This allows me to create a single directory of content and RSS files that can be accessed by any of our other PHP web pages. So the main podcast entry page lists all the casts on our site, and th elistings provide links to web sites connected to the audio, a description, a URL for the MP3 file, and now, stealing the idea from the EDUCAUSE blogs, the slick niftyplayer, and embedded flash audio player, e.g.:

But by setting up categories, I can have content filtered to feeds that are associated with specific project, such as our Dialogue Day podcasts, Ocotillo podcasts, and our Online Learning Group podcasts.

MovableType generates the correct RSS 2.0 feeds with proper enclosure tags, as well as generates the small text files that are used to provide the content to these pages. There is also another template that provides the content used to display as “What is Podcasting” info on these different pages. It works well because it is not publishing a full blog, just some small bits of content files.

For example, a snapshot of my current directory includes:

where *.inc are the main podcats listings, *_nav.inc are shorter listings that are just links to the sites that include the audio, and *.xml is a podcast feed.

Below I will describe in a bit more detail how it is done and provide a download of the template files. To use these you will need to

* have a web site that uses PHP for its content pages
* have an understanding of linking to web directories up and down a web server structure
* use or be able to set up MovableType on your server (I use the last free version, 2.661, but it ought to work on the 3.x versions)

The Road to Podcast Publishing

Again, this is assuming you have a running version of MovableType and are capable of creating new weblog sites.

1. Download my set up template files:
   http://cogdogblog.com/alan/mt_podcast_template.zip
2. Download and install MT-Enclosures plugin from:http://brandon.fuller.name/archives/hacks/mtenclosures/
3. My template includes the niftyplayer Flash MP3 file, but if you want to do more or learn more about, it check out:
   http://varal.org/media/mp3player/sample.html
4. Create top level directory on your web server named “podcast” (it need not be top level, but makes it easy to reference links via HTMNl like href="/podcast/somefile....". Set permissions on directory to 0777.
5. Create a new MT blog that publishes to this directory. It’s name and description do not matter as that info is not even used.
6. A total of 6 templates are used:
   

   You will only need 3 of the Index templates listed below, the others can be deleted. The content for each is brief:

   1. About The content that describes what podcasts are. Save as filename: about.inc using about.inc.template
   2. All The main listing file for all podcast., Save as filename: all.inc using all.inc.template
   3. RSS 2.0 The main podcast feeds for all podcasts. Save as filename: all.xml using all.xml.template
7. Create 3 Category Templates:
   1. Category RSS 2.0 (podcast feeds) using template category-rss.template
   2. Category Short (sidebar links) using template category-short.template
   3. Category Summary (displayed feeds) using template category-summary.template
8. Create Movabletyoe categories for all subsidiary web sites that will have their own feeds. Use abbreviated names- mine are “ocotillo”, “dd”, and “olg”:
   
9. The template downlaod includes a basic index.php file that can be used as a starter for the main /podcast site. The relevant parts are:

   <p><a href="/podcast/all.xml">
   <img src="/podcast/rss.gif" alt="RSS" width="36" height="14"
   hspace="4" align="left" border="0"></a> 
   Podcast feed: 
   <a href="/podcast/all.xml">http://www.mybigfatsite.com/podcast/all.xml</a>
   </p>
   
   <!-- begin all site feeds -->
   <?php include $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/podcast/all.inc'?>
   <!-- end all site feeds -->
   
   <h2>More About Podcasts...</h2>
   
   <!-- begin podcast info -->
   <?php include $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/podcast/about.inc'?>
   <!-- end podcast info -->
   
   

   and a sample subdirectory podcast,php file shows how a site specific include works- note the association of the category_name that matches the names created above:

   <p><a href="/podcast/category_name.xml">
   <img src="/podcast/rss.gif" alt="RSS" width="36" 
   height="14" hspace="4" align="left" border="0"></a> 
   Podcast feed: <a href="/podcast/category_name.xml">
   http://www.mybigfatsite.com/podcast/category_name.xml</a>
   </p>
   
   <!-- begin all site feeds -->
   <?php include $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/podcast/category_name.inc'?>
   <!-- end all site feeds -->
   
   <h2>More About Podcasts...</h2>
   
   <!-- begin podcast info -->
   <?php include $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/podcast/about.inc'?>
   <!-- end podcast info -->
   

10. When creating the posts that provide the podcast content for one audio file, we are using two of the MovableType entry fields as special containers:
    
    1. Use any title that is descriptive
    2. Assign to one of more categories
    3. In the Entry Body, include a description, and also include a full hyperlink for the MP3 file so the Enclosure tag will pick it up
    4. Put the Full URL for the MP3 file in the Excerpt field
    5. Put a URL the Feed title should link to in the “Keywords” field
    6. Publish!

Hope that helps someone. Your mileage may vary, blah blah blah.

I’ve yet to join the merry gang of Podcasting Is The Greatest Thing Since ________, but I do so a value of adding more audio content to our site, capturing events, meetings, interviews etc. This will be a hasty and haphazard explanation of what I did, cause I really want to get home and have some dinner ;-)

First of all, I will be capturing the audio on the cheap, plopping down a new iRiver iFP 799 MP3 recorded (1 Gb model with external line and input ports). It’s a love hate relationship -I love being able to record like 40 hours of audio on this thing the size of maybe a role of quarters, and I love the audio quality. I hate, despise the user interface on the thing. I cannot even remember the simplest things- each button has about 5 different functions. Someone could do a thesis on how crappy the human interface is.

I used it at our September 2 meeting of our Ocotillo Online Learning Group at the request of colleague Holly Beene. Holly was our first presenter, and in Frijolero – Inspiration and development of podcasting inspired Grant Project in Intercultural Communications, she was sharing her idea for having students do some audio production of what she calls “Digital audio postcards”:

My goal is to put a human face on culture. I will explore the learning potential of students’ first hearing and reflecting on a variety of authentic stories in digital “audio postcards.” Students will then construct personal knowledge through identifying, composing, and recording a brief original story. The research question is: will personal stories constructed in capsulized audio correlate to students’ ability to develop supporting detail for assignments and to retain course concepts?

The project evolved in the confluence of narrative tradition, my personal love of audiobooks, experimentation with digital storytelling, and a random drive-time report from Youth Radio in May 2004 – a four-minute Border Story from Tijuana presenting a point of view sure to surprise and engage many students. It did. If the instructional use of audio, a medium students are clearly attuned to, can be used effectively as a simple storytelling device without the time commitments and technological challenges of multimedia, then the project could easily be extended to other courses and disciplines.

She asked me to bring the iRiver to show the audience what she is considering using for recording. I thought to myself, let’s go one demo better, and record her session to attach to the meeting notes. So I got a 31 minute recording without too much trouble… so I thought we ought to be doing this for presentations at future meetings. And then I thought of a few other projects where we had recorded things like student panel discussions and session presenters… and I saw a web of audio and podcasts somehow tied together.

I first considered using the desktop podcast desktop creator Feeder (Mac OSX) which did a decent job, even handled the uploads and had template options for the various podcast formats. I was seeking something that would not only render the feeds, but do somethings to allow my to add some summary/descriptive data for a set fo feeds.

So I rolled up my sleeves, pulled out my decrepit version of MovableType 2.661 and created a mini site that would not be for creating a blog, but for creating a series of content files I could use site wide via PHP includes. The use of the MT Enclosures plug-in allows my feeds to add the RSS enclosure tags for any linked MP3 in the blog entry file.

My individual templates include

* about.inc: a general chunk of HTML to explain “what is a podcast” and add some links to reference site. This can go on a summary page that explains a project’s podcasting content… on the OLG example, the 2nd 3rd paragraph and the bulleted reference list are from this file.
* content file and RSS feed for all reference podcasts we will collect. This will go to a future overall MCLI podcasting page yet to be created.

I use categories to associate entries with different project sites, so there are 3 category templates:
* a detailed listing include file- includes the title, web reference URL, description, and date for an item that includes an MP3 audio. This provides to info in the box for the on the OLG podcast listing. Since the updates will be not very frequent, this is much faster that running it through an RSS parser. The one tricky thing in my template is I am putting the URL for the site it references in the MT keywords field, and I need to make sure the MP3 is references as a link in the post body. The stubby template looks like:

<ul class="podcast_sum">
<MTEntries  lastn="20">
       <li><a href="MTEntryKeywords"><$MTEntryTitle$></a><br />
       <span class="posted"><$MTEntryDate format="%b %e, %Y %I:%M %p"$></span><br />
        <$MTEntryBody$>
  </li>
</MTEntries>
</ul>

* a short listing used for site navigation sidebars. This is just a simple list with links to podcast content, and is used to populate say the smal left side bar listing on the OLG main page. This is even a shorter template:

<ul class="podcast_short">
<MTEntries lastn="5">
       <li><a href="<$MTEntryKeywords$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a></li>
</MTEntries>
</ul>

* and a category RSS feed, to be the published URL for the podcast, e.g.:
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/podcast/olg.xml

With these pieces in place, I just need to use MovableType to publish an entry, and associate it with a category, and it will create the RSS feeds and the little content nibblets I can use across my web sites.

I have this in mind since our double events happening Friday we are grabbing a good chunk of the presenters as audio.

It took about 30 minutes of adding new filters to the MT Blacklist, running the Despam routine. I deleted somewhere between 150 and 200 ping spams. The interesting thing was among the usual suspects (pills and porn) was a majority of links to various Mp3 sites– what’s with that?

Other preventative measures included:
* renaming the Trackback script and adjusting the MT config files. This necessitates rebuilding all pages of all blogs running off of the site
* deleting the option of Trackback email notification. Since there have been no legit trackbacks in a year, why bother emailing spam notes?
* turning off the “allow_tb_pings” flag in the database for old entries.

It’s a lesser used site, and the infestation is pretty minor compared to other’s sites.

To re-iterate, maybe re-state: I like the notion of the service Trackback provides but the implementation is faulty, yet nothing exists to fill in the space. So what are we to do?

Hello, Google- remove the PageRank incentive for spam placed links- spank the Pills Porn Casion link spammers down to the basement.

First I had not responded to the comment about updating my Feedburner settings. Well, 4 months later, and I sprung into action, updating the blog URL, and making sure my links were now coming from del.icio.us rather than furl. I’ve tagged it into my WP templates, but my feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/cogdogblog is now up to date.

The other topic I never mentioned was dealing with the 2+ years of old entries at CogDogBlog 1.0. When I did my migration research, there were alot of methodologies for the migrate in place, where one tries to replicate all of the old Movable Type URLs into the new site, so there are no lost links.

My strategy was different. I left the old blog as is, although I did export all the entries and import them into the new Wp blog. But back on the old blog, I updated the MovableType Individual Entry template to insert a “forwarding address” link, for example see this entry from January 2005, where above the content is:

Note: CogDogBlog has a new WordPress powered home. All entries from this version have been moved there, so as a guide dog service try finding this article in its new home.

Rather than try and hack my way to a direct link to the actual WordPress version, my link goes to the search script for the WordPress version and inserts the title as the search parameters, yielding the result the goes to the CDB 2.0 version of the same post.

It is not the most brilliant approach but good enough. For those interested in the MovableType template code to do this, I used was:

<em><strong>Note:</strong> CogDogBlog has a new 
<a href="http://cogdogblog.com/">WordPress 
powered home</a>. All entries from this version have been moved 
there, so as a guide dog service try 
<a href="http://cogdogblog.com/index.php?
s=<$MTEntryTitle encode_url="1"$>">
finding this  article in its new home</a>. </em>

Our complaint department has not had any feedback regarding this (although someone did turn in a lost sock)

The new feature is a link along the front page and archive pages (and individual entries) where the line has links for comments, trackbacks, etc that says “IM this”. Clicking the link will open an iChat/AIM client chat window with the URL in the chat entry area, so all you need to do is pick a buddy to share the URL with.

Stealing this from Preshrunk’s entry on “Feature Creep” (who stole it from someone else, go stealing!), it is a simple matter of a link that looks like:

<a href=aim:goim?message=http://www.blah.com/blog/the/url/for/this/post">IM this</a>

where in MovableType templates it looks like:

<a href=aim:goim?message=<$MTEntryPermalink$>">IM this</a>

Okay, this is pretty low on the potential use scale, but rather simple to do for newbie template twidlers.

Like I said, waiting for MovableType to rebuild 800 posts is but one more reason to wake up and join the WP crowd (yes I will James, no need to spur me on, it’s a matter of time). MT is like, so…. 2002. Tired.

When the switch happens, it will likely be a conversion attempt of the past CDB 800 posts, but sitting at a new to be determined URL, and leave this old blog as an embarrassing artifact.

It was fairly trivial with BBEdit to semi-manually sift out all the spam roach poop. There were a total of 1947 rows in the comment table of the database (for about 6 blogs, mostly inactive) and out of those, I deleted 1662 spammies, easily identified by their repeated patterns, url encrusted comments, and general stench. There were sequences of more than 150 in quick succession to a dormant blog (which is now fenced off).

And the captcha security code on the comment form is working like a dream, perfection, baby.

This would not have been possible had not Audree, our eportfolio programming genius, been gracious enough to help with the cryptic perl installs of the GD.pm and GD perl libraries. Thanks Aud!

Some notes:

(*) Yes, D’Arcy, I know that captchas are a total barrier for the visually impaired. My plan (not fully implemented) is to provide a link to our standard feedback form which is accessible. This form publishes no content online so is useless for spammers (though they try, fools).

(*) The captcha takes away my previous restriction that all comments had to be previewed; again D’Arcy, I agree it was a PITA, but gone now. This might be the tradeoff for the first point?

(*) My individual entries can now include the comment for rather than putting them all in pop-up windows.

(*) I’ll be testing this to see how effective it is, not just on CDN but the Low Threshold Applications site as well. Out LTA authors need not be bothered by phenterminegamblingbeastiality link foisting.

(*) It may not be perfect as folks are already working on breaking visual captchas.

I still plan to try maybe later this month a migration to WordPress. It really seems to have more flexibility (after doing an MT rebuild of 800+ entries I see the value of a dynamic publishing WP blog) and to be honest it feels like it did in 2003 when I looked at blogs- the blogs I liked reading and looking at were published in MT2.x– but these days, the ones looking and feeling cool are Word Press (and Drupal). While MT3.x has some desirable features, it hardly feels much more evolutionary than what I have now, and really feels, well stale and dated.

Plus I understand there are a number of very effective WP spam fightinh tools. MT has 1- the MT-Blacklist plugin (yes, Cheryl told me about Brad Choate’s new antiSpam plug-in… requires MT3, so fugggedaboddit).

Of course it is subjective! It’s my blog.

FYI, James Seng has ported his MT captcha plug-in to his new Drupal run blog.

So cya, “Absinth452″ and pals. Go crap on someone elses blog.

A good post title, grabs attention, sets the mode, and I often tried (in vain) to hit the punny spot. It’s worth being original, and just not having a dry, ‘just the facts ma’am’ sort of title.

So I thought, why not peruse all of them via a MT template that displays all blog entries listed my title in alpha order? The template was a snap, the meat of it being:

<ol class="posted">
<MTEntries sort_by="title" sort_order="ascend">
<li>
<a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>">
<$MTEntryTitle$></a>  
(<$MTEntryDate format="%B %e, %Y %I:%M %p$>)
</li>
</MTEntries>
</ol>

So here it is, not available in any store, the full collection A-Z, 837 (and counting) CogDogBlog’s Greatest (and not so Great) Hits. And I could recall the topics of most of them except for a few… My personal of the best include:

• A Sheep in Wolve’s Clothing: I am Teaching Online (February 9, 2004 10:12 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/02/09/sheep.php
• BackTrack to TrackBack (April 19, 2003 03:35 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2003/04/19/trackback.php
• Bb-igfoot: Are there More than Blurry Photos of ePortfolios? (November 15, 2004 04:12 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/11/15/bbigfoot.php
• Beautiful, Textbook Instructional Design… I Yawned All the Way to the Post Test (September 14, 2004 10:59 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/09/14/yawn.php
• Breeze– A Mighty Wind– But the Audio Editing Blows (March 6, 2004 11:14 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/03/06/breeze.php
• But Will Flickr Have A Manicure As Well? (January 24, 2005 08:26 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/01/24/flickr.php
• Captain Biff Flies the MLX Lead Balloon, Powered By A Breeze (March 12, 2004 10:29 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/03/12/captain_biff_flies_t.php
• Creating RSS (bottle opener optional) (July 29, 2003 03:17 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2003/07/29/creating_rss_bottle_.php
• Flickr: The Land of 10,000 Memes (December 30, 2004 01:01 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/12/30/flickr.php
• Hey (Hic)… this Merlot is tasting better… (September 10, 2003 09:58 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2003/09/10/hey_hic_this_merlot_.php
• Hey Phentermine Pusher: You Left Your Roach Prints in Our Spam Honey Pot (December 13, 2004 09:10 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/12/13/gotcha.php
• I Blog Therefore I am… (April 19, 2003 09:18 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2003/04/19/cdb.php
• I Can’t (Blah blah blah blah) Read Long (Blah blah blah) Academic Papers (January 24, 2005 07:03 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/01/24/blah.php
• I’m Bored As Hell And I’m Not Gonna ……. zzzzz (March 7, 2005 04:41 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/03/07/im_bored_as_hell_and.php
• It’s Brown But Looks Awfully Familiar (December 19, 2004 10:10 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/12/19/familiar.php
• Kung-Log: Neo Says “Whoah” (December 10, 2003 03:55 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2003/12/10/kung_log.php
• Larry, Curly, or Moe on the Server Install (January 7, 2005 05:44 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/01/07/stooge.php
• Learning Object Reuse Acknowledgment (an idea, an acronym, and not much more) (February 13, 2004 11:23 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/02/13/lora.php
• Look What the Referer Dragged In (November 14, 2003 07:11 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2003/11/14/look_what_the_refere.php
• Mamas, Don’t Let Your Programmers Be Web Designers (February 29, 2004 05:09 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/02/29/programmers.php
• Meta-Data Yeti-Data (March 3, 2004 09:40 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/03/03/yetidata.php
• McLuhan On a Dime (October 9, 2004 09:14 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/10/09/mcluhan.php
• My Dentist Has an RSS Feed (March 29, 2005 07:49 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/03/29/dentist.php
• My Left Big Toe is a Learning Object (January 23, 2004 02:15 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/01/23/toe.php
• North of the Border……. (eh?) (July 9, 2004 11:36 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/07/09/eh.php
• ObjectExegesisParanoia (June 4, 2004 02:01 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/06/04/definitions.php
• Phil Phinds Phriendly Trackback (October 2, 2003 11:08 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2003/10/02/phil_phinds_phriendl.php
• RSS Equalizer- Order Before Midnight Tonight and Get the Free Turnip Twaddler! (July 3, 2004 11:41 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/07/03/rss_ripoff.php
• Repository of (Learning Object) Dreams (October 2, 2003 01:10 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2003/10/02/repository_of_learni.php
• Sipping MERLOT’s RSS Feeds: Is this Boone’s Farm or Dom Perignon? (August 27, 2003 11:35 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2003/08/27/sipping_merlots_rss_.php
• Sit. Down. Roll over. RollUp RSS Feeds (March 7, 2004 06:41 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/03/07/rollup.php
• Sometimes You Spend So Much Time and Effort Thinking of a Cute or Clever Title for A Blog Post That You Completely Forget What You Were Going to Write About (October 21, 2004 06:23 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/10/21/title.php
• Spam’s Quiet on the Western Front (October 3, 2004 07:43 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/10/03/quiet.php
• Spam: The International Game of Intrigue and Mystery (October 3, 2004 08:11 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/10/03/spam_game.php
• The Grand VideoCasting Future: Watching Me Say Ummm (February 24, 2005 07:05 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/02/24/videocast.php
• The Serendipitic Web: Google Defines to Biff to A Fallen Tomahwak (March 25, 2004 10:36 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/03/25/biff.php
• Thrice Warned: Piracy Shy? (January 9, 2005 03:12 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/01/09/warned.php
• Try Some A9 Sauce On That Next Web Search (November 16, 2004 02:23 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/11/16/a9.php
• What We’re Doing When We Tag (January 25, 2005 11:32 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/01/25/tag.php
• What a Maroon (December 21, 2004 07:00 AM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/12/21/maroon.php
• Yawncasting (December 19, 2004 10:42 PM)
  http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/12/19/yawn.php

Rock On! I’m moving to another label….

No, I have no intent to start regular podcasts, enough other people with velvety FM radio D.J. type voices that never say “ummm” are at it already. There is no time to jump into this endeavor. But never say never.

On the other hand, twice or more or in the last week. I have included references to .mp3 files in a blog entry, and there is no reason those could not be made podcast-able. So to investigate what it would take, should ever a leap month appear in my calendar, here is a simple recap of how easy it was to add the proper RSS tags to my MovableType blog to make it “podcast” ready.

All you really need is Brandon Fuller’s MT-Enclosures Movable Type Plugin:

Audio blogging is starting to take off. Currently, Movable Type has no support for audio blogs so I decided to whip up a quick plugin to provide the capability.

The missing link here is automating the process of adding the special <enclosure> link into your RSS 2.0 feed. That is the job of this plugin.

Installing it is a matter of clicking, downloading, and moving it to the plug-in directory.

Next, you need to make sure your blog has a template for RSS 2.0 feeds (it should be there for MT 3.x). Us old folks with MT 2.6x and older likely have RSS 1.0 templates (RSS feeds that have URLs that end in *.rdf). You can keep ‘em, but it is easy enough to create a new index template, have it save as a file named index.xml, and get a copy of a basic RSS 2.0 template from SixApart’s MovabbleType old dingy templates.

While you are getting techy with the templates, you might as well make my recommended change of the default description tag:

  <description><
  $MTEntryExcerpt remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$>
  </description>

  <description><
  $MTEntryBody remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$>
  </description>

This way your RSS feed are not restricted to the stubby 40 words of the Excerpt, but whatever you type into the MT Body entry field. Take control of your feed descriptions!!

The change the MT-Enclosures is that inside the <item>...</item>... area, you add a line that makes the magic happen:

<MTEntries lastn="20">
   <item>
      
      <$MTEntryEnclosures$>
      
   </item>
</MTEntries>

The plug-in automatically sniffs your content, and any hypertext links to enclosure content will get added to your RSS feed like:

<enclosure 
  url="http://cogdogblog.com/alan/snore/iwantanipod.mp3" 
  length="877408" type="audio/mpeg" />

which is what podcast reader tools look for to download to your computer and possibly transfer to yoour pod (if you have one, sniff, sniff).

The only hitch with the MT-Enclosures plug-in is, if I read the docs, right, it will look for all kinds of enclosed media (video, images, etc), so on my baby attempt, I used the include option to keep it to only URLs that end in *.mp3:

<MTEntries lastn="20">
   <item>
      
      <$MTEntryEnclosures include="mp3"$>
      
   </item>
</MTEntries>

The other design decision I took was that I am not expecting to do a whole lot of ‘casting, so it would not make much sense to subscribe to my main RSS feed. So my strategy was to create a new blog category called “audiocasts“, so if I write anything with a linked .mp3 file, I will add this category to my post. Thus, subscribing to the feed for that category, will give you all my “audiocasts” in RSS 2.0 with proper enclosures:

http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/cat_audiocasts.xml

and I even got fancy, and used Adam Kalsey’s way cool button maker to generate my own custom RSS Audiocast badge:

And there it is…. I am ready to podcast if I ever care too. The blog is ready.

We’ve recently released the Low Threshold Applications (LTA) site, recast as a blog from a once manually edited HTML site. To make the index of LTAs by author work, we had to assign the blog entries to accounts for the people that wrote the content (we are doing all the blog posting from content written by others). One limitation of MovableType is I can give author credit to only one person, so posts with multiple authors needed some under the hood tinkering to add new database tables and use PHP/mySQl query to pull out entries by “co-authors”.

This also means that comments posted to an entry go to the actual author (a good thing), but how do I, as a site owner monitor that traffic? (just in case the spam roaches sneak in– I can feel their antennae and little feet scurrying outside the moat).

At first I thought about altering the MT comment scipts to add my address asa BCC header to all email (ugh, more email). I think they way to do this is to edit the /lib/MT/App/Comments.pm file, around lime 216, from:

my %head = ( To => $author->email,
       From => $comment->email || $author->email,
       Subject =>
         '[' . $blog->name . '] ' .
         $app->translate('New Comment Posted to '[_1]'',
           $entry->title)
       );

to

my %head = ( To => $author->email,
       From => $comment->email || $author->email,
       Subject =>
         '[' . $blog->name . '] ' .
         $app->translate('New Comment Posted to '[_1]'',
           $entry->title),
      BCC => 'mt-admin@somesite.edu'
       );

but the thought of more email was not enticing. (BTW, I never tested the above code, just guessing).

A simpler approach was to create an RSS feed to the comments that could be subscribed to, in this case:
http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/lta/comments.xml

it’s really just a new archive, with some cut and paste / minor editing from the full blog RSS feed (see some details), but at least it offers a scan across a mutli-authored blog what is being said. And once created as a feed, it can be embedded into content page:

http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/lta/comments.php

Sure MovableType may be showing some signs of age, but it is still an open enough tool set to tinker with, once you get beyond what comes with the box.