Audio Player for Blog Posts
Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 7:30 am
If you are looking for a clean and easy way to embed your own audio content in your blog posts, check out Audio Player by Martin Laine.
Audio Player inserts a small, unobtrusive flash object into your blog post. This player reads an audio file such as an mp3 from a specified location on your server and streams it into your post when a user clicks the play button. It’s been around since 2005 and apparently even Digg.com has used this handy little tool.
Stripped of all unnecessary bells and whistles, Audio Player is an easy-to-use audio solution for blogging.
It is available as a plugin for Wordpress, but the good news is that a lady called Mindy McAdams has written a tutorial on implementing Audio Player in non-WP sites, including Blogger (provided that you have your own server space to upload the content to).
If you are using Wordpress, the control panel under Options > Audio Player, gives you a good amount of control over the behaviour and appearance of the player. It can be adapted to play a sequence of audio clips or for use in a podcasting blog. You can also insert multiple instances of Audio Player in a single post.
A problem:
I have tested Audio Player on one of my other Wordpress blogs. Since RSS Feeds don’t allow embedded flash objects, the control panel offers you three “Feed options”:
- A download link: Choose this if you are OK with subscribers downloading the file.
- Nothing: Choose this if you feel that your feed shouldn’t contain any reference to the audio file.
- Custom: Choose this to use your own alternative content for all player instances. You can use this option to tell subscribers that they can listen to the audio file if they read the post on your blog.
Of course I don’t want subscribers to have access to the address of my audio source files because that defeats the whole purpose of the player. No matter which of the three options I choose, my RSS feed displays the file path linking to the mp3 on my server. It looks something like this:
MEDIA ENCLOSURE: http://www.blogdomain.com/audio/audioclip.mp3
My feed is hosted by Feedburner, so I don’t know where the problem lies:
Is it a. the plugin, b. Wordpress or c. Feedburner?
I searched Google for a solution and all I found so far was an article explaining how to edit your WP RSS and Atom includes. I’m not sure if that is best practice but I tried it anyway to no avail.
I hope somebody can point us in the direction of a solution - feel free to comment!
Ivette Says:
April 14th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I really have no clue but while reading your entry i remembered that when you create your feed in feedburner it asks if it’s an audioblog, so it might have something to do with it? Good luck :)
mr.eims Says:
April 16th, 2008 at 5:16 am
Thank you for the link. :)
btw if you found any other better way, pls inform me as well.
about feedburner audioblog or podcast, I always unchecked the option since I don’t blog audioblog. But the result was the same. Media enclosure on your feed will still exist.
Danny Foo Says:
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:22 am
Thanks for the share. I’ve always been wondering how’d they do this. :)
loach is fish too Says:
June 28th, 2008 at 5:53 am
????????
a good blog
virtualizado Says:
June 28th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Wow! beautiful desing!!! Congratulations!