How To: Add an Audio Player To Your WordPress Site
I recently received a request from a user of my AWSOM News Announcement plugin for WordPress to add the ability to have an audio player be a part of the News Announcement area. This turned out to be the spark of designing a new version of my plugin that supported using php code in the news box. Of course I needed to do some research on how to get an audio player to run, so I went looking for one to use. I found the XSPF Player for WordPress, and it is absolutely excellent. It is easy to use and allows you to play one or many different mp3 files from your site, all defined in your admin interface. It has a few different player types that you can use, and has some basic CSS formatting you can set. XSPF + AWSOM News means you can always have your most recent podcast waiting for your visitors at the top of your site.
Firefox, WordPress, One Click, Done!
Here at AWSOM.org I try to keep things as simple as possible in terms of how I set up my plugins and tutorials for WordPress. I have to be honest though, someone has beat me in the simple department. A new plugin for Firefox/Wordpress has made it exceptionally simple to upload a new plugin or theme to your WordPress install. OneClick is a plugin that literally makes it as simple as clicking a link to add a new theme or plugin to your install. It seems to work like a dedicated ftp program that you set once to your install and then it just works. It even has it’s own plugin/theme backup system! If you want absolutely simple this is about good as it gets.
AWSOM News Announcement 1.3.0 released
The new version of the AWSOM News Announcement plugin 1.3.0 is now available for download. The new version features the ability to run php code in the news block, so you can have any plugin that uses php code (like most audio or video players) run within the news block. You can download the new version from it’s product page.
Update to AWSOM News Announcement soon
I am finishing testing of a new update to the WordPress AWSOM News Announcement plugin. Based on user feedback the new version 1.3.0 will now feature the ability to run PHP code directly from the announcement block. This feature will allow all kinds of PHP theme tags to be placed in the Announcement block to let various video/audio players and any other WordPress Plugin features that require a PHP based theme tag to operate. This feature can be turned on or off by the admin in the News Announcement manage page.
Expect the new version to be available within the next day or so.
Security Scanner Plugin for WordPress
While it’s still pretty early in it’s development, Blogsecurity.net has created a new security plugin for WordPress. This plugin works with their site to do a scan of your WordPress install to determine if there are any generic security issues present on your site. Right now it’s pretty basic, but it can quickly tell you a few common issues that might exist and direct you to how to fix them. The main page to get the plugin and read up on how it works is http://blogsecurity.net/wordpress/tools/wp-scanner/. Remember though, once you use the scanner, go back and disable the plugin you installed on your site from your WordPress Plugins admin page, you don’t want to leave it active.