Podcasting Manager

A WordPress plugin for managing a podcast: an episode post type, show-level settings, a Podcasting 2.0 RSS feed, an episode list shortcode, and WPGraphQL support for headless sites.

Features

• Podcast RSS feed at /feed/podcast/ with iTunes tags and Podcasting 2.0 tags (podcast:guid, locked, funding, location, person, license, trailer, updateFrequency, episode, season, transcript, chapters).
• Episodes as a podcast post type, with URLs like /podcast/12/ (the number is the episode number).
• Audio: paste a URL or upload to the Media Library. File size and length fill in automatically for uploads. Single episode pages show an audio player.
• Transcripts: an HTML editor on each episode, shown on the episode page, plus a transcript URL for the feed.
• Settings page with dropdowns for license, update frequency, language, explicit rating, show type and Apple Podcasts categories, tooltips on every field, and artwork upload.
• Episode defaults: new episodes are pre-filled with today's date, the next episode number, the current season and default hosts.
• Shortcode to list episodes on any page.
• WPGraphQL fields for settings and episodes (optional; requires WPGraphQL).

Installation

1. Download the zip (or build it, see Development).
2. In WordPress go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin and upload it, then activate.
3. Go to Settings → Permalinks and click Save Changes (needed once so /feed/podcast/ and /podcast/{n}/ work).
4. Open Settings → Podcast Settings and fill in your show details.

Requires WordPress with pretty permalinks enabled. WPGraphQL is optional.

Setup

1. Podcast Settings (Settings → Podcast Settings): name, description, artwork, owner and owner email, language, categories, explicit rating, license. Apple Podcasts requires square artwork between 1400x1400 and 3000x3000 pixels.
2. Add episodes under Podcasts → Add New. In the Podcast Details box set the audio (URL or upload), episode number, date, and optional season, hosts, guests, transcript, transcript URL and chapters URL.
3. Submit your feed to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Index and others using the feed URL shown at the top of the settings page. Validate it first with the link next to the URL.

Shortcode

[podcast_episodes]
[podcast_episodes limit="5" season="2" order="ASC" player="yes"]

Episodes without an episode number are not listed.

Feed

• URL: /feed/podcast/ (also ?feed=podcast)
• Includes the newest published episodes that have an audio URL (default 20, configurable under Episodes in Feed).
• podcast:guid is generated once from the feed URL and stored, so it stays stable.
• Subcategories are written nested inside their parent category, as Apple expects.

GraphQL

With WPGraphQL active:

{
  podcastSettings { name description image feedUrl hosts license categories }
  podcasts {
    nodes {
      title episodeNumber seasonNumber mp3File episodeDate
      episodeLength fileSize transcript transcriptUrl chaptersUrl guests
    }
  }
}

Development

The plugin is plain PHP with no build step.

podcasting-manager.php             main class: settings, post type, meta box, shortcode, GraphQL
includes/class-podcast-feed.php    RSS feed
includes/class-podcast-options.php dropdown choice lists and sanitizers

Releases: publishing a GitHub release builds podcasting-manager.zip and attaches it to the release (.github/workflows/release.yml). The release tag must match the Version: in podcasting-manager.php (for example tag v1.4.0 for version 1.4.0), otherwise the build fails.

Build an installable zip locally from the repository root:

git archive --format=zip --prefix=podcasting-manager/ --output=podcasting-manager.zip main

Author

Jeffrey Haug

License

Add a license for this repository (for example GPL-2.0-or-later, the usual choice for WordPress plugins).