Brainstorm Cafe Podcast Player

Brainstorm Cafe Podcast Player turns any public podcast RSS feed into a polished, searchable episode library for your WordPress website.

Add your feed once, choose the layout, theme, and details you want to show, then place the player with a block or shortcode. The plugin plays media from your existing podcast host; it does not require you to republish episodes in WordPress.

Free forever—without catches

Brainstorm Cafe Podcast Player is free and will always remain free. There is no premium edition, feature paywall, recurring subscription, license key, required account, or limited trial. New features and updates are available to everyone.

The plugin is open-source software released under GPLv2 or later, the same license family used by WordPress.

Player and listening experience

• One polished, full-width shared audio player with play, pause, 15-second rewind, 30-second forward, seek, elapsed-time, volume, mute, and playback-speed controls.
• Optional browser-local resume positions, disabled by default, with a listener-accessible clear button.
• Clear playback error messages with a direct audio-file recovery link.
• Optional compact sticky player that stays available after playback starts.
• Complete episode titles displayed above the full-width controls.
• Responsive layouts for phones, tablets, and desktops.
• Accent-insensitive search, season filtering, visible result counts, and progressive “Show more” browsing.
• Expandable episode notes.
• Native browser audio controls as a no-JavaScript fallback.

Themes, layouts, and visible details

• Light and dark themes with matching search and filter controls.
• Optional transparent outer background for better site-theme integration.
• List, card, and compact episode layouts.
• Individual visibility controls for podcast artwork and description, episode artwork and notes, dates, duration, season and episode numbers, authors, links, and explicit-content labels.
• CSS custom properties and an in-dashboard CSS guide for safe visual customization.

WordPress integration

• A dedicated Podcast Player section in the WordPress dashboard.
• A dynamic Brainstorm Cafe Podcast Player block with per-block overrides.
• A flexible [brainstorm_cafe_podcast_player] shortcode with per-embed overrides.
• One site-wide feed plus an optional feed override for individual blocks or shortcodes.
• A saved-settings preview, one-hour normalized feed cache, and manual refresh control.
• Optional Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, RSS, and two administrator-defined links.

Podcasting 2.0

• Transcript and caption links when supplied by the podcast feed.
• Chapter markers that listeners load on demand and can use to seek within an episode.

Privacy-minded by default

• No analytics, advertising, tracking pixels, external fonts, or third-party JavaScript.
• No Brainstorm Cafe account or hosted service is required.
• Feed retrieval is handled by WordPress, while audio and images continue to come from the publisher-selected hosts.

Block

Insert the Brainstorm Cafe Podcast Player block from the Embed category. The block uses the site-wide settings by default and provides inspector controls for:

• Feed URL
• Theme
• Layout
• Transparent background
• Sticky mode
• Resume listening on this browser
• Episodes shown at once
• Total episodes available
• Search
• Season filtering
• Podcasting 2.0 transcripts
• Podcasting 2.0 chapters

Leave an override empty, or set its episode number to 0, to inherit the dashboard setting.

Shortcode

The basic shortcode uses every saved setting:

[brainstorm_cafe_podcast_player]

Override the most common options for one embed:

[brainstorm_cafe_podcast_player theme="dark" layout="cards" transparent="yes" sticky="yes" per_page="12" max_episodes="60"]

Use another public feed for one embed:

[brainstorm_cafe_podcast_player feed="https://example.com/podcast/feed.xml"]

Available attributes:

• feed: Public HTTP or HTTPS RSS feed URL.
• theme: light or dark.
• layout: list, cards, or compact.
• transparent: yes or no.
• sticky: yes or no.
• resume: yes or no. Overrides the optional browser-local progress setting.
• per_page: Episodes revealed at once, from 1 to 50.
• max_episodes: Episodes loaded from the feed, from 1 to 200.
• search: yes or no.
• season_filter: yes or no.
• podcast_image: yes or no.
• podcast_description: yes or no.
• episode_images: yes or no.
• episode_descriptions: yes or no.
• transcripts: yes or no.
• chapters: yes or no.
• dates: yes or no.
• duration: yes or no.
• numbers: yes or no.
• episode_links: yes or no.
• author: yes or no.
• explicit: yes or no.
• subscribe: yes or no.

CSS customization

Open Podcast Player > CSS guide for copyable examples and a selector reference. The neighboring Shortcode guide tab documents every shortcode attribute. A longer CSS guide is included at docs/customizing-css.md inside the plugin. Detailed release notes are included at docs/changelog.md.

Add custom rules in Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS, a child theme, or the site editor. Do not edit the plugin files because updates replace them.

The main design tokens can be overridden in one place:

.braicapo-player { --braicapo-accent: #c2410c; --braicapo-radius: 8px; --braicapo-font: Georgia, serif; }<h3>Feed behavior</h3>

WordPress retrieves and caches the RSS feed. The plugin also caches its normalized episode data for one hour. Use Refresh feed now on the settings page after publishing an episode when an immediate refresh is needed.

The player supports standard RSS and Atom enclosures plus common iTunes podcast tags for artwork, duration, season, episode number, author, episode type, and explicit-content status. It also detects Podcasting 2.0 podcast:transcript and podcast:chapters episode tags. Missing optional data is simply omitted.

When a feed override selects a different podcast, site-wide Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and custom destination links are omitted so listeners are not sent to the primary podcast. The RSS link follows the selected feed.

Chapter JSON is never downloaded during the initial page load. A listener first opens the Chapters panel and selects Load chapters. Supported chapter markers become buttons that seek the shared audio player to the chapter start time.

External services

This plugin does not depend on a service operated by Brainstorm Cafe. It works with URLs supplied by the site administrator or declared by the podcast publisher:

• WordPress requests the administrator-configured podcast RSS URL to parse and cache the feed. The podcast host receives the website server’s request data, such as its IP address and HTTP user agent.
• A visitor’s browser requests podcast audio and images from the URLs declared in the RSS feed when those resources are displayed or played.
• When a visitor selects Load chapters, the browser requests the HTTPS chapter JSON URL declared by that episode’s podcast:chapters tag. The chapter host receives the visitor’s request, without cookies or a referrer from this plugin. The request may fail if the publisher has not enabled browser access to the chapter file.
• Transcript, episode, and listening-platform links take visitors to their configured destinations only when selected.

Those independently operated podcast and platform hosts have their own terms and privacy policies. Site administrators should review the policies of the feed and services they choose to display.

Privacy

Brainstorm Cafe Podcast Player does not collect analytics or send usage data to Brainstorm Cafe. Search, season filtering, pagination, audio controls, and chapter navigation run in the visitor’s browser.

The optional Resume where listeners left off setting is off by default. When enabled, the plugin uses this website origin’s browser localStorage (braicapo_resume_v1) for episode identifiers, listening positions, and last-save timestamps. It keeps at most 100 positions; positions older than 30 days are ignored and removed on the next successful save or clear action. This data stays in the browser and is not sent to WordPress or Brainstorm Cafe. It does not sync between devices or browsers. Listeners can choose Clear saved progress for a podcast, or clear the website’s browser data. With this option disabled, the plugin neither reads nor writes resume data. Playback continues if storage is unavailable.

Support

For documentation and support, visit https://brainstormcafe.com/podcast-plugin/ or email matt@brainstormcafe.com.

License

Copyright 2026 Matt Lawhead and Brainstorm Cafe.

Brainstorm Cafe Podcast Player is free software released under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or any later version. The complete GPLv2 text is included in LICENSE.txt.

Uninstall behavior

Settings are preserved by default. To remove the plugin option and its cached feed data during uninstall, first enable Delete settings when the plugin is uninstalled under Data cleanup.