[Pro] Basic use questions

I have learned the basic functions of Freeway Pro and I have designed some simple sites. I have no prior web design experience or coding experience. I would like to use FP to “convert” our current Word Press designed church site to a site developed in FP since I find the learning curve for Word Press to be too great. I can essentially duplicate our current site using FP with the exception of the audio resources page. Each week we upload current sermons and other audio files to the audio resources page. Viewers can play or download the audio files. This is all made possible by a WP plug-in that provides comprehensive features (filtering, file uploads, meta tags, etc.) Is it possible for someone with little experience to integrate this kind of functionality into a site made with FP? Or would the complexity be of such an extreme degree that a newcomer to web design would not succeed?
Thanks.
John


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If you post a link to your site we can probably offer a method that will allow you to do what you want.

David


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David,
Thanks for your offer of help.

The site is http://lccut.org

A site developer created the current site in WP and left us with little instruction on how to maintain or modify it. Basically we are able to upload new audio files twice weekly using the sermons plug in within WP. Other than this we really don’t feel comfortable to making changes to the site.
I have modified the site using FP by adding some pages to the basic site. The pages linked to from the “Video Resources” page are all created in FP. The page linked to by the “Live Broadcasts” icon was also created in FP since I had no clue how to do this in WP.

What I need to be able to do is to more or less recreate the functionality of the “Resources/Audio” page (lccut.org/sermons/). I need to be able to easily update the audio twice weekly with the newest files appearing at the top. If I can do this in FP then I would migrate everything from WP to FP which I would feel more comfortable working with.
John


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The layout is easy enough to duplicate, but the audio playback requires some outside help in the form of javascript and a Flash player. Instructions for using the one being used on your site can be found here:

http://www.macloo.com/examples/audio_player/

To use it you have to insert some javascript code to load the library needed before the head of your page, and then inserting the player on your page with a markup item.

As far as adding new audio files goes you are kind of talking about a content management system (CMS) that has a admin login for adding files. A CMS in general can be a bit of a complicated beast, although one such as WebYep that has an action suite available makes it simple to implement. Adding audio files is not specifically handled by WebYep so it may not be the best choice. There are other CMS available also with varying degrees of complexity to setup which may work better for this.


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Thanks for your help, chuckamuck.
If I understand you correctly, once I got the audio page set up with the proper javascript and Flash player I would need a CMS for managing the file uploading, configuration, etc. Once this is done would the site maintenance in terms of the audio files be just a matter of uploading audio files? That is, would the CMS automate all of this behind the scenes?

I’ve read and heard about joomla! as a CMS tool. Would something like this be adequate for my needs? I will check out WebYep, but if it doesn’t work well with audio files it may not meet our needs. Are there CMS available as actions specifically for use with FP?

I’m sorry if I am asking very basic questions but this unfortunately is my current level of expertise in this area.
Thanks.
John


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Actually a cms may not strictly be necessary if all you do is add audio files. You might be able to just log into ftp site and stick the audio files where they need to go, but the person doing it must be careful to change anything else.

If you look at the instructions for the player (which I did quickly) it basically says to setup a folder called audio on your web host and put the javascript file, the Flash player file and your mp3 files all together in the same folder. Each audio file must be linked to it’s own player. The tricky part for you will be adding the additional players to the page. Not that it would be difficult, but you would have to remember to add another player to the page in Freeway each time an audio file is added.


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Each audio file must be linked to it’s own player.

It would appear from the following on the instruction page that Chucka linked to that only one player.swf and audio-player.js are required.

Using More Than One Audio File

You can simply upload additional audio files to the same "audio" folder on your Web server. Make sure each file has a unique filename.

You do not need to upload the two files for the audio player (player.swf and audio-player.js) more than once.

So all you need to do once you have the basic page constructed is ftp the files to the server and then copy/paste the links to the files (in the FW doc) making sure that you change the reference to each unique audio file.

David


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Dave, did you read the rest? Read the section “Placing More Than One Player on the Same Page”. There has to be more than one instance of the player called to on the page, not of the underlying code. Each one has to have a different name.


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This page http://deltadzine.net/test/pixelout.html uses one player.swf one audio-player.js and 3 audio files audio1.mp3, audio2.mp3 and audio3.mp3

I inserted a Markup item onto the page (Insert>Markup Item) and pasted in the relevant code from the Tutorial with the correct paths and the correct audio file name.

I then duplicated the Markup item twice and the only thing I changed in the markup was the audio file name(s)

David


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I then duplicated the Markup item twice and the only thing I changed in the markup was the audio file name(s)

Exactly what I was referring to. The call to the player has to be added for each new audio file with a markup item.


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Then I misunderstood what you were saying - I thought that you were saying

There has to be more than one instance of the player called to on the page, not of the underlying code.

Each one has to have a different name.

In other words I thought you meant that you needed individually named player1.swf, player2.swf

My bad! (Hate that expression - don’t you hate old folk using young peoples slang)

Anyway in conclusion it is not difficult for John to do this all in FW. He can ftp the audio files to his audio folder on the server and change the Markup on the page OR he could use an action like Upload Extra Resources to get the files to the server along with the FW doc.

Personally (and looking at some of the file sizes he’s dealing with) I would use FTP to avoid uploading unnecessarily large audio files when doing site updates.

David


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It certainly is not difficult as it is to add another markup item to a Freeway page, but it is fiddly and a manual process. It would be better if the player was added automatically to the page for each new audio file added to the audio folder, but that would require a whole new level of scripting skill.


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There are other ways to organize this kind of stuff. Rather than a button for each file, one could use a multi-file player.

Such would not lead to an exact recreation of the existing page organization, but it might be worth a look if beginning over from scratch.


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Rats! Clicked too soon. Apologies.

http://buckysbrother.com/04-music.html


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