Customizing Templates

Benecaster ships two built-in templates — Default Light and Default Dark — and supports installing custom templates delivered by Benecaster’s design service or built independently. Templates control the visual appearance of episode pages, the episode archive, and subscriber-facing account pages.

The Templates Tab

Go to Benecaster → Settings → Templates to manage templates for the current show.

The Templates tab shows:

Installed templates — all templates currently available, including the two built-in defaults and any you’ve installed
Active template — which template is currently in use for this show (highlighted with an Active badge)
Marketplace link — browse additional templates from Benecaster’s design service

Activating a Template

Click Activate on any installed template to switch to it immediately. The change takes effect on the next page load — no cache clearing required.

The two built-in templates (Default Light and Default Dark) are always present and cannot be removed.

Installing a Template from a ZIP File

If you’ve purchased a custom template or received a ZIP file from Benecaster’s design service:

Go to Benecaster → Settings → Templates
Click Upload template
Select the .zip file
Benecaster validates the ZIP, extracts the template, and makes it available in the installed templates list
Click Activate to switch to the new template

Template ZIPs must follow Benecaster’s template package format — a benecaster-template.json manifest is required at the root of the ZIP. Templates from the Marketplace are always in the correct format.

Removing a Template

Click the Remove button on any installed template you no longer need. Built-in templates (Default Light and Default Dark) cannot be removed.

If you remove the currently active template, Benecaster falls back to Default Light automatically.

Theme Overrides (Developer Option)

Developers can override individual template parts by copying them into their theme. This lets you change specific parts of a template — for example, just the episode title layout — without replacing the entire template.

Override path: wp-content/themes/[your-child-theme]/benecaster/[template-part-path].php

Use a child theme — placing overrides directly in a parent theme means they’ll be wiped out on the next theme update. See the Template Overrides developer reference for the full file list, available variables, and override examples.

REST Endpoints

For programmatic template management (headless setups or custom admin tools):

Endpoint	Purpose
`GET /benecaster/v1/templates`	List installed templates, active template slug, and built-in flags
`POST /benecaster/v1/templates/upload`	Upload a template ZIP (multipart/form-data)
`POST /benecaster/v1/templates/{slug}/activate`	Activate an installed template
`DELETE /benecaster/v1/templates/{slug}`	Remove an installed template (`built_in: true` templates return 403)

All endpoints require manage_options capability and a valid WP REST nonce.