How to Generate an iTunes U RSS Feed (to play on Website)

Question

I'd liked to be able to play iTunes U podcasts on my college's homepage by parsing an RSS feed containing a podcast title, description, and a media enclosure (either .mp3 or .m4a). I'd use an RSS audio player to play the file on our page. We just migrated to the iTunes U Public site manager and I'm not finding any documentation online on how to accomplish this. Is this still possible (it was possible with the private version of iTunes U or even just iTunes podcasts in general). I noted below how I used to do it below. I've tried using the same work around with Public site manager without any success. We link to our iTunes U site in iTunes, but there are some instances when we'd like to be able to play these files outside of the iTunes application. I see how you can format your RSS feed to feed podcasts into iTunes U, but I'm not finding any documentation or examples that show how to pull iTunes U content from Public site manager.
Appreciate any suggestions.
Thanks,
Bittersweet
To get the RSS feed for a tab in iTunes U (for subscribing outside of
iTunes):
1) Navigate in iTunes U to the "Course" containing your podcast.
2) Click on the tab for which you want to get the feed.
3) Right-click on the "Subscribe" button and "Copy iTunes Store URL".
4) Paste the link into a text editor to verify it matches this pattern:
http://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Feed/mycollege.edu.1303285046.013932 85954
* Note: If you right-click on the "tab" of the feed instead of the
"Subscribe" button, you get a link like this:
http://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/BrowsePrivately/mycollege.edu.
1303285046.01393285954
* That link only works inside of iTunes. To make it match the link
format above, change the "/BrowsePrivately/" to "/Feed/" as such:
http://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Feed/mycollege.edu.
1303285046.01393285954

Answer 1

Hi Alan,
Sorry for the tardiness of my reply.
In principle, a backup app much as you outline could be made. It would backup enough of a private site to allow you to restore it in a genuinely substantive way. An outline of how you would approach this would be as follows:
1. You would download full site XML. Apple has a web service API for that. This gives a sort of snapshot of the structure of your site.
2. You would traverse your site XML and download a copy of each content item in your private site. A small twist in this is that you would have to pick up extra things (course/album artwork, for example). There is no Apple API for this, but it's possible to do this other ways.
Unfortunately, I the process of creating such an app would be rough. Maybe a year ago or so, I worked on some code that would allow a person to backup a specific course/album page within a site. And I nearly finished that app, but got distracted with other stuff. If there were enough interest, I could revive that work. Unfortunately, it would have to be Mac-only, I'm afraid. I could probably tackle it in WIndows, but my OS X/iOS coding chops are a LOT stronger than they are for Windows.