We just released an update to our SermonGrid add-on, which is used in our church themes to display sermons in a grid. There has always been an option there to “Subscribe to Podcast”, but we noticed it was causing some confusion for users, and so we have improved it.

Previously, it was coded to try and automatically open the podcast in iTunes. But that caused confusion for people who don’t have iTunes, because it simply opened the “feed”, which looks like a bunch of jumbled code. That’s not a great user experience if you don’t have iTunes. It also didn’t allow users to subscribe to your podcast using their podcasting app of choice very easily. Additionally, the Subscribe button only worked on Apple Laptops and Desktops. It did not work on mobile.

This update is intended to improve all of those rough spots when your users click the “Subscribe to Podcast” button for one of your sermons. Now, when clicked they will see a page which gives them 3 options for subscribing:

1. Subscribe on iTunes
2. Subscribe using another app
3. If they don’t have a podcasting app they use yet, it sends them to a google search for podcasting apps, which is useful for deciding which app is best for them on their device.

Here’s a screenshot of that page:

Once you do the update in your WordPress dashboard, this page will automatically exist. There’s nothing you need to do to make it happen.

The subscribe process on iPhone also works much better now, as it opens iTunes automatically. Here’s a screenshot of that in action on iPhone:

If you have any feedback on this, or thoughts of how it could be improved, or you’re just excited for the better experience provided by this change, let us know! Our hope is to always be making it easier and better for your users to interact with your website, while also keeping the amount of configuration required by site owners to a minimum.

See this change in action on our theme demo for the Restore Church Theme Bundle’s sermongrid page here:
https://demo.mintplugins.com/restore-church-theme-bundle/sermons/