Taxonomy Podcasting

Taxonomy Podcasting, or classifying podcasts into ordered categories, adds custom podcast settings and podcast feed support to specific WordPress taxonomy terms, similar to the Category Podcasting feature. Note: Because of the complexity of Taxonomy Podcasting, the podcast subscribe sidebar widget and subscribe links are currently not supported.

Who is Taxonomy Podcasting for?

If your theme or plugin uses the register_taxonomy function, Taxonomy Podcasting could be for you. Podcasters wishing to create custom podcast feeds using the default WordPress “category” taxonomy, please enable Category Podcasting instead. Post categories are very popular; their taxonomy has exclusive management in PowerPress. Taxonomy Podcasting Requirements Taxonomies that wish to utilize Taxonomy Podcasting should register their taxonomy register_taxonomy with the following attributes: rewrite = true Without this setting, there will be no permalink version of the taxonomy term’s feed. Also, if a custom post type is used, the following attributes will also need to be applied during the register_post_type function call. Please see the Post Type Podcasting page for requirement details. Note: For a post type to utilize taxonomy podcasting, you must create one post type podcast with the post type podcast’s feed slug set to “podcast” without quotes.

Example Taxonomy Podcasting: Post Tags

Many WordPress users and developers might not be aware that categories and tags are taxonomies in WordPress. “Post Categories” is a taxonomy that PowerPress supports out of the box with an exclusive menu. All other taxonomies (other than post categories) must be managed under the PowerPress “Taxonomy Podcasting” section. Before you continue with the following example, please make sure you have enabled “Taxonomy Podcasting” in PowerPress Advanced Options and also have created at least one post tag with which to test and associate that tag with a blog post with an episode specified.

• Go to the Taxonomy Podcasting menu.
• Select Taxonomy, select “post_tag” then press the Select Taxonomy Term button.
• Select the term you wish with which to add podcasting.
• Press the “Add podcast settings to Term” button. You can now enter custom podcast settings for this specific taxonomy term.

You have now successfully created a podcast for the post tag taxonomy for the selected term. Any item you now tag with that term will be added to this podcast feed.

Taxonomy Podcasting vs. Category Podcasting

Taxonomy Podcasting, like category podcasting, uses the default podcast episode box, which uses the feed slug “podcast.” This applies to the built-in “post” post type.  Taxonomy Podcasting works with any taxonomy except for the “post” post type’s Categories. If you are not ware, WordPress Post Categories are a taxonomy. If you want to add podcast feeds to Post Categories, you must use Category Podcasting as this special feature in PowerPress is built in and simplified specifically for Post Categories.

Taxonomy Podcasting with a Custom Post Type

Out of the box taxonomy podcasting works with the default “post” post type. If you want to use taxonomy podcasting with a custom post type, you must enable Post Type podcasting then create a post type podcast that utilizes the feed slug “podcast”. This allows the default podcast feed “podcast’ to be associated with your post type, which is then available to category and taxonomy podcasting.

Why Can I Not Associate Random Post-Type Podcasts to Taxonomy Podcasts?

It is too complicated. For example, if you have one post-type with three post-type podcasts with a custom taxonomy with three taxonomy term podcasts, you wound then have up to nine podcast feed combinations across three episode boxes and have to create special podcast settings for each feed that deals with each combination of each post type with each taxonomy term. We have analyzed the idea of requiring a taxonomy term to be associated to a custom post type podcast, but it brings up the fundamental issue that then we must assume all posts that use the episode box must also select the taxonomy term, regardless if the user actually selected that taxonomy term at the time of post editing. In this case there is no advantage over simply using a post type podcast. Because selecting a taxonomy term is not a requirement when saving a custom post type page when editing, it means it is possible for someone to use the episode box for a term with the post itself is not associated to the taxonomy term. If the post is not associated to the term then the episode would never appear in the feed, regardless if it is specified in the episode box. The solution is to utilize only one episode box for taxonomy podcasting. Utilizing the default podcast episode box allows a simple relationship that can be managed easily. This solution allows you to associate one episode box per post to one - many podcast taxonomy feeds. Category podcasting has the same limitation for the same reason.