RapidWeaver allows you to easily add Podcasts to your blog entries. Podcasting is an evolving standard that allows audio or video files (most commonly in MP3 or MP4 formats) to be published online in a way that allows Podcast receiver programs - such as iTunes, Transistr, NewsFire and others - to automatically tune-in to them and download the files for playback at the listener's convenience.

When you add a Podcast to your blog entry by clicking the "Add Podcast..." button, RapidWeaver presents a Podcast pane that allows you to drag-and-drop your Podcast media file into your blog entry. You can customize your iTunes tags, set custom RSS tags, and even specify external multimedia files to be used for your Podcast if you choose not to use the Podcast dropbox.

NOTE: In order for Podcast applications to receive and download your Podcasts, you must enable RSS Feeds for your Blog page. Enabling RSS Feeds in RapidWeaver is described later in the Blog Setup section.

Tags: RapidWeaver, allows, you, to

When a Podcast is added to your Blog, RapidWeaver inserts any custom RSS tags defined in the your blog's Setup... area. You may override these RSS tags by using the Custom RSS Tags tab to customize any of the tags that RapidWeaver automatically inserts in your Podcast. Click the (+) button at the bottom of the "Custom RSS Tags" list and add any custom tags as required; to remove a custom tag, select it in the list and click the (-) button.

Blog - Podcast: Custom RSS Tags

You may also override the default Podcast settings on the Custom RSS Tags panel to link to external media files for your Podcasts (rather than using the Podcast dropbox), or to use multimedia types not directly supported by RapidWeaver. Click the "Override default Podcast settings" checkbox to enable these fields and fill in the URL to the media file, specify its size (in bytes) and its file type. When published, the file specified will be linked to your Podcast. For more details, see Podcasting with RapidWeaver in the Tutorials area.
When you are satisfied with your settings in the "Add Podcast..." pane, click the "OK" button to save your settings and close the pane. A dialog box will appear asking if you want to add a link to your Podcast in your blog entry.

Blog - Add Podcast Link

Click "OK" to add a text link to the end of your blog entry, and click "Cancel" if you don't wish to add a link.

Tags: podcasts, blog, RapidWeaver, RSS, tag

Many major news organizations, community Web sites and personal weblogs offer headlines and article summaries in the form of news feeds using a technology called RSS. RSS-aware programs, called news aggregators, can help you keep up with all your favorite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them. iTunes, Transistr, NewsFire are among the many popular news aggregators in widespread use.

Blog - Setup: RSS Feed Tab

So that RSS news aggregators (including Podcast receivers) can subscribe to your blog page, you must enable RSS feeds for your blog page. You may also configure your blog page so that it generates RSS entries only for the indvidual blog posts that appear on your main blog page, and not for any archived blog entries, by checking the box "Generate entries for main page only".

You may specify how many words from each of your blog entries should be included in your RSS feed (from one to fifty words) by selecting the checkbox labeled "Summarize text in RSS Entries" at the bottom of the pane, and moving the slider left or right as needed. The number of words will be shown to the right of the slider. If your blog entries use summaries, the number of words included in any blog entry's RSS feed will be lesser of the length of the blog entry's summary or the number of words set here.

TIP #1: You can replace the standard "RSS Feed" text link that appears in your page's side bar with a clickable graphic by using the HTML tag. Here's how:

1. Upload your preferred graphic file to your webserver. In this case, let's say your website is "www.mywebsite.com", and you've uploaded a button image named "rss.jpg" to your "images" directory.
2. In your blog page, click the "Setup..." button.
3. On the "RSS Feed" pane, replace the text in the "RSS Link Name" field with the HTML code:
4. After confirming you have properly configured your Setup... panes so that RSS will work properly, publish your blog page.

TIP #2: If you want to enable your RSS feed without displaying a link in your page's sidebar, leave the "RSS Link Name" field on the "RSS Feed" pane empty.

Tags: major, organization, community, web, sites

You can customize the way the date and time are shown by selecting the "Date Format" tab in your Blog page's "Setup..." area.

Blog - Setup: Date Format Tab

On this pane, you can specify how the date and time are displayed, including separators. As you make changes to the settings, an example is displayed in the lower portion of the pane. To localize the language to that of the one being used by your Macintosh, click the "Localize language" checkbox.

Tags: RapidWeaver, date, formatting