Using the Tier Mapping Board

The Tier Mapping screen is where you connect your membership plugin’s levels to Benecaster’s feed tiers. This tutorial covers the drag-and-drop board, the list view, what the warning banners mean, and how to keep your mapping accurate as your membership levels evolve.

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The Mapping Board

Go to Benecaster → Shows → [your show] → Settings → Subscription. The board is in the Tier Mapping section, below the subscription plugin picker. Each show has its own mapping.

Each Benecaster tier is a column (Free, Paid, and any other tiers the show has), and each of your membership plugin’s levels is a tile. Drag a tile onto the column it should map to. Below the columns, Unmapped levels holds every tile not yet mapped.

What you’ll see on a tile:

• Amber — the level is unmapped. Members at it get no feed URL.
• The column’s colour — the level is mapped to that tier.
• NEW badge — the level has appeared in your membership plugin since it was last mapped.
• Signups closed — your plugin no longer sells this level. See below.

Saving: there is no Save button. Each drop saves straight away, and Saving… shows while it does.

Several tiles in one column stack on top of each other, with a count. Click the stack to fan it out, and ▲ Collapse to stack it again.

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The NEW Badge

When your membership plugin has a level Benecaster hasn’t seen mapped before, its tile shows a NEW badge, and a banner above the board reads “New membership levels were detected. Drag them to the appropriate tier column to grant subscribers access.” A notice also appears in Benecaster’s notifications. This happens when:

• You add a new membership level in your plugin after your initial setup
• You connect a different membership plugin, whose levels Benecaster hasn’t seen before

The NEW badge doesn’t mean feed access is broken — it means the level isn’t mapped yet, so members who join at that level get no feed URL until you map it. If the level shouldn’t grant podcast access (e.g. a newsletter-only tier), leave it in Unmapped levels.

The badge clears once you map the level.

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Levels Your Plugin No Longer Sells

A level your membership plugin has stopped selling stays on the board with a grey Signups closed label: a Paid Memberships Pro level with Allow Signups unticked, a Restrict Content Pro level set to Inactive, or a MemberPress membership or WooCommerce Subscriptions product set to Draft or Private. Its members keep their access, so map it like any other level. [benecaster_pricing_table] and [benecaster_subscribe] leave it off, because nobody can join it. In a stack, the label shows once you fan the stack out.

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Board View Vs. List View

A button at the top of the section switches between the board and a list.

Board view (default) — drag-and-drop columns, good for seeing the whole mapping at once

List view — a table with one row per level and a dropdown in each row (— No access — or a tier); faster for editing specific assignments when you know exactly which level you’re looking for. A change saves as soon as you pick it.

Both views show the same mapping. Your preferred view is remembered.

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Don’t Use public for a Paid Level

public is the tier your public feed carries. Map a level to it only if it is meant to get your public episodes. Never give a paid level’s tier the slug public: Benecaster treats that slug as your public feed’s tier, not a paid one, and doesn’t stop you from using it.

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The Level-Edit Metabox

For MemberPress, Paid Memberships Pro, and Restrict Content Pro, you can set a level’s tier on the plugin’s own level screen, without opening the Tier Mapping board. There is one dropdown per show. Each offers — None (unmapped) — and the same tiers as Tier Mapping: Free, Paid, then each of the show’s tiers once, by name, including one no level is mapped to yet. A tier chosen there is saved by its name.

Every show’s dropdown is saved when you save the level. A show left on — None (unmapped) — is unmapped for that level, even if it was mapped before, so check each show’s row before you save.

Changes saved there immediately update the board in Show Settings. The metabox is a convenience shortcut — the data is the same as editing on the board.

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When a Level Doesn’t Appear

The board reads your plugin’s levels each time it loads, so a level you have just added appears when you reopen the Subscription tab, with a NEW badge. If it still doesn’t appear, check that it belongs to the plugin this show is connected to.

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Common Mapping Patterns

Single tier (all paid subscribers see the same content) Drag all paid membership levels into one tier column. The simplest setup — most podcasters starting out use this.

Monthly and annual variants Map “Gold Monthly” and “Gold Annual” both to the same gold tier. They get identical feed access; the billing distinction is your membership plugin’s concern. Each level keeps its own price and signup page: [benecaster_subscribe] shows a card for each, and [benecaster_pricing_table] gives each its own column, with the level’s name under the tier name.

Early access Map a premium level to gold and a standard level to silver. Set episode availability dates so Gold subscribers get access two weeks before Silver.

Non-podcast levels Any membership level that isn’t related to podcast subscriptions — newsletter-only plans, event access, donations — stays in Unmapped levels (or — No access — in list view). Its members get no feed URL.

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What Happens When You Change a Mapping

Changes take effect on each subscriber’s next podcast app poll — typically within a few hours, or instantly when the subscriber opens their app. No token regeneration is needed.

If you move a level to a higher tier, those subscribers immediately gain access to the additional episodes at their next poll. If you move them to a lower tier or back to Unmapped levels, they lose access to the restricted episodes at the next poll.

See Mapping Your Membership Tiers for the full reference on tier mapping, and Switching Your Subscription Plugin for the wizard that handles full plugin transitions.