Switching from Seriously Simple Podcasting or PowerPress

If you’ve been managing your podcast with Seriously Simple Podcasting (SSP) or PowerPress and want to add paid subscriber tiers, Benecaster handles the transition with a built-in episode importer. Your existing episode catalog converts automatically — you’re not starting from scratch.

This page covers what the transition involves, what the real pain points are, and how to cut over cleanly.

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What Actually Changes

Episodes. SSP and PowerPress manage episodes in their own formats. Benecaster uses its own Episode post type. Benecaster’s setup wizard offers a one-time import that reads your existing episodes and creates them in Benecaster’s system — title, description, audio URL, episode number, season, artwork, and publish date all transfer automatically. After the import you fill in Benecaster-specific fields (mainly tier access and availability settings) in a review table before going live.

Your public podcast feed URL. SSP and PowerPress generate their own feed URLs. Benecaster generates a new one. Existing listeners who have your feed saved in their podcast app are unaffected during the transition — see The feed URL change below.

Where you create episodes going forward. Once you’ve cut over to Benecaster, all new episodes are created in Benecaster. You don’t split episode management between two plugins.

Your membership plugin. Nothing changes. Benecaster connects alongside your existing MemberPress, WooCommerce Subscriptions, Paid Memberships Pro, or Restrict Content Pro installation — it doesn’t replace it.

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What Doesn’t Change

• Your audio files. They stay at Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Transistor, S3, or wherever they are. Benecaster points at the same URLs.
• Your existing listeners. Public podcast subscribers continue receiving episodes throughout the transition and after.
• Your membership plugin, subscribers, and billing.
• Your WordPress theme, pages, and content outside of podcast episode management.

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The Import Process

Benecaster’s setup wizard detects SSP or PowerPress on activation and offers the import as a setup step. You can also trigger it later from Benecaster → Settings → Tools → Import Episodes — the same optional Strip this prefix from episode titles field (placeholder "e.g. My Show: ") is available on both surfaces. It’s removed from the start of each imported title, whatever its capitalization, so My Show: and My Show: both turn My Show: Episode 42 into Episode 42; a title that is only the prefix is left whole. It applies to both SSP and PowerPress imports, and it only affects the episodes brought in by the import you’re about to run — leave it blank to keep titles as they are, and re-running the import never retitles episodes already imported.

The import reads your existing episode data and creates Benecaster Episode posts. After the import runs, a review table lists every imported episode — title (linked to the episode editor), audio URL, artwork, and a description excerpt. This is the same table described in Importing Episodes: it lists every draft any importer created for the show, so if you’ve also run the RSS-based import or Feed Sync on this show, those episodes appear in the same table alongside your SSP/PowerPress ones, each with a Source column noting which importer produced it.

Setting tier access and availability. Tick the rows you want to change (or use the header tick box to select all of them), then use the toolbar above the table: Set tier access (All Tiers, or a tier of the show), Set availability (Immediately, or On a date with a date-and-time picker), and Apply to selected. ⚠ Times you enter are your site’s local time, not UTC. Apply stays disabled until at least one row is ticked, and also while On a date is chosen with an empty picker, so an incomplete selection can never fall through to unlocking everything immediately by accident. For most shows the fastest path is the same as the old one-press behavior: select all, All Tiers, Immediately, Apply. Per-episode tier access and availability can also be set individually afterward, in the episode editor.

Shortcode flags. If your episode descriptions contain SSP or PowerPress shortcodes ([podcast_episode], [powerpress], [ss_podcast], etc.), a separate list below the review table flags those episodes and suggests the equivalent Benecaster shortcode. Most can be replaced in one click with Replace shortcodes; some may need a manual review depending on how the original shortcode was used.

The import is safe to re-run. It won’t create duplicate episodes — each imported episode is tracked by its source ID.

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The Feed URL Change

This is the part that looks complicated but isn’t.

While SSP or PowerPress is still active, your existing public feed keeps working unchanged. Existing listeners in Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, and every other podcast app continue receiving episodes with no interruption. You have time to set up Benecaster, run the import, and test thoroughly before cutting over.

When you’re ready to cut over, set up a 301 redirect from your old feed URL to Benecaster’s public feed URL. Most podcast apps follow 301 redirects automatically and update their stored URL — existing listeners transition silently without needing to do anything.

Your old SSP feed URL looks something like:

https://yoursite.com/feed/podcast/

Your Benecaster public feed URL will be displayed in Benecaster → Settings → Feeds.

How to set up the redirect depends on your host:

• Most managed hosts (WP Engine, Kinsta, Cloudways): add a redirect rule in the hosting control panel
• Apache: add a Redirect 301 rule in .htaccess (see example below)
• Nginx: add a return 301 directive in your server block (see example below)
• Redirection plugin: if you use a redirect plugin, add the rule there

Apache (.htaccess)

Add the following inside the <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> block, replacing the old path with your actual SSP/PowerPress feed path:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^feed/podcast/?$ https://yoursite.com/benecaster-feed/ [R=301,L]

Common SSP feed paths: /feed/podcast/, /feed/?post_type=podcast
Common PowerPress feed paths: /feed/podcast/, /feed/ (if PowerPress has a custom podcast-only feed)

Check your current feed path in SSP settings (Podcasting → Feed Details → Podcast RSS Feed Slug) or PowerPress settings before writing the rule.

Nginx

location ~ ^/feed/podcast/?$ {
    return 301 https://yoursite.com/benecaster-feed/;
}

Reload Nginx after adding the rule (sudo systemctl reload nginx or equivalent for your host).

Testing the redirect

Do not test in Chrome, and do not test in a browser that has visited the URL before. Chrome and Windows aggressively cache 301 redirect destinations, so Chrome may take you to the Benecaster feed even if your redirect rule is broken — giving you a false positive. Use a private/incognito window in a fresh browser session (Firefox, Safari, or any browser you haven’t used to visit that URL), or use curl:

curl -I https://yoursite.com/feed/podcast/

The response should show HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently and a Location: header pointing to your Benecaster feed URL. If you see 302 or 200, the redirect rule isn’t in place yet. If you see 301 but the wrong destination, you have a caching issue in your browser — use curl to get the ground truth.

Spotify — Public Feed Vs. Private/Subscriber Feeds

Spotify does not follow 301 redirects for private or subscriber-only feeds. This matters if you ever give Spotify a token-protected feed URL (which Benecaster doesn’t recommend — Spotify should always receive your public feed). For the public feed, Spotify does follow 301s for episode delivery but does not automatically update its directory record.

Practically speaking: your Spotify listeners will continue receiving new episodes through the redirect. The podcast’s directory listing in Spotify, however, still shows your old feed URL until you update it manually.

To update it: go to Spotify for Podcasters, navigate to your show, and request a feed URL change. Spotify reviews these requests manually — allow a few days. In the meantime, your Spotify listeners receive new episodes normally via the redirect.

Per-App Notes

For apps not listed here: most modern podcast apps follow 301 redirects automatically. If a specific app loses the show or shows stale episodes after the redirect, update the feed URL manually in that app’s podcast directory portal.

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Can I Keep SSP Running Alongside Benecaster?

Briefly, as a safety net — not long-term.

The problem is episode creation. Both plugins manage episodes separately. If you create a new episode in Benecaster, it appears in Benecaster’s feeds but not SSP’s. If you create it in SSP, the reverse. Running both means manually creating every episode twice, which isn’t a workable situation.

The practical window for co-existence is the transition period: import your episodes, test Benecaster’s feeds, set up the redirect, confirm everything looks right — then deactivate SSP. That process typically takes a few days to a week depending on how thoroughly you want to test.

If you’re using SSP-specific features that Benecaster doesn’t yet support, you may want to keep SSP active temporarily until Benecaster’s support catches up. Benecaster ships the Benecaster Podcasting 2.0 podcast: namespace — if you have questions about specific tag coverage, check the release notes before cutting over. In that case, be deliberate: pick one system to create new episodes in and don’t split your episode management.

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Cutover Checklist

• [ ] Install and activate Benecaster, complete the setup wizard
• [ ] Connect your membership plugin bridge
• [ ] Run the episode import from Settings → Tools → Import Episodes (or during setup wizard)
• [ ] Review the import table — set tier access and availability as needed
• [ ] Replace any flagged shortcodes in episode descriptions
• [ ] Test Benecaster’s public feed in a podcast app
• [ ] Set up the 301 redirect from your old SSP/PowerPress feed URL to Benecaster’s public feed
• [ ] Verify existing listeners are receiving episodes via the redirect
• [ ] Update Spotify for Podcasters with the new feed URL
• [ ] Deactivate SSP or PowerPress
• [ ] Create all future episodes in Benecaster

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What Transfers, What Doesn’t

The Explicit Flag

SSP stores the explicit flag as a simple on/off. Benecaster’s episode setting has three values — Inherit from show, Yes, and No — so the import maps as follows:

An SSP episode with the flag off has not been declared clean. SSP has no way to express “clean even though the show is explicit”, so off only ever meant not marked — it is the absence of a statement, not a statement.

Importing those as No would turn that absence into a positive override, and on a show you had marked explicit it would silently mark the entire imported catalogue clean. Leaving them on Inherit keeps them following the show, which is what SSP was doing.

After importing, set the show-level Explicit value in Shows → Settings → Feeds — that is what every inherited episode will report. Then mark individual exceptions Yes or No as needed; Benecaster can express the clean-episode-on-an-explicit-show case that SSP could not.