Quick on-page audio player

My paper started a new Statesman News Update podcast (and the blog that goes with it) this week.

Our Internet editor Robert Quigley sent a shoutout on Twitter to announce it. One of the suggestions he got back was the need for an on-page audio player, which we didn't really have in our web toolkit. The reader pointed us to KUT for an example.

Well, some quick research showed they use a free WordPress plugin by 1 Pixel Out for their audio player, but we don't use WordPress on our home page. 1 Pixel Out points out a tutorial by Journalism professor Mindy McAdams that dissects that plugin, which I used to whip up a player in about half an hour.

It took:

* Putting a .js file and .swf file on our servers.
* Putting an MP3 file on our server
* Dropping javascript code on the homepage

I was able to change the size of the player a little, and I could even change colors, but we choose not to at this point.

So, hopefully tonight, when the the new podcast comes out about 8 p.m., you'll be able to play it on our home page!

Next up is how to get that on-page player for the blog to work. That will be a bit tricky since you have to change id's for each instance of the player.