Getting started with podcasting

A podcast is an easy way of distributing media files over the Internet, and this article will tell how to make apodcast.

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 forsomeone 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 necessary 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 disk space 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 name servers. 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.