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Podcast Settings



The Podcast Settings (Forums & Moderators > Forum Manager > Podcast Settings) section allows you to configure iTunes specific settings for your forums.

Podcast feeds will work inside of iTunes (and other aggregates that support enclosures) without any information on this page being filled in. These settings are used when you wish to submit one of your forums as a podcast to iTunes as a podcast that can be searched for and seen from within iTunes.


Enabled
This setting enables the output of the information entered on this page.

Category
This setting corresponds to categories defined within iTunes. This list is subject to being updated by Apple and the latest list can be found at Apple - iTunes - Podcasts. You can update the categories that you are able to choose from by modifying a file in your forums directory that contains the categories that vBulletin displays for your choosing. The file is located on your server in your forums directory at /includes/xml/podcast_vbulletin.xml

Media Author
This is shown in the Artist column in iTunes.

Owner Name
Your name, or the name of the person to be associated with control of this podcast.

Owner Email
Your email, or the email of the person to be associated with control of this podcast.

Image URL
This tag specifies the artwork for your podcast. iTunes prefers square .jpg or .png images that are at least 300 x 300 pixels.

Subtitle
The contents of this tag are shown in the Description column in iTunes. The subtitle displays best if it is only a few words long. If this is left blank, the Summary will be used.

Keywords
This tag allows users to search on text keywords within iTunes. Use commas to separate keywords.

Summary
The contents of this tag are shown in a separate iTunes window that appears when the “circled i" in the Description column is clicked. It also appears on the iTunes page for your podcast. This field can be up to 4000 characters. If this field is left blank, your forum description will be used.

Explicit
Set this to Yes if your podcast contains Explicit material. Not setting this properly can result in your podcast being banned from iTunes.

Requirements:

vBulletin Options > External Data Provider > Enable RSS Syndication must be enabled.

vBulletin Options > External Data Provider > Enable Podcasting must be enabled.

The forum in question must be viewable by guests.

You must set Enabled to Yes and select a Category.

The feed to your podcast must be called with the forumid of the forum. You can not combine multiple forums into a podcast that includes iTunes specific information.
Ex: http://www.example.com/forums/external.php?forumids=2

iTunes only support six filetypes: .m4a, .m4v, .mp3, .mp4, .mov, and .pdf

There are two options to add the enclosure to the podcast. The first option is to add an attachment to the first post of the thread. This option is limited in that:
Attachments in the forum must be viewable by guests.

Due to the decision of Apple to limit valid enclosure urls to those that end with the extensions listed above, podcasting via iTunes will not work on IIS servers and possibly others. If you need help verifying that podcasting will work on your server, please contact vBulletin support. Hopefully, Apple will come to realize that there are better ways to determine valid urls and will lift this restriction in the future.

The second option is to enter a URL in the Podcast URL field when submitting a new thread in the podcast forum.

A podcast is a method for distributing media files over the internet using syndication feeds, such as RSS. Podcasting originated as a way for creators to push their audio files out to iPods. Podcasting is not limited to iPods, as users may download your media files to any player that supports your media as well as choose to play the media on their computer.

The term is also often used to simply describe any .mp3 audio file that is available for download from a website by clicking on a link. In regards to vBulletin, podcast media is only accessible from your RSS feeds.

Configuring vBulletin for Podcasting

Forums & Moderators > Forum Manager > Controls > Podcast Settings

Choose a forum that will host the podcast files and configure the iTunes settings. Podcast feeds will work inside of iTunes, and other clients that support RSS Enclosures, without any information on this page being filled in. These settings are used when you wish to submit one of your forums as a podcast to iTunes as a podcast that can be searched for within iTunes.

Set Enabled to Yes
Select a Category

You may ignore the rest of the settings if you like. If you would like to configure them so that iTunes works with your podcast, see Podcast Settings for detailed instructions of each option.

This forum must be viewable to guests so verify this by logging out of your forum and checking if you can view threads and attachments within this forum. If not, configure the permissions for this forum to allow guests to view.

vBulletin Options > External Data Provider > Enable RSS Syndication must be enabled.
vBulletin Options > External Data Provider > Enable Podcasting must be enabled.

Setting up a Test Podcast



Browse to the forum that you setup for podcasting and click on New Thread. You will see a few new posting options that pertain to podcasting.

Podcast URL - URL to your media file. Do not enter a value in this field if you are going to use the vBulletin attachment system to upload your media file.

Filesize - Size of media file. Do not enter a value in this field unless an error message asks you to do so after submitting the thread.

Subtitle - Subtitle of your media file, used by iTunes and can be ignored.

Explicit - Check if the media file contains explicit language, used by iTunes and can be ignored.

Keywords - Keywords for iTunes search, can be ignored.

Author - Author of the media file, used by iTunes and can be ignored.

You have two options for specifying your media file:

You may upload your media file to your website, or another website, via ftp and link to it directly. To use this method, specify the complete URL in the Podcast URL that appears on the New Thread screen. You do not need to specify the filesize unless your are prompted to after submitting the thread. If you want your media file to appear in the thread to those that are viewing the thread via your forums, you will need to place the link within your post, such as Download: http://www.example.com/podcast.mp3 The handling of the media file will be handled automatically for those that view the podcast forum via RSS.
The second option for specifying your media file is to use the vBulletin attachment system. You will be limited by the permissions of your usergroup. Only the first uploaded file will appear in the RSS feed as well. iTunes will not function with attachment uploads on IIS servers and some Apache servers. It is best to use the first method when possible.
Note:

You may specify any filetype that you wish, but take note that iTunes only supports six filetypes:

.m4a, .m4v, .mp3, .mp4, .mov, and .pdf

Testing Your Podcast

If you used the vBulletin attachment system, you should see a normal attachment link within the first post of the thread that you just created. If using the Podcast URL method (preferred) then you will only see a link if you manually placed a link within the first post.

For this example, we will use a forumid of 10 for our podcast forum. You can get the forumid of your podcast forum by hovering over any links to your podcast forum and looking for forumid=10.

The link to our example podcast forum is

http://www.example.com/forums/external.php?forumids=10

This is the URL that you would enter into iTunes and other RSS clients that support enclosures. Enclosure is the technical name for including a media file via RSS and is the preferred nomenclature for some clients.
Note:

Do not specify more than one forumid for your podcast URL

Further Details

Users that are subscribed to your podcast forum will make periodic queries to the podcast URL to check for updates. Some clients can be programmed to automatically download the media file when a new post is found.

You may post as many threads in your podcast forum as you wish, whereas the first post of each thread will be considered a podcast. You should include a media file with each thread but are not required to do so.

You may allow your users to respond to the podcast thread, as a normal thread, as it will not affect the viewing of the podcast by podcast clients.

Thanks to the Vbulletin manual for the above