New landing page: The WordPress Briefing Podcast

[thetinyl]

Background

The WordPress Briefing podcast is a bi-weekly series hosted by Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy. It's an important communication channel for project leadership to share insights and resources related to what's going on around the project.

Currently, new episodes of the podcast are shared on /News, with its archive of older episodes living as a category page.

Why a landing page?

Having a dedicated landing page lets us include more information about the podcast and Josepha, which can help improve searchability and expand its reach. It lets us create a more engaging visitor experience, curate content, and leverage the landing page for future marketing campaigns/initiatives. It would also be ideal to have a different URL that's more ownable/recognizably linked to the podcast (i.e. using the name).

Notes

• Landing page copy is already in progress and should be ready shortly
• For design/layout, the goal is to leverage as much of the existing new WordPress.org design language as possible
• @bjmcsherry manages the podcast production and can help answer any specific podcast-related questions
• There may be some technical needs with how the featured episode/recent episodes appear... this may not be the case, but I want to flag just in case

Tasks

• Landing page copy ready
• First draft page created in Editor
• Initial design
• Page complete: Week of September 30

[ryelle]

^ removed some spam comments

[ryelle]

I've created a draft page, you should be able to find it in the Pages list — currently it's called WordPress Briefing Podcast, you can change that and work on the content there. We can tweak the global header and footer colors once we're ready to roll this out, since it's controlled in the template (noting since this came up for creator connections).

There may be some technical needs with how the featured episode/recent episodes appear... this may not be the case, but I want to flag just in case

I've dropped the RSS feed into the page, but it doesn't allow for that much design control (we haven't styled it, AFAIK). If you want something more like the Latest News section on the homepage, that will take a little dev work, but only a couple hours.

This will just be one page, linking off to the current podcast archive on News, right?

Is there a deadline for this page (ex, also by WCUS)?

[thetinyl]

If you want something more like the Latest News section on the homepage, that will take a little dev work, but only a couple hours.

It may not be exactly like the Latest News section, but we'll likely want it to have some additional content vs. the straight up RSS (like episode length, short description, etc). So this is good to know.

This will just be one page, linking off to the current podcast archive on News, right?

Hmm. I don't want to assume here, so flagging @bjmcsherry for your thoughts.

Is there a deadline for this page (ex, also by WCUS)?

Great question. If it can be done by WCUS (or sooner), that'd be fantastic.

[bjmcsherry]

This will just be one page, linking off to the current podcast archive on News, right?

Yes, we will still have the episodes uploaded to /News since many subscribers to News came because of the Podcast.

Also, what are the chances of still being able to view stats for episode plays from the LP? Or would a play here just add to the totals we have on /News? Which is also fine. They use Seriously Simple for stats there.

[thetinyl]

@jasmussen / @sfougnier Copy is ready to go for the page. I've also added it to the draft page (preview may not work) that @ryelle created.

It's a mess at the moment, but let me know if there's more I can do to help prep it for you to start. It may be worth looking at the copy document first to get an idea of the sections.

Happy to answer questions or discuss anything further.

[jasmussen]

I'll take a look as soon as I get a moment. Some other tasks landed on my table. My instinct once I'm able to take a stab, is to just create a new test page edit, you already have one, and work in that, then we can swap around the blocks when we're ready. If anyone subscribed here would recommend a different approach, let me know.

[jasmussen]

Took a deeper look. The draft page is a big help in figuring out how the existing landing page can be elevated. Diving in, however, I think it might still be useful for us to do a quick pass with some of the Figma templates we've got. So I kicked off a starting point in this Figma file. @sfougnier if you get a moment, can you take a look? I'm not happy with the layout as proposed there, but the ingriedients were ported over, giving a head-start to potentially make something nice. Let me know!

[thetinyl]

Just noting that the deadline for this has been pushed to September 30, 2024.

[jasmussen]

Based on mockups @sfougnier did in this Figma file, I expanded upon the work slightly and landed on the attached:

Firstly, please share your thoughts on these, content/structure/design-wise. I suspect that given this becomes a destination on its own, it will be possible to reduce some prose here and there, perhaps move it to subpage or otherwise. But as-is, I've worked to make sure this came together. Since it will be block editor pages, it will be trivial to edit after the fact, so we could start a first iteration pending feedback and a few open questions.

Questions:

• I can build this in the block editor, at least 80% of it. There are some open questions on how the permalink pages may come together, given the particular row and then 2 columns layout, but if that doesn't come together, we can look at alternatives.
• Do we want to update the official podcast artwork? Saul explored some additional options here, this mockup includes the one I think works best. If we prefer to keep the existing artwork, I can easily return with a mockup that keeps that as-is.
• Can I add a little custom CSS? Notably the custom podcast player as it exists, I believe I can make it match the artwork, and just generally gel with the design.

CC: @ryelle @thetinyl

[thetinyl]

Thanks for pushing this forward, @jasmussen (and @sfougnier for the initial exploration). Overall, the design looks beautiful. I especially like the hero section.

My feedback mostly relates to the Episodes and Start here sections:

Episodes section

Having so many podcast players feels like too much for the page. It also includes a lot of redundant information (name of podcast x2, name of title x2, etc).

If possible, I think having one featured episode with the player + a list of the next 5 recent episodes (perhaps in a similar style to the events page?) would condense the page and pull up the other information. Driving listeners to the specific episode page is ideal since it has all the extra resources/information about the episode.

Start here section

Originally, this section was meant to include the three most popular episodes to let new folks jump into what seems to be the hottest topics/most listened to (as a hook). But we can also just feature the first one. If we go with the first idea, is there another way to present the episodes that's not the player? They can just be links to the episode pages.

Everything else looks fine to me as a first iteration. @bjmcsherry Do share if you have any additional thoughts.

I do want to note that the initial scope of this project was just to create a landing page that would end up just linking to the existing WP Briefing episodes on the News blog (where they currently live). That being said, it would create a much nicer experience if we could leverage the designs you're presenting for a podcast archive and podcast episode page. @ryelle Would something like this even be feasible since the podcast is published on News?

There are some open questions on how the permalink pages may come together, given the particular row and then 2 columns layout, but if that doesn't come together, we can look at alternatives.

I may need additional clarification here, but do you mean the other pages besides the landing page? (If so, see my note on scope above.)

Do we want to update the official podcast artwork?

I'll let WP Briefing producer @bjmcsherry weigh in here officially, but I think we could and should. Saul already updated the visual language for the podcast for our social assets (seemingly with the same look and feel as the explorations you've linked).

Can I add a little custom CSS?

I'll defer to Kelly on this one.

[ryelle]

I do want to note that the initial scope of this project was just to create a landing page that would end up just linking to the existing WP Briefing episodes on the News blog (where they currently live). That being said, it would create a much nicer experience if we could leverage the designs you're presenting for a podcast archive and podcast episode page. @ryelle Would something like this even be feasible since the podcast is published on News?

No… the scope of this was to create a single new page (eg, wordpress.org/podcast) on the main site linking to the existing News site archive. We had not planned to rebuild the News site archives, and creating a new site would loose the current subscribers (and as News does not use a proper block theme, I'm not confident that implementing this just for those pages would be simple).

If possible, I think having one featured episode with the player + a list of the next 5 recent episodes (perhaps in a similar style to the events page?) would condense the page and pull up the other information. Driving listeners to the specific episode page is ideal since it has all the extra resources/information about the episode.

We don't currently have a way to add the player to this page at all — earlier I suggested we could use the Latest News block from the homepage with a backend tweak to pull from Episodes, but this will only include the title, date, and category. I'm sure we could figure something out to support a player, but adding that, the excerpt, and the unique layout increases the dev time needed here. Of those, the player is the biggest unknown, so if we could omit that entirely to push people to the episode pages, it would be easier to build.

[jasmussen]

Great feedback, both! I will need to come back and address all the feedback, suggestions, and work within the limitations, so the first draft here served as an excellent catalyst for that feedback, thank you. I should still be able to make the Sep 30 deadline, even though I am AFK next week, but in the mean time, here's what I'm hearing, re-stated here so you can correct me:

• We have a single URL, one-pager, for the podcast, e.g. on the suggested URL.
• We keep the existing news-archive, and for every podcast, we link it there.
• If we can avoid embedding a player in the new version, and simply link out to the existing pages, that's best, it also avoids the duplicative titles.
• We should limit the number of episodes to 3, take a pass at the curation for "start here".

If that sounds right, all of it is very reasonable. I would say it suggests we keep the current podcast artwork intact, at least for the time being, and I'll make sure there's more visual connective tissue between the landing page and the news archive.

I would still say that design elements and explorations made here can be shelved for future explorations, so any feedback you get on these is still welcome, even if the V1 will be pulled back a little.

Thanks again!

[thetinyl]

Thanks for clarifying all of that, @ryelle.

@jasmussen All your bullets make sense to me. Just an update on the last one:

We should limit the number of episodes to 3, take a pass at the curation for "start here".

For this iteration, let's drop the "Start here" section entirely. It's a nice-to-have at the moment, and we can figure that out after the page launches.

I would say it suggests we keep the current podcast artwork intact, at least for the time being, and I'll make sure there's more visual connective tissue between the landing page and the news archive.

I agree on the idea of visual connective tissue between landing page and news, but not sure about keeping the current artwork the same. We are using @sfougnier's refreshed approach to promote the podcast on social, so we could lean more to the new as you've already done.

Example of social artwork: