RangerHQ Radio Wiki

A small, focused internet radio player for your WordPress admin. 44 hand-curated SomaFM stations, per-user history + favourites, four-click search to Spotify / YouTube / Apple Music / Bandcamp, optional pop-out window for continuous background play.


Latest tag	v1.0.0 — stability milestone (2026-06-09)
wp.org status	LIVE — wordpress.org/plugins/rangerhq-radio
Licence	GPL v2 or later
Tested up to	WordPress 7.0
Requires PHP	7.4
Landing page	https://davidtkeane.com/rangerhq-radio
Family	Older sibling to RangerHQ Buddy (WP) and RangerHQ Tuner (Chrome)

What it does

RangerHQ Radio gives every WordPress admin user a small audio player that lives in the WP admin sidebar. Pick a SomaFM station from the Stations catalogue (44 curated channels across ambient, electronic, lounge, rock, metal, jazz, world, reggae, holiday, specials), hit Play, music streams via HTML5 audio. Each user gets their own station memory, volume preference, track history, and favourites — all per-user in wp_usermeta, nothing shared between accounts.

The 4-button search affordance — Spotify / YouTube / Apple Music / Bandcamp — was born here. Every track in your history has the four service buttons next to it; clicking opens that service's public search results in a new tab so you can find the track on whichever music service you actually use. No accounts, no API keys, no SDK embedded in the plugin.

There's also a pop-out window mode for continuous background play — opens a chromeless WP-admin-rendered window so the player keeps going even when you navigate away from admin pages.

Quick links

Architecture — how the per-user radio_state, HTML5 audio, station registry, history layer, and pop-out window all fit together
Stations — the 44 curated SomaFM channels and how the genre grouping works
The 4 Buttons — the Spotify / YouTube / Apple / Bandcamp pattern explained (and why it's the right architecture for "find this track elsewhere")
Privacy — what's stored (locally on your site, per-user), what's not
FAQ — common questions
Family — sibling projects in the RangerHQ family

Install

From WordPress.org

Search for RangerHQ Radio in Plugins → Add New → Install → Activate. Or visit wordpress.org/plugins/rangerhq-radio.

From source (developer mode)

git clone https://git.davidtkeane.com/ranger/rangerhq-radio.git

Drop the folder into wp-content/plugins/ and activate via the WordPress admin.

Source layout

rangerhq-radio/
├── radio.php                   # plugin header + menu + asset enqueue + pop-out renderer
├── LICENSE                     # GPL v2 or later
├── README.md
├── CHANGELOG.md                # Keep a Changelog format
├── readme.txt                  # wp.org-format readme
├── screenshot-1.png … 5.png    # wp.org listing screenshots
├── inc/
│   ├── state.php               # per-user state CRUD (wp_usermeta)
│   ├── stations.php            # 44 hand-curated SomaFM stations + genre groupings
│   ├── history.php             # track logging, favourites, 4-button search URLs
│   ├── dashboard-widget.php    # the player on WP Dashboard
│   ├── admin-page.php          # dedicated "Radio" page
│   ├── settings.php            # Settings page
│   └── about.php               # About page
└── assets/
    ├── css/radio.css           # all visual styling
    └── js/radio.js             # HTML5 audio controller + history logger + UI

Reporting issues / suggestions

Open an issue or email david@davidtkeane.com.