Microsoft Office Live Small Business Community

can I add music to my website?  I read in the tutorial that I can't embed music that will start automatically on page load, but can I put some kind of music and player that visitors can click on and listen?  thanks!

I have a cool flash music player embedded on my site. You can go here to view it: http://co-mastersingers.com/listen.aspx . To get the player for your own site, visit http://www.e162s.com/programs/xspf_player.htm . There are lots of customization options, which you can read about on that site.

Sally

thanks saliandra.  Unfortunately, i am extremely computer illiterate, and all the info on the website has me a bit confused.  Is it as easy as copying and pasting into the html module?  I really like what you've done with yours, and I hope to do the same with mine.

 Shawn,

I would consider myself computer literate and I was really having trouble copying and pasting into the method with a similar mp3 player.  The html pasted ok, but no player ever appeared.  I will try it again tonight using saliandra's resource and see if it does better.  

Donna

www.StringsAndThings.org 

It can be a bit tricky to get it installed. When you go to his site, scroll down until you see this:

        Click here for a Zip file containing all the files for the XSPF player v3.6. Last updated on Feb 05, 2008

Click on the link to download his files to your computer and then extract all of the files to a directory of your choosing. Then upload the file called xspf_player_v3.6.swf into your documents folder on your website. 

Why don't you start there, and get that done, and then we can move onto the next step. Esteban (from that site I mentioned) is extremely nice and helpful too. And you can always ask him questions.

Sally

Wow, thanks so much!  It worked the first time.  Boy I wish I would have looked for advice here before I spent hours of frustration in doing this.  I am so grateful!

Donna 

That's awesome Donna. Congratulations.

Simple solution: http://solutionsforofficelive.com

Thank you very much, Donna and Sally.  I really appreciate it.  Sally, I will follow your advise, and upload that zip file you mentioned, and go from there.  Again, thanks for everyone's help.  I'm sure I'll be in touch!!

hey sally.  I've got that file uploaded to my document gallery.  What's next?

Good job Shawn. Now, pick two MP3 files that we can "test" with. Of course once you get it all working, you can add as many as you like. But let's keep it simple for now. It's important to note that the files must be MP3's. You cannot use AAC's or MIDI's or anything like that. You would first have to convert these files to MP3 format and that's a whole new topic...

Upload those two MP3 files into your document gallery. Also load any album art that goes with the files (JPG). Don't worry too much if you don't have any art. I think if we leave that out the player will still work. But if you have those files, upload those as well into the document gallery.

Now we must create a playlist. Use Notepad for this (or some basic text editor). You can start with the sample playlist that came in the zipped folder that you just downloaded (the file name is playlist_example.xspf) - open it up in Notepad and edit it following Esteban's directions, below. You are only editing the text that is between the tags with the brackets. One thing to note is that you don't need to type out the full URL as in his example. In fact, when I used the full URL, I couldn't get the player to work. So, for instance, the line that starts with <location> should read like this:

<location>/documents/yoursongname.mp3</location>

Also note that if you don't have any album art, I believe you can just take that line out or leave the spot blank in between the image tags. Later on, I can show you how to set the player to not show album art at all if you want. If you do have art, and you have uploaded it into your document gallery, change the location and names to match your files. Also remove the two extra track listings, as his example file is set up for 4 songs, and we are only working with 2. Once you have finished editing, save your new file with the name playlist.xspf - then upload this file into your document gallery.

Before you upload the file, however, it's a good idea to "validate" the file by going to http://validator.xspf.org/ - upload and submit your file to see if it passes without errors. Hopefully all will be OK and we can proceed.

Let me know when you have completed all of this, and I will help you with the next step.

Sally

Hi Shawn,

Posted this for another member in a different thread.  I think this will work for you too:

You can consider attaching the Yahoo Media Player to your website. 

http://developer.yahoo.com/mediaplayer/

Check it out.  It's quite a nice professional addition to any website.

Hope this helps!
Royster
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Hi Shawn,

I thought I would give you the next step, since I have a busy week coming up and I'm not sure if I can get back to these boards for awhile. The next step would be to try the player on your website. I would suggest making a new test page that isn't visible on the navigation, while you are trying to get the player to work. Start with a blank page and put an HTML module on it. In that module, paste the following code exactly as it is:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="170"data=/documents/xspf_player_v3.6.swf?playlist_url=/documents/playlist.xspf&autoload=1&buffer=15&bg_color=AC3A15&txt_color=FFFFFF&button_color=FFFFFF&shuffle=0&repeat_playlist=1&volume_level=80&menu=0"><param name="movie" value=/documents/xspf_player_v3.6.swf?playlist_url=/documents/playlist.xspf&autoload=1&buffer=15&bg_color=AC3A15&txt_color=FFFFFF&button_color=FFFFFF&shuffle=0&repeat_playlist=1&volume_level=80&menu=0" <param name="allownetworking" value="internal" />
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="never" />
<param name="enableJSURL" value="false" />
<param name="enableHREF" value="false" />
<param name="saveEmbedTags" value="true" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
</object>

No other changes should be necessary to get the player to work, as long as you followed my other instructions to a tee. Don't worry - once you get the player working, you can then go back in and modify the HTML box contents to change the colors and other options that you wish. You can change the color of the player itself, the color of the text and the buttons, you can set it to auplay from the moment someone enters a page (be careful with this as it can be annoying). You can set it to not show the album art section, you can reduce the height to 18 so that it becomes a slim player, etc. Just go back to Esteban's website to see the different items that are customizeable. Now that you have been working with this for a little while, perhaps his site won't seem quite so intimidating. 

And when you get it just the way you want it, then you can upload more mp3 files and modify your playlist.xspf file to include those additional files. The player itself will update once you change the playlist.

Hope all of this has been helpful to you. Good luck.

Sally

I was able to upload the player the new version and its showing but tried to change the color and nothing happened, what do i do with the .as and .fla files so they can communicate with the xspf player. I want to change the colors.

heres a link to the xspf player

http://www.xoinga.com/view_profile.php?member_id=180

 Thanks in advance

Saliandra.

I've been browsing the Office live pages & ran accross this e-mail looking for info about adding music to my site.  I'm going to add that on asap, but I looked at your site as well and I wonder how you got the cursive writing & the picture of the rose & piano in your header. I would love to add that look to my site.  Did you have to use the advaced features control?  Any detailed instuctions will be appreciated.  Thanks in advance!

Jerry