audio support under free plans
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Can WP blogs support audio files if you only have the ‘free’ plan? I’ve tried to use the option described as ‘Embed Audio From a Link’ as described here: https://en.support.wordpress.com/audio/#embed-audio-from-a-link — while referring to a URL on my Google Drive for the MP3 file. But the suggested shortcode text doesn’t seem to work as advertised. When I preview the HTML, it just shows large text of the URL instead of the described linear player.
Any ideas?The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there!
As stated in the support document:
You can upload the files to your site if you have the Personal, Premium or Business plan.
— It looks like you do need the Personal plan or above in order to do this, unfortunately.
Sorry, I couldn’t help further. When you have the personal plan, you can refer back to that support article you mentioned to assist you further.Cheers :)
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Please let me know if you can help me for that price proof now please thank you a bak danso
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Hi again —
I don’t understand what you mean. The personal plan is $4 per month, which is billed yearly, so about $48 + taxes and fees.
I can’t help you with the price, and cannot make it lower for you unfortunately. Let me know if you have any further questions.
Cheers,
Alisson -
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Hi @stolzyblog — It’s alright! I am happy that you understand.
Thanks for reaching out though :)
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Hi there,
Can you please paste the Google Drive link that you’re trying to embed using the shortcode? If it works anything like Google Photos, Google adds a bunch of stuff to the URL that effectively prevents you from embedding the file on other services. If that’s the case there’s not much we can do about it, but I’ll need to check with an actual file to be sure.
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Howdy kokkieh,
Go have a look: https://skirmisheswithreality.net/2018/02/11/rumanikos-duet/
I tried it a few ways. I stripped off the Google-Drive generated suffix HTML (which was about visibility and sharing) for example. But results always the same. I have it working now as a kludge: users still have to click on a link.
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Right, so if you look at the URL you added in that post, it’s https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JNhsr-zDK2xF5UV8mAW3x4AHm4hrtJQ_
However, the audio shortcode expects an actual audio file name in the URL, so somewhere in there must be “filename.mp3”. See the examples here:
If that’s not there, as is the case with the Google Drive URL, the shortcode doesn’t recognise it as an audio URL, and it cannot embed the audio player.
As I mentioned, this happens with hotlinking Google Photos as well – Google creates their sharing URLs in such a format that hotlinking and embedding via URL is not possible.
So to do embed your files with the free plan you’ll need to use a different service than Google Drive to host your audio. SoundCloud is the most popular service for this, but there are several options you can look at on this Quora thread:
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-websites-for-audio-file-uploading-and-sharing
You can also look at a service like Amazon S3 for this. They have a generous free offering for the first year, but even once you’re past that, with the current traffic your site gets your costs there should still be much less than what you’d pay for a WordPress.com plan, if audio hosting is all you’re after and you don’t feel you need the other features included in our plans.
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Thanks, will look into this. Perhaps Dropbox does not monkey with the URL? I think I have an old soundcloud account somewhere, too.
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Dropbox should work – they add a query parameter to the link at the end, so you may want to experiment with removing that if it doesn’t work as is. Just keep in mind that should Dropbox change their terms or sharing process it might break existing embeds on your site – that will always be a risk with a service not specifically created for hosting the type of file you want to use.
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Yeah, tried it & still doesn’t work; same issue. I think the issue is as Allison has described above: audio shortcode is not available to WP blogs operating under the free plan. I find the language a little confusing about this on the documentation page discussed, because it could be interpreted that the price plan restrictions only apply to the section labelled: Upload audio to your site, while the next major topic labelled Embed audio from a link does not mention this restriction.
But that’s ok.
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There is no reason you shouldn’t be able to use the audio shortcode on a free site. But the file link needs to conform to the requirements I mentioned above. If you use a file hosting provider that doesn’t mess with the URL there’s no reason the shortcode shouldn’t work.
For example, try this audio file that I uploaded to Cloudup:
[audio src="https://cldup.com/30wyxfSEKB.mp3" /]
It works fine if I embed it using the shortcode on a free site.
It also works for me if I embed it from Dropbox, as long as I remove the ?dl=0 part at the end.
[audio src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/8e7mi6gi141uugu/MLKDream_64kb.mp3" /]
You can see both versions of the file embedded using the shortcode here:
https://justanothertestsiteblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/testing-audio/
You don’t need an upgrade to do this.
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I used a URL produced via Soundcloud – one of the sites you suggested. Here’s the exact code:
[ audio https://soundcloud.com/stolzy/ionian ]It seems the shortcode was not interpreted but just re-presented as text.
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The SoundCloud link again doesn’t contain a file name in the link, but SoundCloud also has its own shortcode as it embeds its own player:
Sorry if I didn’t make that clear before.
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well, nothing’s easy. went to create a cloudup account and lo and behold it seems to think one already exists for my email. then, tried the FAQ and found out that “Public signups are currently disabled. If you have a signup code, please enter it in the box below.” huh? then I noticed it is owned by Automattic Inc… so does it automagically inherit accounts from WP or something?
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FYI: took a look at Clyp (clyp.it) file-sharing service, registered an account, etc. But they also mask the filename with generated hotlinks.
Tried your example from your Cloudup (MLK speech) and it worked. Nice & simple, clean look. But from what I see, Cloudup closed to new accounts at the moment.
…trying to find my old Dropbox acct
…not inclined to use S3 for reason you mentioned, 12-month free limitation
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