This plugin replaces the default WordPress audio player with a player capable of displaying audio waveforms. It can display a mix of the different audio channels (for podcast, radio replays, e-learning, music), or all channels simultaneously (for sound tutorial, sounds-packs showcases, audio products demo etc...), which is its main purpose.
By working with the default audio/playlist shortcode, you have great advantages:
- It works with all your previous posts
- You still have the default player in the Visual Editor (not just shortcode)
- It supports every audio format supported by WordPress (wav, ogg, mp3, m4a).
- Safe deactivation: if you deactivate the plugin, your shortcode will fallback to the WordPress default audio player.
Global colors and style settings can be overridden locally by dedicated shortcode attributes.
progress_color="purple"
wave_color="#FF0000"
cursor_color="#FF0000"
height="128"
bar_width="0"
Also, there is some attributes accessible at shortcode level:
mute_button="true"
loop_button="true"
download_button="true"
split_channels="true"
player="default"
For more advanced customization, with a custom
site-plugin, you can:
- add shortcode attributes conditionally with the filter
wavesurfer_wp_shortcode_attributes
.
- use the
wavesurfer_wp_shortcode_data
filter if you want to add custom waveform data attributes.
- use the
wavesurfer-wp-init
JavaScript event handler to render the player on custom events, like after click on a button. See examples on the WaveSurfer-WP-Init GitHub repository.
Check this
Gist for demos of how to use the filters.
Extra features :
- Pressing play on a player automatically set all the others on the same page to pause.
- AJAX Page loading compatibility
- MultiSite Friendly
The default style requires some icons of
Font-Awesome 1.0. These are included in the plugin as a small custom font. Because this icon-font is already used in a lot of themes and plugins, you can deactivate this custom font if needed.
You can deactivate the default WaveSurder-WP theme, and use your own theme style. I strongly encourage you to do that as custom CSS is the only way to make it fit your theme perfectly. There is a lot of dedicated CSS selectors for that. You can take one of the included theme as reference.
This will allow you to have more control on icons, responsivity, mouse hover behavior etc...
More Infos & Demos
You can contribute by to WaveSurfer-WP development on
GitHub
Themes and Translations are welcome !
Optimization trick: if you only use this plugin on a couple of pages, I invite you to use a plugin like
Plugin Organizer or
Gonzales to globally deactivate the plugin or its style, and make it load resources only on pages which need it.
No need for that on the back-end, only for front-end.
This player doesn't have and will not have Like Button, Sharing Button, Play count and Download count.
If you are looking for a WordPress player with such Social Features and advanced statistics like
SoundCloud or
Hearthis.at, take a look at
ZoomSounds.
For other advanced WordPress integration of wavesurfer-js, you can check
WavePlayer by luigipulcini or
WaveSurfer-Plus by GalleryCreator.
Contrary to the other WordPress plugin based on wavesurfer-js, wavesurfer-js hasn't been modified in this plugin. This means that you can extend feature of this plugin using the wavesurfer-js
methods, and that updates from the wavesurfer-js community will be pushed in WaveSurfer-WP regularly.
WordPress 5 and Guteberg: Inserting
[audio]
with Gutenberg doesn't bring the
[audio]
shortcode as it use to be. As this plugin is designed to hook the audio shortcode, you can use the generic shortcode block in gutenberg to manually write your shortcode, or use the classic editor.
WaveSurfer-WP Premium Add-on
A premium add-on is available to add extra features to WaveSurfer-WP.
- Cache Peaks File
This add-on creates and loads peaks from small files, containing peaks values. No need to wait for the full audio to be decoded to display its waveform.
- Markers System
You can add custom clickable element on your pages to seek WaveSurfer-WP player to a desired position. Can be useful for adding marks, chapters, and it can even be used for interactive audio transcripts!
- Plug and Play
These extra features are packed as an add-on. No need to delete and replace the original plugin. You will still be able to benefit from translations made by the community. Also, the core is still open source, to allow contribution.
- TimeLine Plugin
When activated thanks to a shortcode attribute, a customizable time ruler will appear below your waveform.
You can buy it from the official
product page.
Thanks for considering this way to support WaveSurfer-WP !
For an automatic installation through WordPress:
- Go to the Add New plugins screen in your WordPress admin area
- Search for WaveSurfer-WP
- Click Install Now and activate the plugin
For a manual installation via FTP:
- Upload the
wavesurfer-wp
directory to the /wp-content/plugins/
directory
- Activate the plugin through the Plugins screen in your WordPress admin area
To upload the plugin through WordPress, instead of FTP:
- Upload the downloaded zip file on the Add New plugins screen (see the Upload* tab) in your WordPress admin area and activate.