If a post at Running After My Hat supposedly allows you to play music, but you can’t actually do so, please let me know via email (runningaftermyhatATjohnesimpsonDOTcom) and I’ll correct the situation ASAP. For details, see below. Thanks!
I like adding music and sometimes other audio content to posts when relevant. Over the years, I’ve used a couple different audio-player gizmos here to make that possible; the catch is, they function as so-called “plugins” to the WordPress software which powers RAMH (and a gazillion other blogs).
Why is this a catch? Because many plugins are built and maintained by a single individual, or by a small group of people… and over time, for one reason or another, this support drifts away or simply stops without warning.
Such is the case with the audio player plugin I first used. When its developer left it behind, everything continued to “work,” kinda. But it continued to work only in certain browser versions — and so I added a second audio player to use on a going-forward basis. Since then, I’ve used only this other player, and replaced references to the old one when I came across them or when some site visitor reported a problem with an incompatible browser.
This morning, I upgraded some of the critical software which WordPress itself relies on — which, naturally, no longer supports that first plugin at all. So if you go back to posts from years ago, you may encounter some strange behavior. Specifically, you may see something like this (from a post in August, 2008):
The key sign that this “audio player gizmo” is irretrievably broken is the bit outlined in red. The details will vary from one audio clip to another, but if you come across that audio: … | titles=”…” | artists=”…” sort of notation with the square brackets around it then yes, you have encountered a broken player, so you can’t listen to the clip.
I’ve been updating these broken things over the years, as I came across them. (As soon as I post this, I’ll go the page referenced above and fix it there.) But obviously many remain unfixed — if you find something you’d like me to correct, just drop a comment here, or of course email me: runningaftermyhatATjohnesimpsonDOTcom.
Thanks for your help and patience!
Update (a few minutes later): I’ve fixed the audio players on the page described above (including the wonky silver boxes around the section headers *cough*).
Update (a few more minutes later): a quick search tells me that over 200 posts (of about 400 in the Music category) still contain the broken audio player… aaiiieee!
Leave a Reply