I like to use Safari
for testing because I can just drag the file I created into the window. You
will probably notice that the link is pointing off to whatever website you
configured earlier and not to the local file. This is the way an RSS feed is
supposed to be. Your RSS content will be repeated on other websites so it has
to have an absolute URL for every link. But if you don't keep that in mind
it can be startling to see the link not work (at least not locally). I want
to assure you that you did it right.
If you happen to have a web server on your computer like I do on mine and
if you provide the right site URL you can make the links work. This sort of
setup is how most web developers work now anyhow, especially anyone doing server-side
coding (like asp/php/etc...). The relationship between absolute URLs and relative/local
URLs is one of the stickiest bits of work, but once configured, RSS DreamFeeder
handles it for you. If you did this part right and the links work then you
can proceed to iTunes and try it out there.
Launch iTunes. Select the Advanced menu and Subscribe to Podcast. Now provide
the url of the podcast. The podcast you created now appears in the Podcast
list in iTunes.
Congratulations -- You have created a Podcast.
Of course the best podcasts are ones that are regularly updated with new and
interesting content. It is this ongoing activity that draws and keeps an audience.
The configuration work you've done on this feed means that once the FruitCast
page is updated all you will have to do to update the RSS feed is press the
Process button. I like that so I'm going to say it again -- one click and you're
updated. Cool.
So there is another MP3 file in the audio folder in 06_PublicRelations called
episode12.mp3. That's your next FruitCast episode.
Now go back to cast.html (the FruitCast page) in Dreamweaver so you can edit
it. The episode descriptions are in a table with the most recent entries at
the top of the table (reverse chronological order). The easiest thing to do
is to copy and paste the row for Episode 11 and then modify it. So select
the whole table row and copy it, then click at the start of the headline and
paste (a new row will be inserted automatically).
Now you change the copied content.
For the headline use: "Episode 12: Oranges are Orange"
For the description use: "You'd be supprised how many people get this one
wrong
Change the date to: May 27
Change the link to link to the episode12.mp3 file in the audio
folder and to say "Download Episode 12"
Now that you are done editing the FruitCast page you need to save it. When
you do save it you will notice that the files list in the RSS DreamFeeder floating
panel now indicates that there is 1 file to check for your podcast.
You have now arrived at the single-click update. Simply select your feed from
the files list in the RSS DreamFeeder floating panel (probably already selected)
and press the Process button.
Your feed is processed, the new content is extracted from the source page,
and it now is in the podcast.
Check it for yourself by loading it into your
RSS reader (if you used Safari you can just press the refresh button in Safari).
If you need to, upload the feed to the website and then test it in iTunes
again. To refresh in iTunes select the podcast from the list and press the
Refresh button at the bottom-right of the window (or right-click and select
Refresh).
Congratulations -- You have updated your podcast.
One other thing you might be interested in. If you want to edit the content
of the feed directly you can use the Content tab of the Edit dialog. Simply
select your feed from the files list in the RSS DreamFeeder floating panel
and press the Edit button (looks like a little pencil) and then press the Content
tab. You can change headlines, stories, dates, links or whatever you need (to
fix a stupid typing error). This is also a useful way to check the content
of a feed if you don't have an RSS reader handy.
If you're interested you may choose to proceed to another tutorial::
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