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Introducing The New Castos Audio Player Block For Your WordPress Site

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WordPress 5.0 (codenamed Bebo) was released back in December 2018. Its biggest addition was the introduction of the new Block Editor, Gutenberg, which changes the way we all build sites with WordPress.

Castos embraced the Block Editor, even going so far as to rebuild our entire website using it. Today, we take that commitment to supporting Blocks one step further, with the Castos Player Block.

WordPress audio player block example

Since version 1.19.0 of Seriously Simple Podcasting, it’s been possible to enable an HTML 5 player on your podcast episodes, instead of the default audio player. This is the same player we use on our own Audience podcast, as well as what we offer our Castos account holders on their Castos powered podcasts.

However, this audio player was previously only available on podcast enabled posts. If you wanted to use it on a non-podcast enabled post, or a page, you had to use a shortcode. We recognized this wasn’t a great experience, especially in the post-Gutenberg world.

WordPress audio player setup example

Now, you can add a Castos Player block directly from the Block editor and select which episode to play. It works exactly the same as the existing player block, the only difference is now you can use it anywhere that the Block Editor is available (not just on podcast-enabled posts).

And we aren’t stopping here. Adding Block Editor support for the plugin opens up a whole new host of options to us. So watch this space, and let us know how you like the new Player Block.

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Craig Hewitt
Craig is the founder of Castos. When he's not busy podcasting, talking about podcasting, or helping others get started in this awesome medium he's hanging out with his wife, two children, and likely planning their next travel adventure.

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