Kirby CMS

Podcaster 2.0

Kirby Plugin

After working on my comment plugin most of the time in the last year, I started updating the Kirby Podcast plugin some time ago. Today version 2.0 is released.

Important things first: Tracking of downloads using the file method is deprecated and cannot be used anymore. This method nevers was the best choice but I wanted to offer an alternative to MySQL.

SQlite

This alternative is now SQLite. Since version 2.0 of the plugin SQLite is the default method for tracking downloads. Setting it up is easy, you don't need any database server and most hosters support it.

Tracking

While working on SQLite, I also optimized the tracking. Now useragets, systems and devices will be tracked, too. So you can now see where your listeners come from, Apple, Spotify etc. While tracking this data this is all done without storing any personal data of your listeners. You get the numbers, your listeners keep their privacy.

 

I also worked on the panel view for the statistics. A new library for showing graphs is included, the old one was to buggy and not so easy to handle. Next to the new information like useragents, there is now a monthly view. There you can look into the details of the given month. You'll get a beautiful graph and a list of downloaded episodes. You can cycle through the months and instead of that long ugly list of downloaded episodes, those can be paginated, too.

There is still the overview over the whole year for episodes and feeds, splitted into months. And the overall top 10.

Cleanup and tweaks

I cleaned up a lot of code, sorted it new, shrunk it. And there are some new smaller features, like the possibility to disable the styling of the rss feed.

Future plans

I would like to offer some blocks for the new Editor. For example a block for the podcast player. I would also like to make it possible, to embed the new apple player or the spotify player.

More information about the update, detailed step by step instructions for the installation and update can be found on Github. I am curious about your podcast, let me know!