The instructions given below are for RealAudio on a Windows 95/98 computer, but process is almost identical for RealVideo and other platforms. I tentatively suggest you print out this tutorial for easier reading, by copying text and pasting it into Wordpad or Word then printing it out. Or if, you prefer, you can download text as a zipped document from here. Netscape users please press shift as you click to save file to disc.

Before you start, be sure you:

1: have an audio or video file in one of following formats: AVI, MOV, WAV, or AU format. If your file is not in one of those formats, you will need to convert it before starting this tutorial.

2: check with your internet service provider or people who provide your web space that they support streaming media. This is one sure thing that will guarantee that you'll never get this technique to work on your site. Save your self a lot of time and effort by finding out before you start this tutorial.

3: are not violating any copyright laws by placing copyrighted material on your web site. It goes without saying that best files to put on your web site are files you've created yourself. A snippet of Spice Girls may titillate a few but it won't encourage people to stick around or even come back to see how your site develops and it may make you vulnerable to prosecution.

Step 1: Download RealProducer encoder The current version is RealProducer 7.0. To get encoder, click here, fill out form and download encoder. I've been through this process myself a few times and I can guarantee that Real won't send you annoying bumf. After you finish downloading, you will need to execute file you downloaded and install RealProducer.

Step 2: Preparations to encode your music file Double click icon on your desktop or from start menu called " RealProducer." In dialogue box which pops up choose 'record from file'

Now you need to enter name of file that you want to encode. Click "Browse" and browse for file. Once you have found file, click "Open" then "Next".

In next screen, enter title, author, copyright and a brief description of track to inform your listeners of kind of thing they can expect to hear when they play it. Then click "Next". Now you need to select target audience. Select "Multi-rate SureStream for Real Server G2" and click "Next". Then choose 56k Modem as a target Audience stream format. Most PCs, browsers and modems should be able to handle this.

The current screen asks for audio format. Select appropriate type based on type of file you are encoding and click "Next".

Now you will be asked to enter output file. You can choose to enter it anywhere on your hard drive but you should be able to remember exactly where you placed it. Then you should click "Next". Please ensure at this stage that you avoid any spaces in a file's name. Most servers are still susceptible to file names which aren't continuous so a file like 'wake free zone.rm' would be more easily recognised as 'wakefreezone.rm'.

By far most popular database management system is mySQL, because it is free, works well, and most web hosts have it installed. This can be used in conjunction with a language such as PHP or Cold Fusion to create a website which interacts with database.

PHP is probably most popular of languages for interacting with mySQL databases. It can be easily used to create webpages for your site dynamically. This means that, rather than a site consisting of many static or unchanging webpages, each page is generated based on information in your database, at time page is accessed by a user.

Creating a web site in a language such as PHP and using a database to store information, or some of it, has many advantages over a normal static site.

One of most common and most useful ways to use a database in your website is in a content management system.

What Is It And How Does It Work? --------------------------------

A content management system is a set of programs (basically, webpages containing programming code) written in a language such as PHP. The content management system displays content of your website to your visitors and allows you to easily add, edit or remove content from site without creating a new webpage.

This is accomplished by storing content of site in a database. Rather than creating a "page1.html" with a layout, title, content, etc. you would store title and content in database, along with any other information you wanted like author name, keywords, etc.

Then, rather than having a link to "page1.html" you'd have a URL that looked something like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/article.php?id=123

Article.php would be a page you've written in PHP which gets information from your database. The "?id=123" passes fact that user has clicked on a link to article number 123. The page would access your database, find article 123, and send back a webpage to your visitor with that article in body. But, difference between this and a static page is that you use same webpage to access other information:

http://www.yoursite.com/article.php?id=124