Lazarus Graveyard

One other thing I need to understand with wordpress is how to use it to play mp3 files. The media section in the backend allows you to upload files that are kept and linked ready to be added to a post. When I went to upload a small test mp3 I received an error message that the maximum upload is 2mb. Which is pointless for mp3. My mp3s are enncoded at 44.1khz and I generally use 192kbps which gives a good balance of soundquality against files size. This normally means my average mp3s are between 3 and 6 mb.

I looked around on google and discovered that this isnt a wordpress limitation but is controlled by the php.ini file of your web host’s server. I then went to the site of my host to find out if there were any T’s&C’s prohibiting the editing of php.ini and discovered that support actually had a sticky on their forum with the code you need to alter it (kewl!).

Created a new .txt file on my desktop – pasted in the code from the support forum, renamed the file to php.ini and used an ftp client to upload it into the public folder of my site (this will probably vary from host to host) and badabing!! Wordpress uploaded and crunched the mp3 with no problems.

So the next thing is adding the mp3 to the post and playing it. By using the ‘add audio’ button in the post editor you can add a hyperlink to the track, when clicked this will use whatever plug in is installed on your browser to play the file. But that’s a little dull. So I checked the extensions pages for wordpress to see if any helpful individual had made a flash player available.

And that’s where things got a bit tricky. Its easy to embed objects and media in HTML webpages but an actual decent flashplayer – well there are one or two free ones that run off xml playlists but on the whole you have to buy them or make them. There are a ton of tutorials showing you how to make a SWF player but you need a copy of Flash (I have mx2004) and you need to get down and dirty with the actionscript. In any event I have no idea (YET) how youd implement something like that with wordpress. Joomla has quite a lot of media plug ins available but it seems wordpress has less music makers! But there are podcasters out there..There are tons of plug ins that let you link to youtube or mp3s on other sites and display their content in your post but not an awful lot that will let yo present your own media in a reasonably attractive way..

There were a few but I have just upgraded to WP v2.8 and I received messages that these plug in hadnt been tested on this version yet. I took a gamble with one and it killed the site got a php fatal error messages everytime I tried to do anything in the back end. Luckily I was able to delete the plug in from the server using my FTP client and wordpress appears to have recovered and is giving me a message that it has deactivated the failed plug in because the directory cant be found (cos i deleted it) – hopefully its ok….. I should have backed up before I tried installing that plug in.

Anyway my quest for mp3 in wordpress continues…

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 7:43 pm and is filed under Web Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.