The Podcast Player plugin offers a variety of settings in its admin dashboard to help you manage how podcast data is fetched, displayed, and optimized for your website. In this guide, we will go over each setting and explain how it can affect your podcast’s performance on your site.
Podcast Update Interval
The Podcast Update Interval setting determines how often the podcast player will check for any updates or changes in your podcast feed data. This includes checking for new episodes, updates to episode information, and changes in your podcast feed structure.
- Default Value: 720 minutes (12 hours)
You can adjust this interval based on your podcast release schedule. If you publish new episodes more frequently or want quicker updates, consider lowering this interval. For example, setting it to 360 minutes will check for updates every 6 hours. Conversely, if updates are not needed as often, you can increase the interval. For a detailed explanation of how to change and manage this setting, refer to our previous article on updating podcast feed data.
Minimize Unintentional Exposure
The Minimize Unintentional Exposure setting is useful if you want to hide your podcast data, including the feed and audio URLs, from the front-end of your website. This is particularly relevant if you are running a private or members-only podcast.
- When to Enable:
- If you want to prevent users from directly accessing your podcast feed or audio files.
- For private podcasts or podcasts restricted to certain audiences.
If you enable this setting, ensure that the podcast player still functions as expected on the front-end. While this setting enhances privacy, it may affect how the player interacts with your content.
Image Optimization
Podcast feeds often include images that are large in size, such as podcast artwork or episode thumbnails. Directly using these large images can slow down your website and prevent effective image caching, which could negatively impact page loading speed. The Image Optimization setting helps to improve the performance of your site by automatically downloading and resizing podcast images to your WordPress media folder. This allows smaller, optimized images to be served, reducing page load time.
- How It Works:
- When this setting is enabled, Podcast Player downloads podcast images to your media library.
- The plugin then displays smaller, resized versions of those images in the player, improving page speed and performance.
Add rel Attributes to Links
The Add rel attributes setting enhances the SEO and security of your website by adding specific attributes to external links found in podcast episode summaries.
- SEO Benefit:
- Adding a
rel="nofollow"attribute to external links prevents search engines from transferring link equity (PageRank) to external sites.
- Adding a
- Security Improvement:
- The
rel="noopener"orrel="noreferrer"attributes improve security by preventing malicious behavior that can occur through external links.
- The
Enabling this setting is generally recommended for better SEO practices and to enhance the security of your website.
Advanced Settings
The Advanced Settings section contains options that are only necessary for specific cases, usually involving troubleshooting or compatibility issues with other plugins.
- When to Use:
- If you’re experiencing issues with how the podcast player is fetching or displaying data, these settings can help resolve potential conflicts, especially with caching or performance plugins.
- Recommendation:
- Leave the advanced settings turned off unless advised by support or documentation to enable them. Incorrect usage could lead to issues with podcast data fetching or display.
If you experience any problems with your podcast player, contact the plugin’s support team. They will advise whether enabling specific advanced settings can assist in resolving your issue.
Conclusion
The Podcast Player plugin offers flexible settings to ensure your podcast feed is updated, optimized, and displayed correctly. By adjusting the Podcast Update Interval, enabling Image Optimization, or using settings like Minimize Unintentional Exposure, you can tailor how the podcast player interacts with your website. For advanced customization or troubleshooting, the Advanced Settings section provides tools to resolve any potential issues. Remember, only use these if necessary or when instructed by support. With these settings, your podcast player should perform efficiently, ensuring your listeners enjoy a seamless experience.