Verbs, Not Nouns: Tidying Up PodGlue's Sidebar

By Junaid Ahmed

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A beta tester sent me a note that started with "I think there's some broader, conceptual work you could take on." That's a nice way of saying the sidebar was a bit of a mess.

He was right.

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What was off

The sections down the left read Create, Plan, Growth, Manage. Three things you do, and one thing that happens to you. Small thing, but it changes how the app feels. "Grow" is something you can go and do this afternoon. "Growth" is something you hope shows up.

Manage had turned into a junk drawer: the production board, your quotes, the book builder.

And the Planner, the place you start a new episode, opened with "Choose Your Source," then showed cards covered in little labels like "Inputs," "Output," "4-8 min." That was us talking to ourselves.

What changed

The sidebar now reads Create, Plan, Grow, Manage, top to bottom, in the order you actually work.

Manage is one link now, straight to your production board. Quotes and the book builder moved up to Create, since that's what they are. And the Games section is gone from the sidebar. It was a distraction.

The Planner now opens with a plain question: What type of episode do you want to make? There's one line explaining what an archetype is (a reusable episode format, like a solo deep-dive or a news roundup). The cards just say what each option is for. Once you pick one, PodGlue shows you what you'll need and what you'll get.

A concrete example

Say you want to plan an episode around something that's blowing up in your niche this week. Before, you'd scan six cards full of labels and time estimates. Now you see "Trends: turn live market trends into timely episode angles," click it, and PodGlue tells you it needs a topic to scan and gives you an episode outline built around the trend.

What's next

Studio, Sessions and hosted RSS feeds are moving into a Beta Features section you can request access to, so we can polish them with a smaller group first. More on that soon.

If you've been in PodGlue a while and something reads like we're talking to ourselves, tell me. That's exactly the kind of note that made this better.