Liberated Syndication (Libsyn)
Built platform distribution integrations and led major UI overhauls across the Libsyn ecosystem.
April 2018 was my entry into professional software development. Coming in as a junior, I was thrown into a large, established PHP codebase (Zend) for a high-volume podcast hosting platform with millions of listeners and thousands of accounts. The learning curve was steep, but I dove right in.
RadioPublic was a podcast discovery platform looking to expand its content network. I built and launched the Libsyn podcast feed destination for them. This integration allowed creators to distribute their Libsyn shows directly to RadioPublic.
This was one of the first features I owned end-to-end as a junior developer: the feed generation, the destination form UI, and the backend logic that managed the submission. They had unique requirements that other destinations did not have such as Gateway Episodes (basically most important episodes of your show).
The Libsyn Directory was a public-facing podcast catalog. The existing design was dated and the UX was inconsistent with the direction the rest of the product was heading.
I did complete UI redesign of the Directory, rebuilding it from the ground up with a modernized design using Materialize. The work spanned frontend templating, CSS, and backend PHP rendering logic.
MyLibsyn was the creator-facing dashboard where podcasters could monetize their feed and episodes The portal had accumulated years of inconsistency and technical debt across its UI.
I engineered a major overhaul of the portal — reworking the layout, navigation, and visual components. The work required careful consideration to avoid breaking existing workflows while bringing new life to the product.
This was early enough in my career that Internet Explorer was still a real constraint. I was responsible for ensuring platform features worked correctly across Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE — which meant regularly debugging layout and JavaScript behavior in environments that didn’t support modern APIs. It built strong instincts for defensive frontend code.
PHP + Zend Framework — the primary backend language and framework for the platform. My first exposure to a large-scale MVC server-rendered codebase.
JavaScript & jQuery — vanilla JS for all frontend interactivity at this point, before React was introduced. Event handling, DOM manipulation, AJAX — the fundamentals.
MySQL — worked with the platform’s relational database for feature development and content queries.
SASS/SCSS — introduced here; used for all styling across the platform’s server-rendered views.
Bootstrap + Material Design — used for rapid UI scaffolding in the earlier portal work before the team moved toward custom component patterns.
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