One page for all your article audio, sorted by section: what it does and where it stops

Most article audio lives in one place: a player under the headline. That is the right place for someone reading that article. It is the wrong place for three other people you probably care about: the commuter who wants your last five stories in a row, the subscriber who only follows one section, and the newsletter reader you would rather send one link than ten.

Every WeDispatch account has a page built for those three. It is easy to overlook, because there is nothing to switch on. This article describes what it actually does, from the code that serves it, and what it does not do.

Finding it, and what it costs

The address sits in your dashboard under "My distribution", then "Podcast and sharing", labelled "Your audio page". It looks like wedispatch.fr/hub/ followed by your account identifier. The page exists from your first audio onwards; there are no settings.

It costs nothing to run. The page does not create audio, it lists audio that already exists, so no credit is spent when someone opens it or listens, however many visitors it gets.

What a listener sees

At the top: your name, and your logo if you are on a paid plan and have uploaded one (the free trial shows the WeDispatch mark instead). Below that, how many audio articles are available and their combined running time.

Then a row of sections. "All" comes first, followed by every section that has at least one available audio, in alphabetical order. Tapping "Business" keeps only business. Each section has its own address (the page URL with ?rubrique=Business added), and this is the detail that makes the page useful in practice: you can share a single section directly. The sports newsletter links to sports, the council bulletin links to local news. Sections come from the category you already send with each article; if you never set any, the row simply does not appear and the page shows everything. How sections work is covered on the sections feature page.

Finally, the list: your eighty most recent audio articles, newest first, each with its title, section and duration.

How listening works

Tap a title and it starts playing, with a bar at the bottom of the screen showing what is on, a pause button and progress. When an article ends, the next one starts on its own, in publication order. That is the point of the page: start it, put the phone in a pocket, and the stories keep coming. If one file fails to load, the page moves on rather than going quiet.

Everything works from a keyboard, which matters to people who browse without a mouse or with a screen reader. The progress bar behaves as a real slider: arrow keys move five seconds, Page Up and Page Down thirty, Home and End jump to either end. The article that is playing is announced as current, not just shown in a different colour. The bottom bar stays out of the tab order until something plays, so focus never lands on an invisible button. Secondary text is computed to keep at least 4.5:1 contrast against the background, and animation is dropped when the device asks for reduced motion. If accessibility is the reason you are adding audio at all, our piece on what a compliant audio player needs goes further.

The interface is in English when your account language is English, French otherwise. A title written in a different language from the page declares its language, so a screen reader switches voice for it.

What never shows up there

The page follows the same access rules as your player, with no shortcuts:

• If your player is set to restricted access, the page serves previews only and says so at the top. In that case it is not cached publicly either.
• If your account protects its files with signed links, the page is switched off and explains why. A public list of temporary links would hand out exactly what that protection is meant to keep back.
• An audio waiting for approval stays off the list until the new version is approved.
• Private listening (documents you sent to WeDispatch Radio for yourself) and imported PDFs never appear, neither in the list nor in the sections.

What the numbers tell you

Every play started from this page is counted in your Listens screen under its own origin, "Your audio page", next to plays from article pages, the daily playlist and newsletters. So you can tell whether the page earns its place. If nobody uses it after a month of being linked, stop promoting it; our guide to audio metrics that actually mean something explains how to read the rest.

What it does not do

Better to know this before you announce it to readers:

• It lives on our domain, not yours, and it is not indexed. That is deliberate: we do not want to compete with your own site for searches about your own articles. The trade-off is that it brings you no search traffic. It serves people you send the link to.
• It does not take on your colours. The background is a fixed dark theme, unlike the article player, which adapts to your site.
• It stops at eighty items. There is no paging and no search box. Section filters are the only way to reach further back.
• It is not a podcast. Nobody subscribes to it from an app. If you want to appear in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, that is the job of the feed, which can be split one show per section.

Where to put the link

Three places work well. In your site menu, under a plain label such as "Listen": on WordPress that is a custom link added to the menu, no theme edits involved, while the plugin handles the audio on each article. At the foot of your newsletter, for readers who want the whole lot in one go. And in a social profile, where you only get one link anyway.

In short

The audio page is not a flashy feature. It gathers what you already publish, sorts it by section and plays it back to back. It costs nothing, respects your access settings, works from a keyboard and reports its own listens. It will not replace your site or your podcast feed, and it will not help you rank. For a reader who would rather listen than read, though, it is often the most useful single link you can give.

Read next

• Security questionnaire for an audio tool: what to ask, and our answers, including the noes
• Breton, Basque, Corsican, Alsatian: why French text-to-speech trips on regional names
• A woman's or a man's voice for a quote: what French grammar reveals about who is speaking