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The Benecaster Admin

When you open any Benecaster page in WordPress, the plugin takes over the full browser viewport. The WordPress admin bar, left admin menu, and footer are hidden — Benecaster renders its own navigation and admin shell instead.

This gives you a focused workspace without the visual clutter of nested admin menus. WordPress is still running underneath; you are still on a WordPress admin page.

Returning to WordPress

A door-out icon appears in the top-right corner of the Benecaster toolbar. Hovering it shows the tooltip “Exit to WordPress”. Clicking it returns you to the standard WordPress dashboard.

Left Navigation

The left panel is Benecaster’s primary navigation. The currently active section is highlighted with the solid brand color, white text, and medium font weight.

Sections in the left nav:

  • Dashboard — subscriber count and recent activity at a glance
  • Shows — all your podcast shows; create, manage, and archive them here
  • Subscribers — full subscriber list with search and filter
  • Episodes — episode list, drafts, and editor
  • Settings — app-level settings (Account, Notifications, Permalinks, Add-ons, Tools, Your Data, GDPR / Privacy)

Shows

The Shows screen lists every podcast show on your site. Each show appears as a card displaying the cover artwork, title, episode count, subscriber count, and feed slug.

Add show — a button in the top-right of the Shows screen. Benecaster checks your plan’s show capacity before opening the creation flow; if you are at the limit, it surfaces an upgrade prompt instead.

Each show card has two actions in its overflow menu:

  • Archive — opens a confirmation modal warning that subscribers will lose feed access while the show is archived. Archived shows are removed from your active show count, freeing a plan slot for a new show. The show’s data, episodes, and subscriber list are preserved. Archived shows appear in a collapsed “Archived shows” section at the bottom of the Shows screen; unarchiving restores normal feed delivery immediately. See Show limits and multi-site use for how show slots are counted.
  • Delete — opens a typed-confirmation modal (type the show title to confirm). Permanent and irreversible.

Clicking a show’s title or artwork opens per-show settings for that show. Creating one for the first time is covered in Creating a show.

Per-show Settings

Each show has its own settings screen. The left nav highlight stays on Shows while you are inside per-show settings, and a breadcrumb or back link returns you to the Shows list.

Tabs available in per-show settings:

  • Details — show title, description, feed slug, cover art, and language
  • Subscription — the show’s plan and connection, and the subscription plugin and tier mapping it uses
  • Visibility — upload patron lists from Patreon or Supercast to see how your existing audience maps to Benecaster
  • Feeds — explicit rating, copyright, cancelled-subscriber behaviour, and the episode-page Download link
  • Feed Sync — RSS import from a previous hosting platform
  • Credits — episode credit templates
  • Emails — email templates and sending options for this show
  • Language — per-show language and locale overrides
  • Listener Support — tips and donations
  • Payments — the show’s payment settings
  • Podcasting 2.0 — Podcasting 2.0 feed tags
  • Templates — per-show page template selection

Add-ons that keep settings per show add their own tab after Templates, marked with a puzzle-piece icon.

Settings

The top-level Settings screen covers app-level configuration that applies across all shows.

Tabs in Settings:

  • Account (default) — your shows portfolio, referrals, limit enforcement and telemetry. Plan and connection state are shown per show, on that show’s Settings → Subscription tab
  • Notifications — admin notification preferences
  • Permalinks — global episode URL structure
  • Add-ons — installed and available add-ons
  • Tools — import, export, and diagnostic utilities
  • Your Data — data export and deletion
  • GDPR / Privacy — privacy and consent settings

Notifications and Tours

Benecaster surfaces admin notices inside its own shell — not in WordPress’s standard #wpbody notice area. If the setup wizard was exited early (paused rather than completed), a notice appears at the top of every Benecaster page:

Benecaster setup is paused. Resume setup

The Resume link is bold and underlined so it reads clearly as a link regardless of the admin theme’s default anchor color.

Other notices carry a button that opens the screen the notice is about.

Setup reminders appear on the Dashboard instead, as the first rows of its Needs attention section: no membership plugin connected, no tier mapped, built-in membership without its Stripe keys or a tier, Listener Support switched on with no payment link, and any add-on’s own setup steps. Configure bridge and Map tiers open your show’s Subscription tab; on a site with more than one show they open the Shows list instead, so you can pick the show you mean. The × hides a reminder for you, and it comes back if the problem is fixed and later returns. See Dashboard Overview.

Guided tours are available from the ? button in the top toolbar. Each tour walks through a specific section of the plugin. The first tour — the Benecaster Overview — is available as soon as setup is complete and can be revisited any time. The full list is in the tour catalog.

See Also

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