Radio Websites – Updates 2024

Throughout 2024, we have continued to develop and improve our Radio Website builder! We are committed to continuous improvements to this platform – this includes new features, enhancements, and bug fixes. Your monthly subscription means you always have access to the latest features and support. We are exited to deliver these enhancements to our 60+ stations on the platform.

If you don’t already use Radio Websites for your station, take a look at all the features you can get access to for a simple monthly price.

This article outlines the notable changes to the platform throughout 2024. All updates are now available to all sites, subject to plan requirements. In addition to the changes listed on this page, there are also hundreds of smaller improvements – including bug fixes, security updates, and user interface improvements.

If you have questions, please get in touch with our support team. We’re here to help!

Fundraising Tally Block

Many of our stations are community radio stations, and conduct fundraising appeals throughout the year. We have developed a Fundraising Tally Block to allow you to display a live donation tally for your appeal on your website.

Here’s an example of Sonshine’s appeal landing page:

There are three different data sources you can choose from:

• Manual
  This option lets you manually update your Tally within WordPress.
  
• Gravity Forms
  This option lets you could the payments made on one or more forms, within a specified date range. Use this to show a tally directly from your donation page’s donations.
  
• Profiler CRM
  If you use the Profiler CRM, we can fetch the tally and goal in realtime from your Special Events mode.

You can also customise the text displayed in the progress bar, using merge codes to insert the percentage, dollars raise, dollars remaining, goal, and more.

Additional Payment Gateways via payFURL

We have long supported Stripe as our Payment Gateway within Radio Websites. They provide a robust, feature-rich way to process once-off and recurring payments from your website. However, some of our customers choose not to use Stripe.

As a solution, we have partnered with payFURL to enable access to 50+ payment gateways. They support most gateways from Australian banks, as well as a whole host of international gateways.

payFURL handles the payment entry, including PCI-DSS transport, and passes the details through to your gateway for processing. They can also pass the gateway’s tokenised card details through to a compatible CRM (such as Profiler) for later processing (e.g. recurring donation processing).

There are additional usage-based feeds for payFURL, and payFURL is only available on our Premium plans.

Apple Pay & Google Pay

As mentioned in 2023, we had been working on Apple Pay and Google Pay integration with Stripe and our websites. This integration rolled out earlier this year, and is now available for all Stripe-enabled Radio Websites.

To enable this, you need to follow these steps:

1. Verify your domain in Stripe, and add this verification to your Radio Website (WordPress Admin > Forms > Settings > Apple Pay).
2. In your Forms, enable “Additional Payment Methods” on your Stripe field.
3. Test your integration. Apple Pay works in Safari browsers, and Google Pay works in Chrome browsers.

Song History Improvements

We have been re-designing our Song History feature. This page is often in the top-5 pages on stations websites. All stations get access to MetaRadio as a part of their website subscription, so it makes sense to connect your automation system and enable this page.

The new Song History feature has two layout options – Cards and Table. It also has Apple Music links (on hover), and a new dynamic search tool which doesn’t reload the page upon searching.

The card layout, which will become the default for stations in the coming weeks, looks like this:

The table layout, which is currently active on all sites and will still be available as an option, has received some polish too:

These changes will also be rolled out to MetaRadio WordPress users in the next release.

Google Analytics Event Tracking

We have enhanced the events that are sent to Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel. The events listed below should automatically show up in the Google Analytics 4 property connected to your site. Facebook Pixel events are sent as Custom Events.

Automated Imports

We have always had automated tools to import content, such as The Wire. We also use these tools for bulk migration of content. These import tools are now available for ongoing imports.

You may have a news wire provider, or third party content provider, who can offer their content in a structured format (JSON or XML). If this is the case, we can connect this data feed to your site and import Posts or Directory Entries periodically (as often as hourly).

If you need this feature setup, please contact our support team.

Form Surveys & Coupons

We have enabled the Survey and Coupon features in Gravity Forms.

The Survey feature allows you to create survey forms, such as listener feedback surveys. It can perform summary analysis of the results for you. The ‘Survey’ form field provides a number of different options. This is available for all sites, regardless of their plan.

The Coupon feature can be used on Payment forms to provide conditional discounts. This is available for all Premium sites.

Profiler CRM Enhancements

We have been developing a new version of the Profiler integration for your sites. This new integration has a number of new features:

• Uses the latest version of the Profiler API for Donation feeds
• Removes User Defined Fields (this significantly speeds up configuration time)
• Create ‘Profiler Feed List’ setting screen, for quick access to all configured feeds on your site (WordPress Admin > Forms > Settings > Profiler Feed List)
• Remove Profiler Logs fields, and move these to an entry metabox.
• Donation Feed: Add Extra Comments field
• Donation Feed: Automatic formatting of Australian phone numbers
• Donation Feed: Add new fields for gender, interactions, roles, membership mapping and payment split text.
• Add Profiler icon to all Feeds

Other Changes

• Directory Entry Default Images
  You can now specify a default image to be used when no image has been provided for a specific directory entry. This is configured in the WordPress Customizer.
  
• Artist Directory Social Links
  Social links can be added to the Artist Directory, and these display as icons.
  
• Disable Bylines for Specific Users
  You may have a generic author and don’t want to display their name in the byline on Posts. To disable their byline, go to their User Profile and tick the box “Disable Byline on Posts”.
  
• Multiple User Roles
  User accounts can now have multiple roles. User Roles define the permissions for a specific user. For example, you may have an Author, who should also be able to edit Track History entries. The additional roles available are: MetaRadio Manager, MetaRadio Track History Editor, SEO Editor, and SEO Manager.

What’s Next for Radio Websites?

We have been working hard behind the scenes and have some changes in progress. We expect these to be rolled out to all sites in the first quarter of 2025. These changes include:

• New & Improved On Demand Blocks
  Our new version of the On Demand block will bring on-demand audio and track history information into the one location, in a super user-friendly interface. Our designer has been very excited about this one!
  
• New Player & MetaRadio Design Options
  We’re continuing to work on the designs within MetaRadio. These new designs will be available to Radio Websites first, and will allow you to present your programs & shows in new and exciting ways.
  
• New Component Variations
  We’re continuing to work to deliver new versions of the components you use across your site – headers, footers, banners, and cards. These variations will allow you to substantially change the appearance of your site, allowing for much more detailed customisation.
  
• Popups
  We are designing a range of popups, which you could use to encourage mailing list signups, competition entry or donations.