Release 2.6.0

New Module: E-Mail Notifications

This is a new module complementing the existing contributor module. Once activated, it enables you to send emails to contributors when an episode gets published.

You can find the settings at Contributors > E-Mail Notifications. The settings are:

  • email subject and message, customizable with all available template tags
  • a time delay until the message is sent after the episode was published
  • who will receive the message by using groups and roles as a filter

Podlove Web Player 4 Alpha

After months of work we’re ready to show you what we’re working on: A new take on the modern Web Player. We learned from previous attempts and thought about responsiveness and embeddability from day one. Of course there’s full support for chapter marks, too.

Give it a try if you like. Be aware though that it’s marked as alpha, meaning we’re still working on new features and fixing bugs in existing ones when we find them. But if you’re curious, head over to Podlove > Podcast Settings > Player, switch to Podlove Web Player 4 and let us know what you think.

Once Podlove Web Player 4 is stable, it will be the only actively supported Podlove Player. Podlove Web Player 3 isn’t being developed anymore.

And finally, all web players can now be previewed on the settings screen.

Templates

  • Assets now have an identifier asset.id to quickly access a file for an asset within an episode, for example: episode.file("mp3")
  • Contributors already had such an id, but now there is a new accessor to get a single contributor by id, for example: podcast.contributor("jerry")
  • DEPRECATED: id parameter in podcast.contributors to access a single contributor: podcast.contributors({id: "jerry"}).
  • Feeds can now be accessed the same way by their slug: podcast.feed("mp3")

Analytics

Download tracking is now turned on by default in new setups.

Bits & Pieces

  • network dashboard statistics: fix average length and file size; remove “days between episodes”
  • episodes: prettify “detect episode duration” UI
  • episodes: enhance media file UI:
    • rename “update” button to “verify”
    • move “update all media files” button above “verify” buttons and rename it to “verify all”
    • show file URL even if url cannot be reached
    • show Bytes in human readable format
  • episodes: fix focus when adding contributors to episodes
  • episode asset settings: increase assets per page from 10 to 100
  • episode asset settings: fix format filtering by type
  • episode assets: new “name” attribute for reference in templates, for example episode.file('cover').url where “cover” is the asset name
  • support page: add Publisher icon to “Get Professional Support” callout
  • contributors: services only get deleted on “Save Changes”, not immediately
  • contributors: fix sorting by contribution count in the admin interface
  • contributors: fix minor PHP issue when creating new contributors
  • templates: immediately purge cache on updating any template
  • Podlove Subscribe Button: add module option to deliver locally instead of using the CDN, but continue to default to CDN
  • job dashboard: add mode description to jobs where necessary to distinguish between different run settings
  • be tolerant to missing PHP iconv module
  • fix Auphonic chapter import
  • update Hindenburg chapter parser
  • new PHP constant PODLOVE_DISABLE_IMAGE_CACHE to disable image caching
  • fix security vulnerability (thanks to DefenseCode, who found the vulnerability using their tool ThunderScan and kindly approached us)

Read release blog post: Podlove Podcast Publisher 2.6

1 Like

Great work on the new release! I really like the looks of the new player.

If I have been using the Podigee player and then switch to version 4 of the Podlove player, will the existing embed codes for Podigee continue to work? I would like to make the switch but I don’t want to leave broken embed codes on sites where people have linked to episodes of my show.

If the embed codes do not work, are you aware of any way to identify the sites where the Podigee player has been embedded so that I can contact them about the updated embed option with player 4?

The Podigee Player will remain in the release with no changes to the embed code.

I’d love to see the automatic-mail feature to support HTML. Primarily to add links to those e-mails.

And please add the ability to set a sender name and sender e-mail address. (Workaround: Create a new contributor and select that one.)

Yes, that’s something we are thinking about but it adds complexities. You basically need to maintain two templates: HTML and plain text.

What you call workaround is the intended way.

1 Like

I see. How about HTML (and Twig) only? The user would just need to know the <br> (and maybe <p>) tag to achieve about the same result we have today. That’s manageable, isn’t it?

The fancy solution would be some kind of editor. Just as we know it from episodes and other Wordpress posts.

I already have a version of Podlove on my website, will this affect the shows and settings in my current version?

Anything in particular you’re thinking of? For example: The new webplayer and e-mail notifications won’t be activated by default after updating.

Spoke too soon. I kept getting notices about the 2.6 upgrade, I just checked, my plugins are already updated.