Musical Blogging
Adding sound to a webpage is one of those things your never really sure is the right thing to do.
Most people appreciate that it can cause issues if browsing at work and it can just plain annoy if people are already listening to their own music.
But the other side of the coin is that aural pleasures are some of the most memorable and emotion inducing we have. It can certainly help brand your site if the music fits with the overall website theme.
Whichever side of the fence you are – here is how you do it:
‘Easy if you know how’
Overall it was a little trickier than I thought it would be, note this one in the ‘easy if you know how’ category of things to do in Wordpress.
Installing a audio player plugin was a cinch – just looked in the most popular plugins and there is was http://wpaudioplayer.com/
Screenshot of WP Media Library showing the Audio Player button
Automatic plugin installation works fine. But the next step is not immediately obvious – the plugin settings do not explain a typical usage scenario. So let me explain: The typical usage would be adding a music inside a blog post. If your looking for a widget to play a library of music – look elsewhere.
At first I was stumped the installation of the plugin doesn’t really explain how to use it – reading the FAQ and documentation and a little web research will of course yield results. Basically a button is added in the link dialog that appears after uploading media – so it’s easy to add your music inside the blog post. (see image highlights in red)
The button changes the link text to the following format:
(audio:http://link_full_path_to_file)
Change curly brackets to square ones in above
Once you know this button is there it’s trivial but then I found another problem – how to make the music start on loading of the page. Surprisingly no mention of this is covered in the FAQ so more investigating was needed.
Turns out you just need to add “|autostart=yes” in the link and voila!
Making your mp3 autostart on pageload:
(audio:http://link_full_path_to_file|autostart=yes)
Change curly brackets to square ones in above
There you have it – marvellous music to annoy or enhance your website depending on your perspective.
Music to ones ears!!
Star Trek
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