Posting audio files on an independent website

[xiaojiang216]

大家好！

I am currently teaching Chinese to students in my area, and they asked if I would be able to put up a website with audio files of the handouts being read aloud and things of that sort.

Would I be able to make a website and post audio files without a great deal of knowledge about computers?

Thank you for your patience, it is greatly appreciated!

[roddy]

If you're happy to put the handouts and audio files on here, you can use the upload function on this site. Your students will need to register though.

As for what you're asking - it's not difficult. Do a Google search for 'html tutorial' and 'ftp tutorial' and you'll be halfway there.

[xiaojiang216]

Thank you for your help! I will look into the tutorials on Google.

As for allowing them register, I don't think their parent's would approve. Because these students are very young, their parent's might not want them talking on forums. It is unfortunate, because there are so many kind and warm-hearted people on this forum!

[roddy]

Ah, ok. There are a number of options. The easiest might just be to get a list of email addresses and email stuff to them.

[Xiao Kui]

Some different options might be:

1. Perhaps the cheapest option (FREE) is to download PureVoice from http://www.cdmatech.com/products/purevoice.jsp PureVoice is free software which allows you to record sound files that take up very little space and attach them to emails. This way you could email the files to your students. I've downloaded PureVoice, but haven't tried it yet, but it looks great and easy to use.

2. n-track studio from www.n-track.com A freeware version is available. You need to hook up a microphone to your computer to use it but any cheap one will do. It has a lot of fancy features, but you only have to use the simplest of them to edit sound files and burn the audio files to CD for your students, which would eliminate their need to use the web to get these.

3. A website with Yahoo hosting. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/?p=PASSPORT&ovmkt=NB518CV89QPBJ5T00CF5190DL8&OVRAW=yahoo%20web%20hosting&OVKEY=yahoo%20hosting%20web&OVMTC=standard

They have a site builder that is very easy to use - you don't have to know how to do any sort of html coding. The cost is abt $10 a month. You can store up to 5 GB of files on your site which is plenty.

[trevelyan]

If you have teaching material that would be generally useful to people (ie. not just your classroom students but students in general) and are simply looking for help putting it online, I'd be glad to lend a hand and provide webspace/bandwidth. Just send me a private note if you're interested.

[stephanhodges]

For uploading files, Filezilla (http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/) is an excellent free software package (for Windows). It looks just like an Exlorer file browser, and you can drag / drop files onto the web server, etc.

[stephanhodges]

(Responding to a PM from original poster, I've answered a basic "how to" use Filezilla).

You should know your user name, password, and the url address for the upload site.

1) Install Filezilla (duh:))

2) File menu: Site Manager. Select NEW SITE

3) Fill in "Host" as either "ftp.myserver.com" or "www.myserver.com" (depends on how server is set up)

4) Select "Normal" account type

5) Put in your user name to upload files

6) Leave "account" blank in most cases

7) Put in password

Comments can be anything you want.

Click Connect. It should connect to your site

Be carefull where you actually put files, however. There are two basic types of web site accounts. I have a more "expert" account type, where I need to first go into the www folder (sometimes called public_html also). If you don't put files under this, they can't be seen from web site by general people.

You also need to make up an html file (web page) to describe the file, give it's name, and to have a link to the actual file, so that people can click and download it.

You can put files up as mp3, or any other format. If you want to force people to download the files, rather than playing direct from your site, then I would suggest you first compress the files with a "ZIP" program, and then upload the zip files only.

[xiaojiang216]

Thanks stephanhodges, but I can't seem to connect to my server. Is it because it is a .cc? The server address is:

www.wretch.cc

Thanks for your help!

[stephanhodges]

I can "connect" fine, but I'm located in USA.

If you meant that you cannot connect via Filezilla, that is an FTP connection. You should post a question on their forum http://www.wretch.cc/forum/ and ask how to upload audio files using Filezilla. Perhaps they will have a different way to upload files, using a web page designed for that.