[Phpwebsite-developers] Looking for input on new podcast mod feature

[Verdon V. <ve...@ve...>]

Hi :)

I'm in final stages of writing a mod for phpws, for podcasting. It will 
be released soon. I have some uncertainty what to do with categories 
and would welcome any opinions.

Currently, with my mod, you can have 'channels' which have 'podcasts' 
(episodes) attached to them. The channels use fatcat categories.

As far as I can tell from researching podcasting RSS, 'category' is an 
optional rss tag, in channels and/or items, as is 'itunes:category' of 
the subset itunes: which I am supporting to some extent. Many popular 
podcast feeds use no category tags at all though.

Where my uncertainty comes in is that, AFAIK, I can use whatever I want 
for the rss <category> tag, so I'll use the fatcat category. However, 
if I want to support the <itunes:category> tag, there are specific 
itunes categories that must be adhered to. At this time, I have just 
hard-coded the <itunes:category> tags in the .tpl file.

My questions are, does anyone know if my assumption about the wide-open 
nature of the rss <category> tag is correct, or should it be limited to 
specific categories like the itunes:category? Would using the fatcat 
category be appropriate here in a feed? And, do you have any other 
thoughts about the importance of using <category> and <itunes:category> 
in a rss feed in general? I don't really feel like building some kind 
if itunes:category support into the gui of the mod, and am beginning to 
feel that a note about using them in your .tpl files, if you wish to, 
may be all I should bother with ;)

Thanks,
verdon