Adding audio to a SPIP site: templates, RSS feeds and sections
SPIP runs a lot of independent press, local government and nonprofit sites. Here is how to add an audio version of your articles, what the CMS makes easy, and its real limits.
SPIP holds a particular place in the French web: this publishing system, born in the early 2000s, still powers independent newsrooms, local government sites, unions and associations. It is sturdy, battle-tested, and its users are attached to it. The audio-version question arises here as anywhere, but SPIP has its own logic, and ignoring it wastes time. Here is how to go about it in practice.
Two ways to feed the audio
To produce an article's audio, WeDispatch needs access to its text. On SPIP, two routes exist, and the right one depends on how you work.
The first goes through the RSS feed. SPIP natively generates syndication feeds, per section and for the whole site. It is the simplest path: you provide the feed address, generation triggers on each new article detected, and nothing changes in your back office. We described this principle in detail in integrating audio via an RSS feed, and it holds for SPIP as for any CMS that exposes a clean feed. The one precaution: check that your feed carries the article's full text, not just a summary, or the audio will only cover the teaser.
The second route goes through the API. If you want generation to fire the moment an editor publishes an article, rather than at the next feed read, a call from SPIP to the WeDispatch API does the job. It takes a little more setup, but you gain responsiveness and control. The API and CMS page details what the interface allows.
Placing the player in the template
This is where SPIP differs sharply from a WordPress. SPIP works with templates (squelettes): skeletons that describe, in SPIP's own language, how a page is built. To show the audio player at the top of your articles, you do not install an extension, you add a fragment to the template that renders an article (often article.html or the matching include in your template set).
In practice, the WeDispatch player slots in as a block at a chosen point in the template, usually just before the body text. Because the template is shared by every article of the same type, the change is made once and applies everywhere. That is the strength of SPIP's model: no article-by-article handling. The flip side is that you need to be comfortable with templates, or have someone who is. If a contractor built your site, this is a short task to hand them.
Making the most of SPIP sections
SPIP structures content into sections, and that structure is an asset for audio. You can decide that only some of your sections are voiced: investigations and long-form analysis, say, rather than short news items. By linking the feed or API to specific sections, you voice what has real shelf life and real listening value, without spending on content that does not suit it.
This per-section logic carries through to playback: each section can get its own treatment, a distinct voice for instance. Our sections feature is built for exactly this, and it pairs well with how SPIP already organises information.
The real limits, stated plainly
SPIP does not have a turnkey extension ecosystem comparable to WordPress. So there is no "one-click plugin to install": integration happens through the feed, the API, and a template edit. For a newsroom that knows its SPIP, this is quick. For a site left without technical maintenance for a long time, budget for someone who knows templates to step in.
Another thing to watch: older SPIP sites sometimes run dated versions or heavily customised template sets. Nothing blocking, but it means you should look at your install before promising a timeline. The good news is that the RSS feed works almost everywhere, which always leaves a simple fallback path.
Where to start
The fastest move is to begin with the RSS feed for a first round of audio, without touching templates: you check the voice quality on your real articles before investing in player integration. Once convinced, you add the player block to the template and, if you wish, move to an API trigger for responsiveness. It is a risk-free progression, where each step can be tested before the next.
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