Audio Sharing

From KickApps Documentation

Contents 1 Overview 2 Enabling and Disabling the Audio Sharing Application 3 Configuring the Audio Sharing Application 4 Adding Audio Tracks 5 Editing Audio Tracks 6 Finding Audio Tracks 7 Viewing and Interacting Audio Tracks 8 Managing Audio Tracks as a Site Member 9 Managing Audio as the Site Administrator 10 Syndicating Audio 11 Reporting on Audio 12 Audio on Profile Pages 13 Audio on Your Site’s Homepage 14 Audio in Your Site’s Activity Feeds 15 Audio and Points 16 Audio and Groups 17 Advertising on Audio 18 API Support for the Blogs Application (For Developers) 19 System-Generated Emails 20 API Support for the Blogs Application (For Developers) 21 Related Tutorials and How-to Articles

Overview

The KIT Cloud Social Audio Sharing application lets you and your site’s members add audio tracks to your site through their web browser.

Site members can add as many audio tracks as they wish, and you have the ability to review, approve and reject all user-submitted audio tracks before (or after) they appear on your site.

Audio tracks can be organized by tags, and each audio track’s title and description are indexed by your site’s global search engine (which makes all of your site’s content findable by keyword).

Each audio track “play page” has a unique URL (“permalink”), retains your site’s global styling and navigation (including your header, main navigation, background and footer), and is wired up for social interaction via comments and ratings, “favoriting,” sharing with friends, etc.

Enabling and Disabling the Audio Sharing Application

The KIT Cloud Social Audio Sharing application can be enabled or disabled in the Affiliate Center on the Configure > Settings > Add/Remove Apps page. (You can get to the Affiliate Center by clicking the “manage your site” link near the top of all your site’s pages.) When you enable this application, your site’s members will be able to upload and edit their own audio tracks, and listen to audio tracks added by other members.

Note: If you disable this application after audio tracks have been submitted to your site, all of those audio tracks will become unavailable on your site and people who try to access them will see a message that the audio track has been removed. Re-enabling the Audio Sharing application will make those audio tracks accessible again.

Configuring the Audio Sharing Application

When members add audio tracks to your site you can automatically approve the content or you can specify that the content must be manually approved by a site administrator or editor before it goes live on your site.

You can configure this setting in the Affiliate Center on the Manage > Media page. If auto-approvals are not enabled for the audio sharing application, each new audio track will immediately be placed in your site’s Pending Queue, where it must be manually approved by a site administrator. Click here for more information on managing your site’s members in the Affiliate Center (Note: you can designate specific members of your site as “trusted contributors,” which means that even if you have auto-approvals turned off, any audio tracks added or edited by these members will be automatically approved.)

Regardless of which auto-approval setting you choose, a “flag as inappropriate” option appears on every audio play page, which allows site visitors to notify administrators if they see an audio track that should be reviewed or removed from the site. When this link is clicked, a window appears where you can enter details about why you think the audio track is inappropriate. When this form is submitted, the site Webmaster receives an email notification containing a link to the audio track in question and the explanation from the person who flagged it. By setting your site’s “flag threshold,” you can automatically pull an audio track down off the site (and into your site’s Pending Queue) after it has been flagged a certain number of times.

When the audio sharing application is enabled, you can specify a default icon to represent audio tracks throughout your site (on search results pages, for instance). This icon is used when the contributor does not provide a custom thumbnail during the upload process. You set the default icon for audio tracks in the Affiliate Center on the Configure > Settings > Default Icons page.

On the Configure > Settings > Site Settings page in the Affiliate Center can configure your site to allow your members to submit “private media” to your site.

When this option is selected the audio track upload page is modified to include an option for the contributor to specify that “only their friends” can hear the audio track. If this option is selected during the upload process (see below), a link to the “private” audio track will only be visible on the contributor’s profile page, and only their friends inside your site will be able to see it. (Note: Private audio tracks do not show up in your site’s search results or RSS feeds – they are essentially “invisible” to everyone in the world except the contributor, the contributor’s friends and the site administrators. If an unauthorized user tries to listen to a private audio track they will see a message indicating that the audio track is only visible to friends of the contributor.) The accessibility of an audio track can easily be toggled from public to private at any time, as described below in the “Editing Audio Tracks” section of this document.

As the site administrator, you can choose to include a few other optional meta data fields on your audio track upload page. These include geo-location fields (country, city, state, zip) and an “email your friends” field. You can enable these fields individually in the Affiliate Center on the Configure > Settings > Site Settings page.

The Audio Sharing application has a few default text strings that you can modify in the Affiliate Center in the Configure > Language section. The “Language Editor” allows you to not only localize the audio sharing application to another language (Italian, French, Spanish, etc.), but it also allows you to re-position the audio sharing application as any type of user submitted text application. Click on the edit button after you activate your particular language to access the individual labels associated with the Audio Sharing application.

Adding Audio Tracks

You and your site’s members can add audio tracks by clicking the “Add an Audio Track” links which appear in a few places on your site, including the “Get Active” section of each member’s myHome page, the sub-nav section of the main Audio page and in the “interaction module” beneath each audio track on your site. Clicking any of these links will bring the user to the audio track upload page.

Up to five audio tracks can be uploaded at once by clicking the “Add multiple audio tracks” link on the upload page. Uploaded audio tracks must be in MP3 format, with a max file size of 100 MB.

Optionally, members can fill out the title, description, tags and audio thumbnail fields on the audio upload page in order to make the audio tracks more easily findable on your site. (Note: if the “title” field is left blank, it will automatically be populated with the filename of the original audio track that was uploaded.)

If you chose to include additional meta data fields on the upload page for the Audio Sharing application (see, “Configuring the Audio Sharing Application,” above), those optional fields also appear in this section of the upload page.

If you have the “media privacy” feature enabled for your site, the audio upload page contains an option for the contributor to specify that “only their friends” can view the audio track once it’s live on your site.

If the KIT Cloud Social Sets application is enabled for your site, the audio upload page also contains a few additional optional fields where the contributor can add the audio track(s) to sets they have already created, or they can create a new set. If the new audio track is being added to an existing set, the audio track will be the last item in the set. If the new audio track is being added to a new set, the audio track will be the first item in the new set. Click here for more information on the Sets application

If the KIT Cloud Social Groups application is enabled for your site, members will see a list of groups that they belong to on the audio upload page (if they belong to any). The audio track that gets uploaded will be added to all of the groups that the member checks (if any). Click here for more information on the Groups application

Editing Audio Tracks

Audio Tracks can be edited by the site administrators, as well as the member who added the audio track. If you are the member who posted the audio track, clicking the “Edit Audio Track” link in the area beneath the audio track will take you to the “Edit Audio Track” page where the title, description and other meta data associated with the audio track can be modified. If you are a site administrator, clicking the “Edit Audio Track” link will take you to the Affiliate Center, where all of the audio track’s meta data can be edited, or the audio track can be deleted or rejected (which puts the audio track into your site’s “Pending Queue.”

Finding Audio Tracks

Each audio track that gets added to your site is immediately indexed by your site-wide search engine and is made available on the site within a few minutes after it is created. When you enable the audio sharing application for your KIT Cloud Social-powered site, a “Audio” tab is added to your site’s global navigation strip. Clicking the “Audio” tab will display the most recent audio tracks that have been added to your site, with options to sort the list by most views, most comments, most favorites, etc. In addition to the “Audio” tab in your site’s global navigation strip, an “Audio” checkbox is added to the Advanced Search form on your site, so that users can perform keyword searches against only your site’s audio tracks. Click here for more information on the Search application

Viewing and Interacting Audio Tracks

Each audio track in your site has a dedicated page at a URL that is automatically created by the KIT Cloud Social system, based on the title of the audio track. The page that hosts each audio track contains the title of the audio, the body of the audio, as well as information about who added it, and when it was added. Beneath the body of the audio is an interaction module where other members can rate the audio, leave comments, add it to their favorites, add it to a set, share it with friends, tag it, etc. To the right of the body of the audio, beneath the information about the member who added it is a list of related audio tracks. This list is comprised of other recent audio tracks that have similar tags, titles and authors.

In addition to viewing and interacting with your site’s audio tracks while on your site’s “play pages,” viewers can “snag” your audio players and embed them on Facebook, MySpace or any blog or website that accepts embed code. This is a great way of spreading your message through the social web and driving traffic back to your site.

The KIT Cloud Social Sets application allows your site’s members to create “sets” or collections of related media assets that belong to your site. If you have enabled the Sets application for your site, the audio page might contain a “set navigator” module beneath the audio track, which allows you to quickly see which other items are in the set, and navigate through a set of related items quickly. This module will only be present if the audio track currently being viewed belongs to a set. In addition, below each audio track is a link which allows any member to add the current audio track to any of their sets, provided the audio track contributor selected the option to allow other members to do this. Click here for more information on the Sets application

As mentioned above (see, ‘Configuring the Audio Sharing Application), there is a “flag as inappropriate” option on every audio play page, which allows site visitors to notify administrators if they see an audio track that should be reviewed or removed from the site. When this link is clicked, a window appears where you can enter details about why you think the audio track is inappropriate. When this form is submitted, the site Webmaster receives an email notification containing a link to the audio track in question and the explanation from the person who flagged it.

Managing Audio Tracks as a Site Member

Your site’s members can see all of their audio tracks in one place by clicking the “Audio” tab, and then the “My Audio” tab in your site’s global navigation strip. From this page, members can view, edit or delete any of their previous audio uploads

Managing Audio as the Site Administrator

As a site administrator (Webmaster, Admin or Editor), you can view and manage all of your site’s audio tracks in the Affiliate Center in the Manage > Media section. The advanced search form allows you to look for audio tracks by specific members, within specific categories, posted between specific dates, among other filtering criteria.

Clicking the “details” link next to any audio track will allow you to view and edit the audio track, including the comments, tags, ratings and other meta data fields. Changes that you make here are permanent.

Syndicating Audio

Your site’s audio can be syndicated in the Affiliate Center’s App Studio > Feed Builder section. To create an RSS feed of your site’s audio, click the “create” button on the Feed Builder main page, then select “audio” as your “Media Type.” From there you can sort and filter the results using the standard sorting and filtering options available in the Feed Builder tool, to produce a feed containing just the items matching your criteria. (For instance, you could create a feed of audio tracks submitted by a certain member, or group of members, sorted by most recent, or most viewed, or most comments, etc). Note: you don’t have to use the Feed Builder tool to create RSS feeds containing your site's audio tracks. Advanced users can also manually construct an RSS feed URL containing the “mediaType=audio” parameter in our RSS Feed API. Click here for more information on the RSS Feed API

In addition to syndicating all of your site’s audio posts via RSS Feeds, you can also syndicate the audio tracks of any individual member by clicking on the RSS icon located at the bottom right of any audio play page.

Reporting on Audio

Usage of the audio sharing application is tracked along with the rest of your site’s content in the Reporting section of the Affiliate Center. You can see how many audio tracks were added, and how many times your site’s audio tracks were viewed in aggregate for any date range.

Audio on Profile Pages

There is a section on each member’s profile page where hyperlinked titles of their most recent audio tracks are displayed. When members add audio tracks to your site, this section of their profile page is automatically updated with links to the recent audio tracks.

There is also a section on each member’s profile page where links to their favorite audio tracks are listed. When a member of your site adds a particular audio track post to their “Favorites,” this section of their profile page is automatically updated with a link to the audio track. Click here for more information on the KIT Cloud Social Social Networking application

Audio on Your Site’s Homepage

You can configure your site to include a pre-configured “community home page” which contains a bunch of modules that feature the most recent content that members have contributed to your site. When a new audio track is added to your site, the “Most Recent Audio” module is automatically updated with a link to the audio track.

Audio in Your Site’s Activity Feeds

Your KIT Cloud Social-powered site comes with a number of “activity feeds” that are constantly updated as members interact with each other and with the content of your site.

• There is a “community activity feed” on your site’s login page which contains a running feed of all member activity across your site.
• There is a “member activity feed” on the profile page for each of your site’s members which contains a running feed of each particular member’s activities.
• There is a “my friends and my news” feed on your members’ myHome page which contains a feed of their friends’ activities and the also the activities of the people they are following.
• Lastly, there is a “group activity feed” on each group page which contains a feed of activities that have happened inside that particular group.

Each time a new audio track is added, edited or interacted with (rated, commented on, added to someone’s favorites, etc), the appropriate activity feeds are automatically updated with a link to the member who performed the action, as well as a link to the audio track that was acted upon. Click here for more information on the RSS API

Below is an illustration of a member activity feed on someone’s profile page:

Audio and Points

The KIT Cloud Social Points & Levels application allows you to automatically award points to your site’s members when they perform certain activities on your site. If you have enabled the Points & Levels application for your site, you can configure the application to award points when your members add audio track, and when their audio tracks are interacted with. Click here for more information on Points and Levels

Audio and Groups

The KIT Cloud Social Groups application allows you to create “micro-communities” within your site that members can join to share and interact with others in a more granular context than your entire site. If you have enabled the Groups application for your site, each group has a “group page” with a section featuring the most recent audio that have been added to the group. Click here for more information on the Group application

Advertising on Audio

There are a few different types of pages on your site associated with the KIT Cloud Social audio application. Clicking the “Audio” tab in your site’s global navigation strip reveals a “list page” containing your site’s most recent audio tracks. From here, you can click on an individual audio track, which is rendered on a “play page.” If you click to edit or add a new audio track, you are taken to a “profile management” page.

Each of the three types of pages mentioned above have “ad slots” in them that you can populate with whatever content you want. You can configure these ad slots in the Affiliate Center on the Configure > Advertising page.

API Support for the Blogs Application (For Developers)

This document is intended to provide an in-depth look at the Audio Sharing application on the KIT Cloud Social hosted platform, to help you understand how the application can be enabled, configured and managed on a day-to-day basis.

If you prefer to host all of the audio pages on your own web servers, or if you’d just like to use bits and pieces of the audio sharing application, we offer a complete set of REST API calls which allow you to construct whatever kind of user interface you can dream up.

Regardless of which front-end deployment option you choose, the functionality of the audio sharing application (and the content created by it) is managed in the Affiliate Center as described above.

System-Generated Emails

The Audio Sharing application sends email notifications to site administrators and members when certain events occur. The contents of these notifications can be modified by editing your site’s Language settings, as described above (see, “Configuring the Audio Sharing Application”). Below is a list of the email notifications that get sent from the Audio Sharing application, including the “trigger events” which cause the notifications as well as the contents of each notification.

Trigger	Recipient	Notes
Audio Track Approved	Member	N/A
Audio Track Rejected	Member	N/A
Audio Track Tagged	Member	Administrators can optionally send this email from the Affiliate Center
Audio Track Commented On	Member	from an Audio Track play page
Audio Track Flagged	administrator	from an Audio Track play page
Audio Track Auto-unapproved due to Flagging	administrator	from an Audio Track play page
Audio Track Forwarded to Friends	member’s friends	from an Audio Track play page
Tell Friends	member’s friends	from an Audio Track play page

API Support for the Blogs Application (For Developers)

This document is intended to provide an in-depth look at the Audio Sharing application on the KIT Cloud Social hosted platform, to help you understand how the application can be enabled, configured and managed on a day-to-day basis.

If you prefer to host all of the audio pages on your own web servers, or if you’d just like to use bits and pieces of the audio sharing application, we offer a complete set of REST API calls which allow you to construct whatever kind of user interface you can dream up.

Regardless of which front-end deployment option you choose, the functionality of the audio sharing application (and the content created by it) is managed in the Affiliate Center as described above.

Related Tutorials and How-to Articles

• Audio Player
• Audio Visualizer