Premium Podcasting with WooCommerce

Setting up WooCommerce to to create a membership site requires the use of a handful of plugins, some of which are not free. Setting up the subscriptions and membership is rather complicated and depending on the instructions you rely on, will use a different combination of plugins (e.g. Swipe plugin vs PayPal plugin for accepting payments). Please search google for tips how to setup a membership site with WooCommerce for the pay and subscription model you are looking for.

Setting up premium podcasting support (password protected podcast feeds) once you have WooCommerce setup for your membership site is quite easy.

Requirements

  • Groups plugin. (this is commonly required for use with WooCommerce setup for a membership site)
  • PowerPress 6.3.2 or newer

Instructions

1. Go to the PowerPress menu > Tools sub-menu (found on the left navigation bar of WordPress). Under tools, click the option “Add Password Protection Capabilities for Control of Which Users can Access Your Podcasts”. This enables premium podcasting in PowerPress.

2. Add a define in your wp-config.php to make PowerPress aware of the Groups plugin. Please add the following define anywhere in your wp-config.php above the include line found near the bottom.

define('POWERPRESS_PREMIUM_GROUPS_PLUGIN', true);

3. Create a new (or edit an en existing custom) podcast channel. Go to the “Other Settings” tab, there will be a section titled “Password Protect Podcast Channel”, here you can set the capability to the capability you selected when you setup your membership site.

When your members attempt to access a premium feed they’ll be prompted for their WordPress username and password.

NOTE: The default podcast feed cannot be used for premium podcasting. The reason for this is security. In the event the membership plugins fail, the default podcast feed would become public. By using custom podcast channels, you are guaranteed that the premium feed will remain password protected in the event of a failure.