9 replies to this topic

[EchelonOne]

Due to the numerous hits we are receiving from Google search engine queries regarding Mp3 players we have decided to start development of a few players that will function with vBulletin or IPB. We have the vBulletin Suite setup on this site, so we can demonstrate both versions.

I would anticipate roughly 4 weeks to complete both versions, the only difference between them will be the installation methods, but we will document both in our Tutorial section - to make life easier. We will nolonger provide userguides within downloads, since we can update online documentation much quicker and easier.

The mp3 players will be small, but powerful on features and incorporate ID3 tag reading directly from the mp3 source file.

Release date: TBA

[Bryan]

AWESOME!!

will this be a free or paid modification/add-on?

[EchelonOne]

From previous experiences with releasing modifications, I have found selling small modifications is prone to pirating and not selling very many. The way I tend to avoid this is by releasing modifications for free, but with an embedded backlink, this brings in more traffic and gives us a better established ranking. By embedding the backlink, I don't even need to 'splash' Echelon Designers all over it, there will just be a small square somewhere on the mp3 player. I only charge if a 'brand-free' version is required, in which case all backlinks are removed, so as for the mp3 player itself it will be a free modification.

[Bryan]

EchelonOne, on 13 March 2011 - 04:38 PM, said:

From previous experiences with releasing modifications, I have found selling small modifications is prone to pirating and not selling very many. The way I tend to avoid this is by releasing modifications for free, but with an embedded backlink, this brings in more traffic and gives us a better established ranking. By embedding the backlink, I don't even need to 'splash' Echelon Designers all over it, there will just be a small square somewhere on the mp3 player. I only charge if a 'brand-free' version is required, in which case all backlinks are removed, so as for the mp3 player itself it will be a free modification.

If I understand correctly (please forgive me if I am wrong) that means the player will be embedded on my site, but if they click on it it will redirect them to here?

[EchelonOne]

Bryan, on 13 March 2011 - 04:42 PM, said:

If I understand correctly (please forgive me if I am wrong) that means the player will be embedded on my site, but if they click on it it will redirect them to here?

Not exactly... The mp3 player will be hosted on your own forum, and fully functional. The only way of getting back to this site would be to hover over a certain area where it will show a small popup, if this is clicked on then it will direct the visitor to this site, the hover over area would be no more than a 5 pixel square at most and blended in with the mp3 style, so it doesn't look 'out-of-place'.

So, basically the player will play any mp3 which has been uploaded as an attachment within a post, with IPB it will just be a few files to upload and a BBCode XML file to import to install it.

[Bryan]

ok, thanks for clarifying for me...I am stupid about a lot of things.

I am anxiously looking forward to this as I would love to use it on my site, maybe test it our for you?

[EchelonOne]

As soon as I have an Alpha version available, I will PM you the package. If there is anything that you would like to see changed then I am open to constructive critism.

I already have tutorials which are setup as Userguides for various products which will be released very soon, the Mp3 Player will probably done within a few weeks. At the moment the userguides are in 'Draft' mode and not publicly available.

There will probably be 2 versions available, one in black gloss and another in blue glass - they will both use vector based graphics for streamlining them in file size. I am not too keen on using jpg's or png's within Flash since it tends to 'bloat' files, at roughly 19-20k it will be very light-weight on any forum. At the moment, I have a list of features which will include:

• Track info
• Volume (dual read-out with track info on change)
• Play/Pause button
• Small spectrum analyzer
• Current time
• Full track time
• ID Mp3 tag read

I may add more, but it will be kept as simple as possible due to the overall size. Any fonts used will be standard, so no font will need to be embedded which would increase the overall file size - in the past, I have seen multi-lingual mp3 players with many languages, however this can increase the file size up to 10 times or more.

[Bryan]

sounds like a good solid plan...be happy to help with it any way I can.

[iceberg]

hey - is there any more work being done on a valid MP3 player for vbulletin as a widget? i need to put a library of MP3s on the site and there simply is no good solution out there for vb 4.1.x that I can find.

if you're working on it, i'd LOVE to help test it. if not, how much to help create one for my site?

[EchelonOne]

iceberg, on 10 December 2011 - 07:50 PM, said:

hey - is there any more work being done on a valid MP3 player for vbulletin as a widget? i need to put a library of MP3s on the site and there simply is no good solution out there for vb 4.1.x that I can find.

if you're working on it, i'd LOVE to help test it. if not, how much to help create one for my site?

At the moment there is no work being done on any projects due to heavy workloads, which lately has increased drastically.

The mp3 player itself is quite easy to design, however implementing into vB4 or IPB3.2 is where problems arise since both use entirely different types of php coding. I do have an mp3 engine coded AdminCP for vB3, but would fail under vB4, due to the template rendering engine it now uses on the user side.

Perhaps a better approach would be a popup and not a widget, since this would carry on playing mp3's regardless of new page loads. Just an idea..