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Thanking Members On-Air

Member Thanks is a feature that helps you decide which subscribers to thank on-air in each episode. Rather than keeping a manual list or trying to remember who joined recently, Benecaster generates a suggested set of names for you based on a query type you choose — new members, a rotating pool, or anniversary milestones.

The result can be embedded directly in your episode page or show notes using the [benecaster_member_thanks] shortcode, or used informally as a reference while you record.

Who Can Be Named

Member Thanks names only members who have chosen to be listed publicly: the same people your Supporter Wall shows. A member opts in by ticking Show me on the Supporter Wall on their account page. Everyone else is left out, even if they have a first and last name set.

  • Turn on the Supporter Wall for the show. The Show me on the Supporter Wall checkbox only appears on a member’s account page when one of their shows has the Supporter Wall enabled. Without it, nobody can opt in, and Member Thanks has nobody to name.
  • A list can be shorter than count, or empty. If you ask for five names and only two of the matching members have opted in, you get two. An empty list renders nothing.
  • The rule covers every list. All four built-in query types, query types added by an add-on, and the Member Thanks tile in the Episode Workbench.
  • Nothing renders for a show that is not published. A draft, pending, private or trashed show shows no list.

Query Types

Member Thanks has four built-in ways to select which subscribers appear. You choose one per shortcode placement.

New Since Last Episode

Returns subscribers who joined after your last published episode. The list is the same on every page load — it reflects exactly who joined during that episode window, no randomness involved. Use this when you want to welcome new members by name at the top of each episode.

A follower who later starts paying has two join dates, the day they followed and the day they started paying, so they can be welcomed again in the episode after they start paying. Each person still appears in a list only once. A member you added by hand with a past join date counts from that date.

Random

Draws a fresh random set of active subscribers on every page load, with no memory of who appeared before, so the same person can come up twice in a row. Use query_type="random" when that is what you want, rather than relying on the cycling pool’s behaviour without the Podcast Workflow add-on.

Random Cycling Pool

Draws a rotating set of active subscribers, making sure no one appears twice until everyone has had a turn. Once the full pool has cycled through, it resets. This spreads recognition evenly across your subscriber base over time — no one gets skipped, no one gets thanked repeatedly.

Without the Podcast Workflow add-on, the cycling pool has no memory between page loads, so it draws randomly each time from your full active subscriber list without deduplication. The Podcast Workflow add-on adds the deduplication log that makes cycling work as intended.

Milestone Members

Returns subscribers whose join anniversary falls in the window since your last episode — three months, six months, or one year. Each name comes with an anniversary label so you can call it out specifically on air (“Sarah is celebrating one year with us”). The list is deterministic; the same subscribers appear on every page load for that episode window. For a follower who later started paying, either join date can mark the anniversary.

Placing the Shortcode

Add [benecaster_member_thanks] to any episode page, show notes page, or post where you want the list to appear. By default it shows five randomly cycling subscribers as an unordered list.

[benecaster_member_thanks]

To show new subscribers instead:

[benecaster_member_thanks query_type="new_since_last_episode"]

To show milestone members:

[benecaster_member_thanks query_type="milestone"]

For the full list of parameters — including count, tier, format, and episode_id — see the shortcode reference.

Format Options

The format attribute controls how the list is rendered.

list (default) — an HTML bullet list of display names:

  • Jane Okafor
  • Marcus Reyes
  • Priya Nair

prose — a natural-language sentence, ready to read aloud:

Jane Okafor, Marcus Reyes, and Priya Nair

names — plain comma-separated names with no markup, useful when you’re pulling the content into a script template or a custom layout:

Jane Okafor, Marcus Reyes, Priya Nair

How Names Are Resolved

The name shown for each subscriber follows the same resolution chain used on the Supporter Wall:

  1. Wall name (_benecaster_wall_display_name) — the name the subscriber has set on their account page for community surfaces
  2. First + last name — from WordPress user meta, when no wall name is set
  3. WordPress display name — the final fallback

Subscribers set their wall name from the account page when the Supporter Wall is enabled on one of their shows. If a subscriber has never set one, Benecaster falls back through the chain automatically — the name you read on air is always the most specific one available.

Podcast Workflow Add-on

The Podcast Workflow add-on extends Member Thanks with a dedicated tile in the Episode Workbench. From there you can preview the suggested list before recording, regenerate it if you want a different draw, and then accept it — locking in the final set of names for that episode.

Once a list is accepted, passing the episode’s ID to the shortcode with episode_id="123" retrieves that locked list instead of running a fresh query. This means your show notes page always reflects exactly who you thanked, even after the episode has been published for months and your subscriber base has changed.

The add-on also writes a system note to the episode’s production log when a list is accepted, and — if the Email Editor add-on is also active — can automatically send a “you were thanked” email to each member after acceptance.

See Also

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