Podcasting @ weblogs.ucalgary.ca

The weblogs.ucalgary.ca service is now a full-on podcasting server. It's so unbelievably easy to publish podcasts using the new Drupal 4.6 software!

Podcasting test | weblogs.ucalgary.ca

Wow. THAT was easy. When creating a new weblog post, just use the "Attach File" section near the bottom of the form to select an .mp3 file. It will be automatically uploaded to this server and inserted into the RSS feed for distribution by subscribers! Then, if they have an RSS aggregator application that understands enclosures (podcasting), it will be automatically downloaded.

It literally can't get easier than that! Let the University of Calgary podcasts begin!

The one minor nit that I have to pick is this: If a post with an audio attachment/enclosure is later updated (text added to the blog entry, etc...) then the audio file is downloaded again. This is related to the lack of a element in the element - something simple like using the URL of the post as a guid would work, so aggregators don't key on the pubDate element - which is updated with subsequent edits to the post, hence the re-downloading of enclosures. More info here.

UPDATE: I hacked my Drupal installation to properly generate the element for RSS items in the feed. Simple fix. Add this line after line #717 of includes/common.inc :

$output .= ' ' . check_url($link) ."\n";

(that's all one line)

drupal weblogs.ucalgary.ca

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