So I have a really basic set up for a podcasting operation for a group I'm in. I'm curious if anyone has ideas on how I could improve this. The main goal is to keep it simple and cheap. I don't want to spend a ton of time or money on this right now.

I basically record our talks, then I post the podcasts to two separate locations: (1) an audio archive for our website and (2) a podcast feed.

## Audio Archive

Rather than store all the audio files on our web server, we are using Google Drive to host the files. To do this, I 
1. Created a separate Google account for CSL Leesburg.
1. Created a folder that I [shared](https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2494893?hl=en&rd=1) to the public
1. Loaded all the audio files to the folder
1. Copied the Google file URL (from the file sharing settings) and referenced it in the web site's html.

## Podcast Feed

A podcast feed is like an "rss feed". If you're not familiar with these, they are files that other programs/applications can use to pull data and re-use it. So iTunes can take the feed and make the audio files accessible to others for download. iTunes does not host the files. So the two main things to figure out are where to host the files and how to create the feed. Google Drive is not a great option for the podcast feed (though it does work for direct links off a website).

Fortunately, there are some great services you can use to host the files and generate the feed. I started off with [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/) since it offers free hosting for a few hours of content and generates and rss feed.

The general steps are:
1. Set up an account with SoundCloud
1. [Register the feed with iTunes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXc7WCq_25c)
1. Share the iTunes link with folks
1. Share the RSS feed link with folks (not the same as the iTunes link)

Note: The same feed you register with iTunes can be used with other podcast applications. So if someone has an Android phone (which doesn't have iTunes), you can use an app like BeyondPod to pull in the podcast feed.

And if your looking for a great, free audio editing tool, I use Audacity for some basic, but critical tasks:
* Removing excess audio from the beginning or end of the track.
* Levelling the volumes and boost the sound a tad (there is a great feature called "Chains" that I saved and apply every week).
* Compress the file (so folks with cell phones have smaller files to download)

Any thoughts or recommendations?