Chapter 5 [ 137 ] server. In this example, we will upload a self-contained audio le (called audio in .mp3 format) to our web server. If you are using FTP, simply move the MP3 le from your computer into the new directory. If you are using the Media Manager, then make sure you are residing in the directory you wish and use the le upload feature to load the audio into your desired directory on the web server. Once your audio has been uploaded, we can proceed to include this in a Joomla! Article. Disable the WYSIWYG editor In order to place the correct HTML into our Joomla! Articles, it is best to make sure the built-in WYSIWYG Content Article Editors are disabled. You can easily do this by following these steps: Logging into your administration. Clicking on the menu item named Site|User Manager. Select the user to edit. Under the parameters for that user, select Editor – No Editor as the option for the Editor eld. Clicking on Apply or Save to save your settings. The editor can also be disabled on a global basis, by visiting your Global Conguration and changing the Default Editor eld to Editor – No Editor. Create the category Follow these steps: Log into your Joomla! Administration and proceed to the Create Category area which is located under Components|Articles|Categories. In the top-right corner, click on the New icon, which loads the Category Manager: Add Category screen. Give your category a name. For our example, I am going to call it Podcast. The Alias can be left blank, but make sure the category is published. If you want, you can give this category a description. • • • • • • • • This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Using Audio in Your Joomla! Website [ 138 ] That is all we need to do for now, so complete the process by clicking on the Save button at the top-right of the page. You will see your new category created and shown in the Category List. Create the article to display your audio The next step is to create a new Joomla! Article, which will contain your audio content. If you are already in the Category screen, click on the link to the article view. If you are not, then click on the Article Manager icon on your Control Panel or go to the Components|Articles menu item. Click on the Create New Article button at the top-right of the page, give your article a Title, and select the Podcast category that was created earlier. We now need to include the HTML code into our article (refer to the Embed and display audio in Joomla! Articles section, mentioned earlier in this chapter). Make sure you don't have your WYSIWYG editor turned on in your Joomla! Articles when entering complex HTML code into your Joomla! Articles. Once you have your audio code in place, click on the Apply button (top-right) to apply the changes and save the new article. Create the menu link and RSS feed Once you have created your audio article (or articles) and have it located in the applicable "Audio Podcast" category, it's time to utilize the Joomla! RSS feed menu feature. Creating a menu link to the category is done by going to the menu you wish to place the new link on, for example, Menus|MainMenu, and clicking on the New icon at the top-right of the screen: • • • • This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Chapter 5 [ 139 ] As this section is about creating a menu link for an RSS item, we will not take the time to go through all of the menu parameters, but for our RSS menu link the most important ones are: Title: Enter a title for your menu link. For our example, I am going to call the menu link Audio Podcast. Type: Click on the Change Type button to open up the menu Type options, which will open a lightbox with menu type options. Create a new menu type called Link to Category by clicking on the applicable link. The popup lightbox will disappear and the appropriate Menu elds will be populated. Parameters (Basic) - Category: You need to choose which category you wish the menu link to link to. Parameters (Advanced): Make sure the Show a Feed Link radio button is set to Yes. If you want to ll out any additional parameters or properties for the menu item, then please do, but the previous are the main requirements to create our new Link to a Category menu item. Click on Save on that page to save the new menu item. How it all works If you look at the front page of your website, you should now see the new menu link you have created. If you cannot, then make sure your menu link is published, and your menu module is published to show the menu on your front page. Click on this menu item, which will take you to the Category page, displaying the links to your podcast articles. As most modern web browsers, such as Safari and Firefox, have built-in RSS readers, once you are on this Category page, you should see an RSS icon in your browser. In Mozilla Firefox and Safari, this will be an icon to the right of the URL eld in your browser. Click on this to view the RSS feeds from this particular web page: • • • • This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Using Audio in Your Joomla! Website [ 140 ] You may receive more than one option when you have clicked on the icon: RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0. These are syndication languages and will be covered in a chapter later in this book. For now, both will display your new RSS feed, and allow users to subscribe to and view them. FeedBurner Now the fun begins. We are going to create a podcast-friendly feed using the FeedBurner service by Google. The FeedBurner service is located at http://feedburner.google.com. If you do not have one already, you will need to create a free account with Google in order to utilize this service. When you are logged into your Google account, visit the previous URL, and you will be presented with a box to enter your RSS feed location into: Paste the URL to your podcasting category into this box, and not the actual RSS link itself. Then make sure you check the I am a podcaster! box to the right of this and click on the Next button. If the link you entered is a valid URL link to your Joomla! Category, FeedBurner will accept it and take you to the next step. If you are having issues with your link, please create a new menu link in your Joomla! site that links directly to your "Podcast" category, click on that link, copy the URL, and then paste it in FeedBurner. This should be all that is required and FeedBurner will now report that it has found two valid RSS links from that URL—RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0. These are different syndication languages, and for this example, I will use the RSS 2.0 option: This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Chapter 5 [ 141 ] Next we need to give our feed a descriptive Title that users will be able to view, and also provide the Feed Address, which will start with http://feeds.feedburner. com/ and then have our sufx at the end. For this example, I will use the title, Amplify Podcasts and the Feed Address, amp_podcast. Once this information is populated, click on Next: Unless the information you entered into your elds has already been allocated, you should be presented with your brand new sparkling podcast feed: This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Using Audio in Your Joomla! Website [ 142 ] The FeedBurner service offers you additional features to customize your feed and even submit it automatically to iTunes. We need to utilize one of these, so click on Next. At the top of this page, make sure the Create podcast enclosures from links to: any rich media le is selected. It should be the default setting: You can give your podcast a description, some keywords, and even add it to iTunes and the Yahoo! search engine. Then click on Next. In this last page, FeedBurner offers you some powerful statistics, which lets you know who is subscribing to your podcasts and how often they have clicked on the content in your feed: Click on Next and we are all done here! This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Chapter 5 [ 143 ] Next, we need to let people know about your new podcast feed. In your FeedBurner page, you should see a tab labeled Publicize. Click on this and then on the left-hand side menu item labeled Chicklet Chooser: Scroll to the bottom of the page where you can copy some HTML code: Copy the code, go back to your Joomla! site, and create a new module, pasting in this HTML code linking to your new feed. Publish this on your podcast pages, and users will be able to subscribe directly to your feed: This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Using Audio in Your Joomla! Website [ 144 ] To continue to produce podcasts from your website is now an easy process. When you want to create a new podcast, simply create a new Joomla! Article and either embed your audio player into it, or create a link to the podcast material and save this article into your "Podcast" category. Joomla! and FeedBurner will do the rest, automatically creating a new RSS feed entry for this new article. Podcasting using extensions There are other ways to podcast from our Joomla! site. These involve using the power of Joomla! third-party extensions, and one of the best tools for the job is the "Joomla! Podcast Suite" by Joseph LeBlanc: The Podcast Suite extension contains a Joomla! Component, Module, and Plugin which provides an extensive list of podcast tools at your ngertips. You can get your rst podcast up and running quickly, and easily build and manage this ongoing. We will highlight the Podcast Suite extension in the following section, which covers third-party audio extensions. This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Chapter 5 [ 145 ] Third-party audio extensions Joomla! Extensions provide us with a range of powerful audio solutions which can be installed and congured by administrators, with nearly no developer's knowledge required. There is a huge number of extensions that are now available for Joomla!. The most difcult decision for a Joomla! site administrator is usually not nding an extension to do what you want it to, but nding the most suitable one out of the available options. The following section highlights some of the most popular, and non-commercial third-party audio extensions. Podcast Suite The Podcast Suite for Joomla! is in a world of its own. It does "what it says on the tin" and you can be presenting podcasts within Joomla! in as little as ten minutes: This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Using Audio in Your Joomla! Website [ 146 ] The suite consists of a component, module, and plugin. These are installed via the Extensions Manager, and require minimal administration congurations. The Podcast Suite works by creating an RSS feed for your podcasts, as well as a new article, which can contain a description and a special code enclosure for the podcast le. The plugin embeds a useful Flash-based MP3 player into the article, which means you can publicize an RSS link for your podcasts, as well as link directly to the article so your users can listen to them within your site. There is also a handy module to display the RSS feeds. The Podcast Suite has some excellent author and metadata features, some of which are utilized by iTunes, helping to make your podcasts as iTunes-friendly as possible. To download the Podcast Suite, visit http://extensions.joomla.org and search for "podcast". MP3 Browser The MP3 Browser plugin is a superb solution if you are looking to display and play multiple MP3 les in your articles. The plugin creates a table containing all of the MP3 les from a specic directory, for example, /audio/training/. This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 . power of Joomla! third-party extensions, and one of the best tools for the job is the " ;Joomla! Podcast Suite" by Joseph LeBlanc: The Podcast Suite extension contains a Joomla! Component,. 08724 Using Audio in Your Joomla! Website [ 144 ] To continue to produce podcasts from your website is now an easy process. When you want to create a new podcast, simply create a new Joomla! Article and. third-party audio extensions. This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Chapter 5 [ 145 ] Third-party