Ampache WordPress Plugin/Drupal Module
This page is dedicated to the Ampache Now Playing wordpress plugin, and drupal module.
Description
Ampache Now Playing is a plugin for WordPress and a module for Drupal that displays the current song playing on your Ampache Server.
Features
This module can pull information about the current playing song from an Ampache server via it’s RSS feed, and display it as a widget/block. It can pull the song title, album, and artist, the date the song was played, and from what user agent the song is being streamed to (ie, ampache web interface, iphone, android, etc.).
This module can also authenticate to Ampache, and pull the album art, and display it in the block.
This module can cache both the album art and the RSS feed (caching is user customizable). The RSS is cached in the database for a default max age of 10 seconds, so if this module is used on a website that generates a large number of hits, this will limit the amount of connections wordpress/drupal will make to Ampache.
The album art information is also stored in a database, and the artwork itself is saved, and scaled down (to make the file size smaller), in the webserver filesystem, more specifically in /wp-content/uploads/ampachenowplaying/ for wordpress and /sites/default/files/ampache/ for drupal.
The user can clear this cache at anytime if they choose from the module settings menu. The user also has full control over what type of data is displayed to the end user in the widget.
Example/Screenshots
You can check out a live sample of this plugin on this website on the right hand side, and the drupal module can be seen on my personal blog at http://www.daveeddy.com.
Download
WordPress.org has accepted my plugin, you can download it from wordpress directly at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ampachenowplaying/. You can also check it out at my launchpad site http://launchpad.net/ampachenowplaying-wordpress.
Drupal has not yet accepted my module, it’s in for review, and I still have to change a few things before it gets accepted. In the mean time you can check on its review at http://drupal.org/node/827026. For those who are eager to try this module, and are not too concerned with the fact my module has not been tested/approved by those in charge of Drupal, you can check it out and download it at my launchpad site http://launchpad.net/ampachenowplaying-drupal.
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Hello,
Been using the ampache plugin for wordpress for a while now. Very nice plugin.
I recently (after the last update) have a little issue with the plugin. For security reasons I use htaccess passwd protection on the wp-admin folder of my website.
When I goto my website that has the plugin running it starts asking for the htaccess passwd of the wp-admin folder.The plugin tries to fetch data from the wp-admin dir which is not possible due to the htaccess passwd protection. This did not happen in previous versions of the plugin as far as I can remember. Is this due to the last update ? Might there be a way around this issue ?
Thanks.
Hey,
I’m glad to see that you are using module, but unfortunately since the last update (1.1 to be exact) I have switched over the loading mechanism to load in the background using ajax/jquery. I’m trying to think of a way around this, but unfortunately the only real solution would be to roll back to a version before 1.1… version 1.0.1 was the last one before switching to ajax.
Because of the nature of the wordpress ajax calls, requests must be made to the wp-admin/ folder on the server. Might I ask why you are using this .htaccess authentication on your wp-admin folder? it seems a bit redundant with wordpresses authentication mechanisms.
That is a fair point “why do I even use htaccess”. It is probably due to my paranoid nature lol. Avoid scanners, bruteforce attacks, jadie jadie is probably the best reason I can give you. Just an additional piece of safety on my blog. The options I have are clear. Either remove the htaccess or role back. No plugin at all is not an option imo.
Thanks for the effort and the fast reply on the matter.
i can understand it from that standpoint.. my site does get hit with a lot of bruteforce attacks and scanners, and an htaccess is a quick and easy way to stop them before they can do any damage.
I’m glad to hear that “no plugin at all is not an option”! But unfortunately you are either going to have to remove the htaccess for the new plugin to work, or roll back to the new version. The only new feature the new version adds is that it uses ajax/jquery to load in after your website has fully loaded. So in the rare event where your Ampache server is down, the new version will prevent your blog from loading slow.