Captivate Insider

Knowing exactly how to work with sponsors is something that so many indie podcasters are concerned about and one of the vital, early-stage conversations with potential sponsors is around whether you're both a fit for each other. Today, we've made it easier than ever to start that conversation by introducing the initial version of our one-click sponsor kits!

This is something that the Captivate power users have asked for and today we're very pleased to announce that you'll see a lovely little download icon next to the information icon on each section in your analytics area - hit that for a download of the data within each section so that you can use it wherever you like!​ Don't see it? Hit a hard refresh on your screen :)

As always, we've worked hard to listen to what you'd love to see in Captivate and we've just added one of the most requested features by podcasters using Captivate sites to generate their stunning podcast website - single episode pages.

We just released the outstanding embeddable playlist players and the simple, powerful latest episode embeddable player to all Captivate podcasters! As of today, you can embed a beautiful player that showcases all episodes of your podcast into any website or, you can embed a player that always shows and plays the most recent episode of your show.

It's weekly update time!! As always, we've worked hard to listen to what you'd love to see in Captivate and have put together the latest release as follows...

Drag and drop team member ordering on your Captivate podcast website: This is a nice one - you can now drag and drop your team members into your desired order for display on your Captivate podcast website. This makes it even easier to customize the display of your team online.

Single subscription link custom domain bug: In certain circumstances, the single subscription link wasn't respecting your use of a custom domain name. It is now :)

Advanced WordPress options for Captivate Sync™: Users can now use a captivate.php file in their theme for a custom layout for the episode list page (for example, you can base this on the index.php page that comes with WordPress and then you can customize sections of it so it's a different layout to the blog.) You can also, if you want to, edit single.php for single episodes by uploading a single_captivate_podcast.php page which you can edit. This is for advanced WordPress users only.

All relevant help articles have been updated to reflect these changes.

It's weekly update time!! As always, we've worked hard to listen to what you'd love to see in Captivate and have put together the latest release as follows...

Request a Captivate feature!: We love working with you and we love making things that work for you. So, we've added a "request a feature" link to the Captivate dashboard footer so that all Captivate podcasters can let us know the features that they'd like to see released. This links directly to our project management platform and we'll be able to let you know when your feature has been greenlit for build!

Even simpler cancellation process: Even though we hate to see you go, we understand that, for various reasons, you may want to cancel your Captivate account. It's our job to make sure that you never need to, but that if you do, that the process should be clear and easy. So, we've redesigned the cancellation process from the ground up to make it even simpler! That's nice, isn't it!

Today, Captivate becomes the world's first podcast hosting platform to introduce a full transparency mode for all podcasts. Full Transparency Mode allows listeners to see exactly where their data may be going when using prefix-led third-party tracking tools such as Podcorn & Chartable, with links to each specific privacy policy and a simple way to add this to your entire episode inventory.

Asking people to subscribe to your podcast can be a real pain - where do you send them? To what link?! Promoting your podcast just got way, way easier and there's more to come!

It's weekly update time!! As always, we've worked hard to listen to what you'd love to see in Captivate and have put together the latest release as follows...

Episode URL added to publishing screen: We've popped in a lovely little field within the episode publishing screen for you to add the URL for your episode if you aren't using Captivate Sync™ or Captivate Sites. Useful for people using Wix, Squarespace or some other web platform. Remember GeoCities? Awww. Also, thanks Evo!

Quashed a minor team member bug: In some really specific edge cases, owners of shows were able to remove themselves from their own show. It took some jiggery-pokery to actually do it, but one or two peeps had the issue so we took a lightsaber to it and got it sorted.

External prefix interface changes: In preparation for next week's release, which is a powerful one, we've made it easier to chain together podcast prefixes like those from Chartable, Podtrac and Podcorn. Captivate's interface now lets you choose the prefix provider and we'll do some checking to make sure your prefix looks a-ok for you.

All relevant help articles have been updated to reflect these changes.

It's weekly update time!!

This week it's all been about SEO, whoop!

As always, we've worked hard to listen to what you'd love to see in Captivate and have put together the latest release as follows...

Episode page SEO: Whether you're a Podcast Websites user or you're using Captivate Sync™ on your own WordPress website, you're going to love the addition of episode page SEO tools. You can now set a custom SEO meta title and meta description, as well as customize the permalink/slug of your episode for your WordPress website. This feature is available in the WordPress Captivate Sync™ interface and in the episode editor within Captivate proper, if you're using Sync.

Internal coupon stuff: Our goal is to be a platform that can be as agile and responsive as possible. There are some podcast hosts that still do things like affiliate programmes using paper (I know!) and from day one, we didn't want to be that company. So, we spent some time this week working on a custom interface to extend the way that we can add coupon behaviours to our pricing system. This means that for events, quick spin-up online summits and so on, we can respond quickly with custom plans/trial extensions for them - it's great for organizers to get answers quickly. Boring for you, super useful for us!

All relevant help articles have been updated to reflect these changes.

Heads up, too - it's holiday season so there'll be no feature releases during the weeks commencing 23rd December and 30th December.

Holiday support hours.

During the holidays, we'll be around as usual with exceptions on these days:

24th December, Christmas Eve - reduced support hours, but still around.

25th December, Christmas Day - closed.

26th December, Boxing Day (UK) - reduced support hours, but still around.

31st December, New Years Eve - reduced support hours, but still around.

1st January 2020 - closed.

2nd January 2020 - normal service.

Happy holidays!