Activating plugin inserts weird text above player

I had that same problem. It occurs if you have the automated linking feature turned on.

Yeah, I’m using the automatic feature because it saves me having to type in hundreds of shortcodes for my transcripts.

Blubrry used to work, so I’m guessing the Blubrry player has either started putting its player code into the actual post content, or you’re embedding it via a shortcode (or some other text) that contains a timestamp.

Could you let me know how you’re embedding it? Either with a screenshot or short screen capture video?

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

As I said, everything is working fine, it’s just this weird timestamp anomaly appearing above the player when your plugin is activated. >> https://pasteboard.co/I5yjmUk.png

I’m just using the standard PowerPress automatic embedding (no shortcodes)
https://pasteboard.co/I5yajwJ.png

Out of curiosity, do you use leading zeros in your timestamps? I found that Skip to Timestamp doesn’t play well with leading zeros with the automatic linking.

Hello @hillofbeans,

Thanks for using PowerPress!

The link to timestamp feature was natively added to PowerPress last year. If you disable that plugin PowerPress should handle the skip to timestamp tag in its place. That may be a better solution that should also fix this issue. We did make PowerPrss work with the skipto plugin though you are welcome to continue using it with PowerPress, any skipto that PowerPress cannot handle will be passed onto the skipto plugin.

What version of PowerPress are you using and also can you reply with the skipto shortcode value you used so we can use that for testing?

Thanks,
Angelo

Hi Angelo,

Thanks for the info.

Here’s the thing.

Originally I was using the PP ‘skip to’ shortcode, but realised that the shortcode solution wasn’t optimal because:

i) some podcast directories don’t parse the shortcodes which made the summaries look bad
ii) some directories (like Spotify web player) will automatically convert plain text times into clickable timestamps
iii) adding transcripts meant that I would have to manually insert dozens of shortcodes per episode

So…. I decided to go the plain text times option and automatically convert these into clickable timestamps. This works great with the Skip to Timestamp plugin….. except for the weird display anomaly in the player.

Right now I don’t know if this is an issue with PowerPress or Skip to Timestamp.

Hello @hillofbeans,

The “weird timestamp anomaly” must be a bug or a conflict with another plugin. I did some testing and the text value you enter for the timestamp in PowerPress appears correctly as entered.

We do not convert existing timestamps to skip to positions currently, if you want that functionality we recommend adding the skipto timestamp plugin.

As far as seeing if this is a problem with the skip to timestamp plugin, I would switch your site temporarily to a default theme, such as twentyeightneen. The problem I aw in your screen shot makes me think your theme may be chancing the content. It can also be another plugin, you can disable plugins one by one to test. The procedure for diagnosing issues like this is documented in detail here: https://create.blubrry.com/resources/powerpress/using-powerpress/diagnosing-feed-andor-player-issues-with-powerpress/

Thanks,
Angelo