Play.ht - Make Your Blog Posts Accessible With Text to Speech Audio

Play.ht helps you convert your articles, blog posts, courses and almost all written content into spoken word audio so users can listen to your content. Play.ht uses state of the art Text to Speech technology and SEO friendly embedded audio players along with RSS podcast feeds to help you create, embed and distribute your articles in audio format. Giving users an option to listen to your content offers several benefits such as it makes your content more accessible to busy on-the-go users, it helps people with visual disabilities to consume your content and when people listen on your website they spend more time thereby increase user engagement and page on time metrics of your website which improves your SEO. Play.ht also enables you to create RSS feeds of your audio articles that you can submit to iTunes, Spotify and Google Podcasts to publish your articles as podcasts on these platforms thereby increasing the reach of your content. With more than 260+ high-quality realistic AI Text to Speech voices in 55+ different languages powered by Google Wavenet, Amazon Polly, Microsoft Azure and IBM Watson, you get the largest collection of best and natural sounding AI Voices to choose from to narrate your content. Use from 3 different types of fully customizable and white-labeled embedded audio players to offer the best listening experience for your audience. You also get access to detailed audio analytics which shows listening behavior of your users. When users listen to your articles, they have the ability to increase or reduce the listening speed, share the audio on social media, download or even subscribe with their emails.

Installation is very easy. Simply follow these steps -

1. Download the Play.ht Plugin.
2. Once downloaded, click on Plugins -> Add New Plugin -> Upload Plugin from your Wordpress admin.
3. Select the downloaded plugin file (it's in zip format).
4. Install and activate the plugin.
5. Go to Play.ht plugin section from your Wordpress admin and Login to get started

3.6.4

• Editor Update

3.6.3

• New! A new player type added
• Fix regenerate audio / edit audio playing old audio
• UI Improvements
• Editor update

3.6.2

• Fix page player JS error

3.6.1

• New! Redesigned voice selection screen with more filters
• New! The ability to favorite voices
• New! Admin player
• New! Title player shortcode params to wrap it in a custom html tag. Use [playht_listen_button inline="yes" tag="p"] to wrap the player inside
• New! Filter to change supported shortcode wrapper tags. playht_shortcode_wrapper_tags
• Improved loading player assets
• General improvements

3.6.0

• New! Play.ht element for Elementor
• New! [playht_listen_button] shortcode to show Listen Button anywhere in the post/page
• Added support for archive pages
• Added support for homepage and front page. New filter hooks are available to modify this feature. Use playht_disable_on_front_page and playht_disable_on_home
• Add support for Avada builder
• Improved admin UI
• Improved settings UX, Active setting tab will remain active after refresh

3.4.2

• Updated editor with new voices
• Fixed an issue with drafts while having a converted audio
• Fixed an issue with adding audio after deleting drafts
• General improvements

3.4.1

• Editor update, New UI and other improvements
• Fixed an issue with audio editor in WordPress 4.7
• Fixed player view in mobile devices
• Fixed missing download link for converted audios in play.ht dashboard
• Fixed an issue with adding audio to posts after searching in posts list
• Fixed an issue with adding audio to posts when default order is changed
• Fixed an issue with saving settings of audio player

3.4.0

• Fixed an issue with audio drafts
• Fixed an issue with WP-Rocket plugin
• Fixed an issue with getting correct default voice in the editor

3.3.5

• Fixed a php error.

3.3.4

• Fixed an issue with opening the editor
• Fixed showing player in frontend
• Fixed infinite loading modal after converting an audio
• Improved admin UI
• Improved Metabox UI

3.3.2

• Fixed opening blank editor
• Fixed audio conversion
• Improvement in post/page row actions to prevent unwanted audio actions

3.3.1

• Fixed an issue with wp-api

3.3.0

• New! Autosave support in the editor
• Added compatibility with cache plugins including Litespeed cache, WP-Rocket and, Autoptimize
• Improved load time and performance
• Improved style of settings
• Fixed showing audio column for post types which are turned off from settings
• Fixed unwanted stretched width in shortcode

3.2.6

• Fixed an issue with audio player height when using shortcode
• Fixed an issue where audio files created from plugin wouldn’t show up in web dashboard

3.2.5

• New! Add and manage pronunciations library from the Text-to-Audio editor
• New! Revision mode in the Text-to-Audio editor allows you to listen to the full text
• Fixed an issue with setting default voice
• Fixed broken layout in settings
• Fixed chat with us link

3.2.4

• New! Change audio player settings using shortcode
• New! Improved pauses in the Text-to-Audio editor
• Fixed! The featured image of the post will be shown on mobile audio player
• Fixed a bunch of warnings in the admin
• Optimizations to page player

3.2.3

• Adding new voices and improvements to the Text-to-Audio editor

3.2.2

• Fixed an issue with short codes being included in the content by other plugins

3.2.1

• Fixed an issue with CORB where pressing the Add Audio button wouldn't do anything

3.2

• Redesigned the voices menu to clearly show what voices support what features. Eg Narration styles, breathing, etc.
• Redesigned and organized the tabs in the plugin page to make more sense
• Updated "Article Player" preview to the new design!
• Redesigned the analytics charts
• Fixed an issue with Shortlink on Learnpress
• Fixed an issue with dots being pronounced
• Disabled adding audio to multi posts at the same time (we'll add it back!)

3.1.4

• Fix for content getting stuck with “Converting” status
• Minor fix for converting multilingual posts

3.1.3

• Added 100+ new voices from Microsoft!
• Added new feature to save a default voice.
• Fixed an issue with saving pause settings.
• Fixed an issue with converting multilingual posts.

3.1.2

• Fixed an issue where if you tried adding audio you would see a blank screen.
• Added functionality to retry conversions!

3.1.1

• Redesigned and added more options to the Play.ht menu in the edit post page.
• Removed Sentry (error reporting tool) due to conflicts on some blogs.
• Removed Crisp (chat tool) from loading in different places in the plugin.
• Renaming Play to Play.ht :)

3.1

• Big update – supporting WordPress 5.5 now!
• Fixed an issue where text from Custom Post Types would disappear after adding audio.
• Redesigned the menu options
• Removed language & voice drop down and just keeping Add Audio button.

3.0.16

• Fixed an issue where the block editor would crash

3.0.15

• Fixed an issue where posts would not convert and would be stuck on 'Converting' status
• Added a warning on delete audio
• A possible fix for encoding special characters in the text

3.0.14

• Important Update - Fixes an issue with Post creation
• Rolled back some nice features :(

3.0.13

• Added support for Custom Post Types
• Run the plugin normally in debug mode
• Updated Editor version to 2.6 with new pauses and speed features

3.0.12

• Fixed a conflict with React version where the editor wouldn’t open
• Fixed an issue with the visual content composer with React version where the editor wouldn’t open

3.0.11

• Fixed a Warning that was being displayed on some blogs

3.0.10

• Fixed a couple of issues

3.0.9

• Added Drafts!
• Fixed issues with Thrive themes
• A couple of other fixes and improvements

3.0.8

• Fixed an issue with Article Player giving error after embedding
• Updated the voices list
• Added a loader for editor

3.0.7

• Fixing an issue with audio player customization

3.0.6

• Important fix where in some cases words were not taken into account

3.0.5

• Made the system Word based!

3.0.4

• Fixed the 'Uh no, something went wrong' issue
• Added delete audio for pages

3.0.3

• Fix warnings being displayed
• Fix pagination on post list page
• More obvious onboarding

3.0.2

• Page player white label fix

3.0.1

• Fix Appsumo credits issue

3.0.0

• Support for Wordpress Pages
• Support for Custom Post Types
• Fixes for Gutenberg

2.9.8

• Fix audio for 'questions' in Learndash

2.9.7

• Add support for 'questions' in Learndash

2.9.6

• Added crisp
• Fixed duplicate events
• Fixed issues with not being able to convert articles to audio

2.9.4

• Removed 'Listen' buttons from post list

2.9.3

• Fixing loading of text in the editor

2.9.2

• Fixing issues with the editor
• Fix Convert button

2.9.1

• Fixing issues with the editor
• Error reporting using sentry

2.9.0

• Adding a Text to Voice-Over editor!
• Fix bugs with Stats

2.8.1

• Fixing minor bug where error would get displayed on the webpage

2.8.0

• Adding new voices!

2.7.0

• Fix issues with player icons

2.6.9

• Fix conflicts with Divi editor

2.6.8

• Fix audio player not showing by default

2.6.7

• More fixes for Learnpress + fixes for analytics + email subscribers tab

2.6.6

• Fix conflict with Learnpress plugin

2.6.5

• Fixes and improvements

2.6.4

• Improvements to stats chart

2.6.3

• Improvements to stats chart

2.6.2

• Fixed an issue where post content was being deleted at rare occasions

2.6.1

• Fixes for Gutenberg editor

2.6

• Added Page Player

2.5.3

• Update readme.txt

2.5.2

• Bug fixes

2.5.1

• Fixed height of the audio player on some blogs

2.5.0

• Added dashboard for analytics and audio player customizations

2.4.0

• Major bug fixes

2.0

• Big update

1.0

• This is the first stable release.