Standalone Wordpress plugin update?

[chrismarquardt]

I use the standalone Wordpress version of the Podlove web player at several of my podcasts (www.happyshooting.de and www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com)

The plugin seems to not have seen any love in a long time. According to the Wordpress plugin directory the last update was 5 months ago and it still features the old player. We have now begun to receive complaints (link 1, link 2) from some listeners that the player is broken on their platforms.

What am I supposed to do now? For legacy reasons I can't use the full podlove suite. I depend on the standalone Wordpress plugin, which I installed because I assumed it would be kept up-to-date along with the full Podlove suite.

PS: Here's the web page that still advertises the standalone plugin: https://podlove.org/podlove-web-player/

[ericteubert]

I was the one responsible for the 2.1 release, slightly modernizing a years-old player. See the link for details.

You shouldn't expect any updates soon. The Web Player 3 Beta (which is included in the Publisher) development is abandoned and, as it is, in a worse state than the Player 2.1 you are using.

I was happy to take a few days of my time to kick the old player 2 back into gears, but I'm honestly not willing to spend my spare time fixing IE bugs for old Windows versions.

What am I supposed to do now?

As far as I can see the player defaults to the basic html5 audio player. That might be acceptable. If not, you may need to look for a different solution.

[zusatzstoff]

Hey Chris,

because of the state of v3 we decided to kickstart the webplayer v4 with a full new tech stack. We are working hard to get it feature complete and stable as the v2 but also deliver new features. The current version is in an alpha stage but with the experiences of v3 in mind we won't give a commitment for a specific date.

[chrismarquardt]

Does that mean there will be a standalone Wordpress plugin version of v4?

[chrismarquardt]

I appreciate you spending time on the 2.1 version. My post wasn't necessarily about IE. And as long as there's a clean fallback, I'm happy with it. That was only what triggered my question.

The real reason for my post is this: I am concerned, because looking at the official Wordpress plugin page, it claims compatibility up to WP 4.6.4 which we're far beyond now.

I am well aware that this requires time and resources, I just would like to know if there's any active development on the Podlove Web Player Wordpress standalone plugin or if it's abandoned and I'll have to find an alternative.

For now I can live with the current state, I'm just very afraid that some future WP update might suddenly break it, which would leave several of my podcasts in the rain. As of now, I don't have a fallback and I depend on this.

Any future plans that you can share with me?

Thanks!

[zusatzstoff]

Yes, we are working on it.

[chrismarquardt]

Thanks, that just made my day.

Let me know if I can be of any help, I have two big podcasts that might be helpful as a test case.

[ericteubert]

For now I can live with the current state, I'm just very afraid that some future WP update might suddenly break it, which would leave several of my podcasts in the rain.

Ah, I see. I will definitely get active again if a WordPress update should really render the whole plugin unusable.

[Joey]

v4 is good news. Thanks. I'm waiting for a v3 replacement (with a download-button integrated) for quite some time now. Unfortunately, the podigee player still has some issues that keep me from switching. Therefore I'll be waiting for v4.

[chrismarquardt]

Thanks, @ericteubert and @zusatzstoff for the clarifications. Very reassuring. And again, let me know if I can be of any help here.

[zusatzstoff]

As soon we have something in place we will keep you posted