Create a private RSS feed without paying a penny.

#rss #github #dropbox

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Prerequisite

Steps

Upload your mp3/mp4 contents to Dropbox. Get a raw link by following this step.
Locally, follow this article to create an RSS file.
Commit your RSS file to your Github repo. Publish it as a Github page.
Make sure your RSS file path is valid with https://castfeedvalidator.com/. Some of the test results say warnings. As long as this is a private feed, you can ignore them.
Share the RSS file path to your community! Popular podcast apps (including Apple Podcast) have a way to import RSS URLs directly. Enjoy.

To be minimum, below worked. (The URL is no longer valid, as I was too embarrassed to keep it public).

<rss xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:rawvoice="http://www.rawvoice.com/rawvoiceRssModule/" version="2.0">
    <channel>
        <title>Podcast Title Here</title>
        <link>https://www.example.com</link>
        <image>
            <url>http://www.example.com/image3000x3000.png</url>
            <title>Podcast Title Here</title>
            <link>https://www.example.com</link>
        </image>
        <description>
            The full length description for your podcast
        </description>
        <language>en-us</language>
        <copyright>Yuta copyright 2016</copyright>
        <item>
          <title>Episode Name 2</title>
          <link>https://dl.dropbox.com/s/dff56030336b/YourVideoAudioFile.mp4</link>
          <pubDate>Sat, 02 Jan 2020 16:00:00 PDT</pubDate>
          <description>The full length episode 2 description</description>
          <enclosure url="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/dff56030336b/YourVideoAudioFile.mp4" length="36715125" type="audio/mpeg"/>
          <guid>https://dl.dropbox.com/s/dff56030336b/YourVideoAudioFile.mp4</guid>
        </item>
    </channel>
</rss>

Misc TIL

I didn't know that .mov and .mp4 are compatible with great extent
I'm not sure how protective this feed URL will become, only by specifying robots.txt. Let me know your thoughts.
If you're more serious about your audience, consider paid / services
Finally, another link I stumbled upon along the way. Thank you Internet!