Today, we’re excited to announce a brand new Elementor integration for our WordPress plugin, Seriously Simple Podcasting.
We’ve repeated the importance of having a podcast website a fair amount and detailed exactly how you can build one of your own. Castos customers also already have access to customizable podcast pages to showcase a show and its episodes.
But when we asked ourselves how we could make creating and maintaining a podcast website even easier, we thought one thing–templates and widgets built-in to one of the most popular WordPress website builders. A no-code, drag-and-drop solution to generate a beautiful home base for your podcast.
At Castos, we promise to help you start, grow, and monetize a podcast and created this integration to help our Seriously Simple Podcast users improve in all three categories. The powerful combination of Elementor and our WordPress podcast plugin is the answer to launching and maintaining a successful show.
This new release encompasses two components: new widgets and templates in Elementor’s page builder. Here’s what you can expect from our brand new Elementor integration.
Tip
We wrote an in-depth tutorial on how to set up a podcast website with Elementor and Seriously Simple Podcasting. Create your own beautiful podcast website in minutes with our pre-designed templates and widgets for Elementor.
New Podcast Widgets for Elementor
The beauty of using Elementor’s or any other WordPress page builder is the drag-and-drop functionalities. The basic building blocks of creating a webpage with Elementor are the widgets. Now, you can easily add a media player, subscribe links, an episode list, and a recent episode playlist to any page on your existing website.
Watch the video to see Castos’ Elementor integration with new widgets and templates in action. Plus, we’ll show you how to set them all up.
The Castos Player
Add the Castos Player to any page webpage to feature a podcast episode. With advanced functions like increased playback speed and rewind and fast-forward buttons, your website visitors have multiple ways to listen to an episode. Plus, users can share it or subscribe to your podcast directly from the player so they stay long-time listeners.
You can customize the player’s background color and the featured image on the left-hand side to match your podcast’s branding.
Subscribe Links
Featuring the most popular podcast listening platforms, your website visitors can immediately subscribe to your podcast with a click of a button. Include this widget on any post or page to make it easy for people to subscribe and grow your listenership.
The subscribe buttons can also be customized to fit your audience’s listening habits. Swap Stitcher for Pocket Casts, or Spotify for Overcast, you’re in control over which podcast players to feature in this widget.
With nearly 60 different podcasting directories supported you can add custom subscribe links for anywhere your podcast is live.
Episode List
The episode list widget allows you to display the latest 10 episodes of a podcast. Each episode is listed with a featured image, Castos player, and an episode excerpt. The widget allows you to toggle each setting on or off, depending on how you’d like the list to appear.
We envision most users will use the Episode List widget to create an Archive page. It’ll be a page where listeners can easily navigate between older episodes and catch up on your back catalog.
Recent Episode Playlist
Help website visitors catch up on older episodes with a Recent Episode Playlist. This widget features the most 3 recent episodes of your podcast. Each “Listen” call-to-action links to the relevant’s episodes landing page sp listeners can hear the audio and read the show notes or transcription.
The playlist widget can be added to any post or page on your website so your most recent episodes are just a click away.
Podcast Website Templates for Elementor
Many podcasters don’t have an existing website when launching a new show. Building one from scratch is intimidating and takes focus away from producing the actual podcast. To give WordPress users a leg up, we created three customizable templates to get your podcast website up and running in now time.
Homepage or Landing Page Template
The Homepage or Landing Page template serves the same purpose–it’s the main page about your podcast. It details what the show is about, features the latest episode, has subscribe links to every major podcast player, and provides details about the hosts.
If your website is only for and about your podcast, this template would be the site’s homepage. It’s the first place people land to learn about the show and discover more episodes.
If the podcast is just one section of your website, then this template would be the podcast’s landing page. After users land on your website’s homepage, a user can click a button in the top navigation area to find your podcast.
This template is available for all Elementor users and can be used within Page or Post post types. Each element in the template can be moved around or removed completely, you have full control of the final design of the page. The template can either act as a starting point or you can simply add your podcast’s details and hit publish!
Episode Landing Page Template
Creating a new post for each episode is a best practice for any podcast website. Now, it’s easier with the Episode Landing Page template. With the episode’s title, description, and embedded player at the top of the page, site visitors can quickly learn what each is about and click play. The rest of the page has widgets to add transcriptions and show notes for even more information.
An added bonus of publishing individual episode posts is the opportunity to be included in Google’s search results. If your episode has the information someone is searching for, the episode’s landing page can be included in the top results. This is an important way for new people to discover the show as data suggests “searching the internet” is one way people find new podcasts.
Subscribe Page Template
A podcast’s Subscribe page is the place you can direct people to officially subscribe to the show. Include the URL as part of your calls-to-action as a central place for listeners to easily find the podcast on their preferred listening app.
In addition, our Subscribe Page template includes an email acquisition widget from Elementor Pro. Create a closer connection with listeners by sending a newsletter with every release of a new episode. Ask people to sign up or subscribe to hear more from you in one central location.
Getting Started with Seriously Simple Podcasting and Elementor
To start using our new Elementor templates and widgets, you’ll first need to install Seriously Simple Podcasting in WordPress. Then navigate to the “Extension” area of the plugin’s settings to install the Elementor integration set.
You can find the corresponding support documentation for each new feature here.
Podcast Hosting Made Just For You
Castos makes it easy to build, grow, and monetize your show
No Credit Card Required
Nice! Any hope for Divi users soon?
Thanks for the new tools. This is a game changer for me. I am building a new website with Elementor and just recently subscribed to Castos.
Great article Craig, thank you! Having a subscribe page is definitely useful and the popularity of Elementor has brought no end of great tutorials and guides to get started.
Also, I know you’ve included the templates with the free plugin but I would also put links to the templates here too as any easy way of getting new subscribers who might not be ready to get started just yet.
This made me go with SSP for creating my podcast page. I hope the compatibility stays stable! Nice plugin! Great work!