In short, SideKick is a plugin that introduces a Songs post type to your website and integrates various features such as Elementor, Charts, Dedications, and Player.
What can you do with Pro Radio SideKick?
- Store the history of 3 played songs (20 songs with SideKick Premium).
- Generate a permanent archive of songs from the history, charts, or manually added.
- Display songs in lists or cards using Elementor.
- Extract widgets of the latest, most popular, or most played songs.
- Keep track of how many minutes each song is played globally.
- Allow users to like the current track or single specific songs.
- Link chart likes and dislikes with the single song in a unified songs archive.
- Automatically generate music charts by extracting songs from the database using your chosen parameters such as popularity, play time, or recency.
- Autocomplete song details using data from iTunes.
- Store a song in a click from any chart to the unified Songs archive.
- Fetch and download song information from iTunes.
- Automatically import the song artwork into your media.
- Auto-store a song from a dedication submission in your database.
- Suggest songs from a local archive to the Dedications form.
- Allow manual addition of any song to your archive for use in charts, widgets, or dedications.
- And much more!
Example of automatic chart generator
In this quick video you can see how easy it is to make a full chart in 1 click with Pro Radio Sidekick plugin.
Wirth the free version that comes with Pro Radio you can generate unlimited charts, with max 5 songs per chart.
With the SideKick Premium plugin you can add as many songs as you want!
In the full version of SideKick Premium you can use all of the functions and options as visible on this screenshot:
Why Upgrading
SideKick gives you great functionalities already in the free version, but if you really care about your radio, it’s your business, and you really want to do more, with SideKick Premium you can really multiply your achievements.
It will instantly boost engagement because you can produce contents in a way easier method, publishing regularly music charts, and attracting new visitors, links and social shares.
Charts are part of the juice that keeps a radio alive, as well as user engagement, and when it comes to engagement what really matters is user interaction.
Wirth SideKick Premium you can let your users vote for the current track, merge feedbacks from chart votings and dedications, extract tracklists in Elementor by ranking or by play time (how much a track was on air in a certain period).
This creates tons of opportunities, sharable contents and usage satisfaction for your visitors. At the same time, you can display latest songs, and let users vote for them or listen to the sample in a click, adding more fun and engagement to your radio station website.
All without having to spend extra time on the website management, all on autopilot!!!
Giving up this opportunity would mean giving up the possibility of truly boosting traffic and user time on the page. But you can judge by yourself: install the free version, try it out, and give it a chance! SideKick is included for free with every Pro Radio theme!
Installing Pro Radio SideKick
- In your site click Pro Radio Admin
- Click Refresh License (just in case)
- Update Pro Radio if required
- Click Install and Update plugins: make sure to udpate all of the plugins
- You will see available the new SideKick plugin, click Install
- For usage and more, check the manual here
My support expired, can I extend it?
Yes! You can always extend your support. If it’s expired since long time, just get back to us, and we will take care of it for you. Click here to contact us.
- Head to the AddOns page https://pro.radio/shop/cart.php?gid=addons
- From the Pro Radio Sidekick, choose the license linked to the domain where you want it
- Complete the purchase
- In your own website admin, click Pro Radio Admin > Refresh License
- IMPORTANT: It may take 10 minutes for the premium license to take effect. Just wait a bit before checking the activation in the Sidekick settings
- Once activated, all options will be unlocked
- Congratulations! You have a full-time ninja at your service!
WP-Cron vs Linux Cron
SideKick uses Wp Cron to check the current song. Wp Cron only runs when somebody opens a page.
If you want to switch to a real Cron job, making sure Sidekick runs every minute, add this line in wp-config.php
define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);
Add this cron to your cpanel
*/1 * * * * wget -q -O - 'https://PUT-HERE-YOUR-SITE-URL/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron' >/dev/null 2>&1
What is SideKick Premium and why is there a paid version?
When we started this plugin, our main goal was to keep track of the songs played on radio channels.
But just storing the history wasn’t enough. We needed a way to keep a permanent list of songs that we could reuse whenever we wanted.
It was tough to gather all the song details manually. That’s why we hooked up with the iTunes API to help us out.
And we couldn’t forget about the artwork! We wanted to make it easy to reuse song images, and we also wanted listeners to be able to vote on songs.
Customers wanted to vote on the current song, so we made that happen. It fit right in with the other features!
Since we had all this data about songs, like how often they’re played and when they were added, we thought, why not make charts automatically? So we did!
But as we kept adding features, we realized it was getting expensive. So we came up with a plan: some features would be free for everyone, but others would be for premium users only.
That way, everyone can use the basic stuff without missing out, and if you want more, you can upgrade to premium. It’s only a few bucks a month, so it won’t break the piggy bank!
Want to know more? Click here to discover SideKick Premium.
Just as you know, some users purchased already MULTIPLE COPIES within the first 24 hours, which led us to think that this plugin was worth the effort.
Why the ninja?
The concept originated from our graphic designer, who initially explored a superhero theme. However, given the plugin’s standout feature—its speed and agility in swiftly navigating different areas and content—a ninja became the perfect symbol for SideKick’s role in a radio station. With SideKick, numerous tasks are accomplished in just a few clicks.
Imagine effortlessly generating a new chart of top tracks on a Saturday, instantly sharing it on Facebook, and including it in your Newsletter—all without spending any additional time on content creation. Thanks to SideKick’s automatic data collection from your radio, this process becomes seamless.
Who else but a ninja could pull off such feats?
