There’s no denying the fact that podcasting is becoming one of the fastest growing media platforms in the world. According to recent figures, today there are well over 800,000 active podcasts to choose from with over 54 million podcast episodes currently available worldwide.
In the first ten months of 2019, a record 192,000 new podcasts were launched. Many predict that this figure will have doubled within the first ten months of 2020. With these statistics in mind, creating your own podcast is a no-brainer if you run a business, have a consuming passion or hobby or simply want to connect with people who share the same interests.
For many of us, using WordPress to create a home for our podcast is an obvious solution. But that’s where the challenge begins. With so many developers claiming to have created the very best WordPress podcast theme, it can be a time consuming, frustrating and sometimes expensive journey finding that one theme that delivers what it promises on the tin. With these thoughts in mind, we were (to put it mildly) sceptical when we heard of the Dixie WordPress theme.
Described by its creators at SecondLine as ‘a modern WordPress theme built for Podcast owners,’ Dixie is fully responsive and supports multiple podcasting plugins such as Anchor and PowerPress. The theme also works with locally hosted or external MP3 files, which is ideal for musicians or people simply wishing to share files with their audience. Intrigued, we decided to give Dixie a test run and the results were hugely impressive.
Installing the theme and importing its demo content took less than three minutes. No, read that sentence again. Less than three minutes. In the time it took to make a cup of coffee, we had Dixie installed. The theme came with one of the most comprehensive set up wizards we’ve ever encountered. The wizard did everything except drink the coffee for us. It not only installed the child theme – which is needed as a base for the theme itself – it also activated the theme, installed all of the necessary plugins and allowed us to import the demo content.
As Dixie integrates with Elementor, probably the best open source page builder in the world, customising Dixie was a breeze. We also loved the fact that SecondLine had also included access to their own Elementor plugins as well as offering a dedicated import plugin that we could use to import all of our podcast episodes. The result was that, within minutes, all of our podcasts had been imported from the host site and into the theme, making our new site look polished, professional and packed with engaging content. Excellent.
One initial worry we had with the theme was one of creating a unique and distinctive look for our site so that it stood out from all the many others using the Dixie theme. This worry was quickly dispelled when we realised that SecondLine has gone out of their way to provide full color customization features as well as font controls, so our brand really stood out rather than blended in.
Talking about standing out, another highlight of the test period was when we needed help with a question on configuring our podcast player. We’re all used to the first rate customer service of multibillion dollar businesses like Amazon. But it’s heartening to know that companies like SecondLine are also setting great examples that other firms should be judged by. We sent a query to the developer in the morning. Less than an hour later we had an email in our in-box dealing with the enquiry and offering a solution. Take that Amazon.
Priced at less than $70, it’s very hard to think of a WordPress podcast theme that can match the many features and benefits of Dixie. Highly recommended. Take a look at our Dixie theme at https://tpimag.com/nakedpropertyinvestor/
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