Hi, please get in touch with me via the Support channel as this is more of a pre-sales questions area. I will do my best to help.

Hi, thank you for your interest – indeed, the theme supports external episode hosting and easy RSS feed import. This makes it possible to manage the podcast on an external hosting provider (like Libsyn) and still have the episodes displayed on your website (the player wil use the external audio links, no need to duplicate them). Hope this helps.

Hi, thank you for your interest – here are my answers:

1. The documentation link works properly, please retry to visit that page. 2. The statistics module can’t track external events, only internal site operations like player usage, feed access, downloads, etc. All the external audio links are masked using a rewrite to collect all the statistics. 3/4. No, sorry. The site would look exactly as the preview looks right now, with the theme player, not a SoundCloud embed. Importing an external podcast feed will result in using the internal player of the site (using the external media file), not the external one. 5. Yes, the download button can be disabled. 6/7. The transcript is a link that is displayed as a button in the player of the episode and can link to an external transcript file. You can also add jumping points manually (by attaching a simple class to an anchor element) or paste your transcript in the content area (and use a scrollable or expandable area for it, using a plugin).

Hope this helps you. If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Hi, thank you for your interest – the theme supports displaying all those social platforms and can import external feeds from them. Also the exported RSS feed is ready for publish on every major podcast platform out there. Regarding fonts, the theme supports all the latest third-party plugins that can customize typography, like https://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-google-fonts/ so you’ll be able to customize the fonts easily. Hope this helps.

This helps a ton. Thank you!

Alright, my pleasure! Let me know if you have any other questions/concerns.

I’m happy to announce that today’s theme update added support for RTL languages. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the update. One last question. In order for me to use the analytics feature of this theme, do I need to upload my episodes directly onto this website or using an external RSS feed would do the job as well?

The analytics module will capture all the listens/downloads/etc happening on the website or with its RSS feed. Episodes can either be uploaded locally or remotely (via the current podcast provider), so you can use an external RSS feed for your episodes. Hope this helps.

Hi, thank you for your purchase – you probably missed the prompt to install the Podcast Helper plugin as it is bundled in the theme. Check again via Appearance > Install Plugins or send me temporary admin access to your site and I’ll take a look right away. Use the Support tab and I’ll do my best to help.

I received your second message via the private message and will continue to reply to that email. Thank you.

Hi, the theme contains its own podcast functionality and doesn’t need any external plugins (and it is not recommended to install other podcast plugins along with the theme). You can import your external podcast with a simple built-in feature. I think by timestamped sections you mean audio jumping points like the ones available in the preview: https://liviucerchez.com/castilo/episode/a-short-wave-goodbye-for-my-good-friend-francisco/ (see the skip to buttons). These jumping points can be added via simple HTML, so you have full control over how they look (they must only contain a specific class and href format).

Hope this answers your concerns and let me know if I can be of any further help.

Got the theme – testing things out now. Is it possible to remove /episode/ from the URL slug for individual podcast episode listings?

Thank you, I don’t recommend removing that unique slug, as this causes conflicts in the permalink structure. You can change it easily, if that’s something you consider doing. For any other further questions you can send me a support message and I’ll continue to help via email. Thank you!

Hi, please get in touch with me via the Support tab and send me temporary admin credentials so I can investigate this further. Thank you.

Hi, yes this is possible and it can be done easily via a simple hook. Install the My Custom Functions plugin and add this custom PHP snippet to the Settings > PHP Inserter section:

function my_episode_custom_type_slug() {
    return 'episodio';
}
add_filter( 'podcast_helper_episode_custom_type_slug', 'my_episode_custom_type_slug' );

After you activate the snippet (by turning it On), you must also refresh the permalink structure via Settings > Permalinks > Save Changes button.

An alternative to installing and using the plugin would be to add the PHP snippet to the child theme’s functions.php file, if you have the child theme installed and activated.

Hope this helps.

Thank you so much! This worked perfectly. I went with the child theme option. One last questions. On the page https://liviucerchez.com/castilo/episodes/ for each episode item, is there a way to make the SEASON 1 category not clickable? The hierarchy is weird, since all of the item will say SEASON 1 instead of the episode number. I’m changing that to 001 instead but since it’s registering that as a category it makes it clickable and that would not make sense for this purpose

Well, you have two options in this case:

1. modify the template-parts/post/listing-content.php template file via a child theme (and instead of the category link display just the category name)

2. apply a simple CSS snippet via Customize > Additional CSS field:

.episodes-listing .posted-in a {
    pointer-events: none;
}

Hope this helps.

Hi, I will make sure to address your feedback and concerns in the Support message you sent me. Again, please use a single way of communication in order to get a better faster reply. I’m going to reply to your Support message and we’ll take it from there. Thank you.

Hi, thank you for your interest in the theme and for the kind words. It’s possible to add a social link icon to Spotify in the header and footer areas easily. Also you’ll be able to add such a link to the homepage hero section, where the other call to action buttons are presented in the preview demo. Hope this helps.

Hi, I’ll do my best to help with this, but please use a single way of communication in order to get a better faster reply. I’m going to reply to your Support message and we’ll take it from there. Thank you.

Hi, thank you for your interest – I’ll do my best to follow up on your questions/concerns.

So, the theme was mainly designed for podcasts, but you can certainly use it for any other purpose. It may require some customization to get it to fit your specific project, but it has a solid code base which can be extended easily. I don’t see any reason you can’t use it for your voiceover project.

The season terminology is related to the category term in WordPress, you can adapt that easily. You can definitely use the episode custom post type as a starting point for other things, but it may require some translations (the .po file provided) or some custom changes. The duplicates effect can be turned off with a simple admin option, but the episode listing view may require some custom changes to adapt it to your specific requirements. There is no need to use an episode post, if you don’t need to (I can help you disable that part completely) – just add audio players or playlists to any page (self-hosted audios or external, like SoundCloud embeds), this is standard WordPress functionality. Episode posts display a “Download” button for their players, but you could eventually add a “Download” button to regular audio players as well (requires some minor code changes). The header part can contain any HTML/shortcode based content unique to every page or post, so you will be able to customize it via the admin panel easily. The image for the header is a customizable background image, but it doesn’t dictate the height of the header – the content inside the header does that (plus the top and bottom paddings, which can be adapted easily). The theme was built so you could use it with the basic WordPress editor, no external dependencies required. It can be used with advanced page builders, if needed (or with the new Gutenberg editor which is supported).

Hope this helps Gerrit.

Hi, please get in touch with me via the Support channel and I’ll do my best to help with your concerns.

Hi, thank you for your interest and kind words. There is a big difference between using a personal hosted theme based podcast and a podcast service (like Libsyn). The advantage of using a personal hosted solution is that you have full control over any aspect of it. You have a customizable website with episodes feed, a blog, contact form, etc, which can’t be obtained using a podcast service. Another big difference is the price: for the theme, you have just a small one-time payment, not a monthly subscription type of payment which adds up to quite a lot in a year or two.

I’m not familiar with Podtrac, to be honest. The theme has its own statistics module which contains useful information with the no. listeners, no. of downloads, listening sources (iTunes, Google Play, site player), etc. One thing I’m sure of is that this module respects the listener’s privacy and doesn’t collect excessive demographics and alter the performance of the feed by using different “measuring URLs” (like Podtrac does).

Hope this helps.

Hi, please use the Support tab of the item as this Comments section is more of a pre-sales section. I’ll do my best to help with your concerns right away. Thank you.

Hi, it is not possible to access the demo backend, I’m sorry. Here are some screenshots of the admin part: https://themeforest.net/item/castilo-audio-podcast-wordpress-theme/screenshots/22552192?index=1 If you have specific questions please let me know via a private message and I’ll do my best to assist you.

Hi, thank you for your interest and kind words. Any valid external podcast RSS feed would integrate well (Anchor too). There is no visual difference when displaying this kind of external feed – it is exactly as you preview the demo right now. If you have further concerns/questions don’t hesitate to ask.

Hi, please get in touch with me via the Support channel and I’ll do my best to help right away. Thank you.

Hi, thank you for your purchase – you can definitely continue to use SoundCloud as the publishing platform and only import the episodes in your site (it keeps the episodes linking to the external audio files and you have an automatic import option, so no need to upload the episodes again). Hope this helps and please don’t hesitate to ask any other questions via the Support tab.

thank you

My pleasure, for any other questions or concerns please use the Support tab and I’ll continue to do my best to help.