Shoutcast radio on Vbulletin forum

[BiZiMDiYaR]

Hi,

Is there a way ( addon or template edit ) to have a shoutcast radio in vbulletin, that doesn't reload everytime the users change to another page on the forum. So to be able to listen to the shoutcast radio, constantly...

Best regards,

[Dismounted]

This is not a limitation of vBulletin, but rather, the way HTML/browsers work. A solution may be to open the player in a new window/popup, this would not be reloaded every time the user browses.

[BiZiMDiYaR]

Hi,

Well... the problem is that most IE and firefox do have popup blocks.. so how to avoid this then ? The radio would be blocked all the time... any solution for this ?

btw, if I wanted to have a pop up, how to do this to have it loaded only once and not everytime the user goes to the forumhome...

Best regards,

[killa seven]

You can add subdomains to your account, correct? Go add one radio.yoursite.com load the shoutcast and point it to that page, and put a link in your navbar, or some other form of letting people know its there.

Thats how i did it. :)

[Dismounted]

Well... the problem is that most IE and firefox do have popup blocks.. so how to avoid this then ? The radio would be blocked all the time... any solution for this ?
You don't have to use a actual popup, you can just link to a new page.
btw, if I wanted to have a pop up, how to do this to have it loaded only once and not everytime the user goes to the forumhome...
The new page acts independently to what the user does on the other page.

[BiZiMDiYaR]

Hi,

I want the radio to play when the user is on the forum... not with a link, not with a popup, just a radio on top. There must be some way for this, as a lot of sites are using shoutcast radios, so this should be something that vbulletin should be looking at... would be a great piece of code...

Can we request something like this ? Do we have a requests page ? :-)

Best regards.

[NeroObsedian]

There is a way to do this but many people will frown upon it and it also depends on the layout of your radio.

A few versions back I had a board running with an iframe at the bottom. The iframe was broken into IRC/Flash MP3 Player/Flash Arcade. I included a link on my navbar called Troll. You went there, said what it did and asked for an IRC username if you wished for it to be different than your username. Once you hit Start Trolling it reloaded the entire page into two frames. The main was anchored across the bottom and I think it was either 200 or 250 high and the rest of the page was the forum.

What youre doing is setting names for the different frames. So if your forum is at the top you could name it forum and bottom anchor. Some of your links would have to target the forum frame, but this would keep it so that the bottom frame only reloads if the page is refreshed or a link is taken from that frame that leaves the framed page.

Oh yeah... this is frowned up due to some browsers that have/had issues with iframes. They weren't stable across all browsers and made for bad page design. I haven't used them for some time now so that may not be the case anymore, but that would get the job done.

[RedDevil]

this is somthing im interested in im trying to solve the same problem, i have the player embedded i just need it to appear as a popup on loading page, been searching for the code but going in circles, another thread i can watch now see what developes.

if anyone knows what code or where please point me there, i would apprecited it, as my coding skills are under developement.

[NeroObsedian]

At one point I had thought about using AJAX for something like this but I wasn't sure and I'm still not 100% sure how you would go about doing and how effective it would be.

However, since Facebook is really the craze anymore you'll notice theres a toolbar across the bottom of the page. Again, i'm not sure how it works or what language its written in (assuming AJAX) but I checked available jobs (http://www.facebook.com/jobs/#/jobs/index.php)for Facebook(page is in php). Under the Interface Design posting it states the following:

# Expertise in PHP, XHTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX
Ability to write well-abstracted, reusable code for common UI components in PHP and Javascript


Thus I assume its a combination of the above. Try investing some google time on live AJAX/PHP frames/bars/windows etc.

[BiZiMDiYaR]

Hi,

Woww.. this has been very usefull... yes, the facebook would do the trick, to have similiar BAR under or even at the top of the page.

Does anybody have this knowlegde or is anybody able to make this.. ? I know that this would be interesting for a lot of people... How to implement this on vbulletin ? Please advise and thanks.

Bes regards.

[Dismounted]

Even if using AJAX, the whole page is reloaded when you move on to another page. This does not solve the problem. The most practical solution would be to use frames.

[BiZiMDiYaR]

Hi,

Yes, what can be done is to rename the index.php and then to but another index.php which devised the site into frames and the topframe would be the radio en below that would be the radio... but the problem is when using frames, and you go back to the first page, the player get's reloaded again and again and again... so you will have several players and that is terrible..

Any idea how to make this work ?

Thanks.

[Dismounted]

but the problem is when using frames, and you go back to the first page, the player get's reloaded again and again and again... so you will have several players and that is terrible..
It should only reload in the frame, so I don't get what you're saying. What is the "first page"?

[NeroObsedian]

Hi,

Yes, what can be done is to rename the index.php and then to but another index.php which devised the site into frames and the topframe would be the radio en below that would be the radio... but the problem is when using frames, and you go back to the first page, the player get's reloaded again and again and again... so you will have several players and that is terrible..

Any idea how to make this work ?

Thanks.

Not sure what you're saying but I'm going to take a stab. I'm assuming you're going on about building a frame into your index.php and that when you're on a thread or anything and click back to the head of the forum three, it reloads the entire page w/ a frame in it as well?

If that's correct, here's what I would do. Write yourself a page(radio.php or something) that has a frame loading your index. On the navbar somewhere, add an link for radio that would link to the page(radio.php) using frames. You'll obviously need to name your frame and set targets, but if I'm correct once you're browsing in a frame it uses itself as the target unless specified otherwise.

As for the mention of AJAX and the bottom bar on Face Book. It IS possible to keep the bar alive like that, however I don't think there is any easy way of implementing that into vbb. I've researched this idea for almost a week now (I wanted a bar to load a music player, IRC and an AJAX IM I'm writing at the bottom of my forums) and some of the industries leading developers are scratching their head on how they make it work. The theory is that the links in facebook send an http request to the server to update XML which is then reloaded. So you're not really browsing page to page? You're just reloading XML data via AJAX hence the bar itself isnt reloading. However, it is all very sketchy as this AJAX Im project is the first thing I've taken on in that language. Point is, you'd have to completely rebuild vbb to use XML and AJAX and that would be an epic feat.