Yesterday I finally finished setting up a website for The Guild of Commercial Filmmakers, a film production company where I work.
The site is powered by WordPress and makes extensive use of customised templates, css and custom fields. The design is by Nicole Dominic, sliced up and css/xhtml-ised by me.
One of the main functions of the website is to present an easily update-able show-reel of the company’s work (primarily TV ads). Some of the tricks I discovered whilst making the site may be of interest to the videoblogging crew or others wanting to use WordPress as a content management system for video. The next step is going to be working out how to customise the site’s RSS feeds to include this information.
For each of the ads I make a regular post, storing a lot of information in custom fields, such as: the url of a thumbnail image; the url of a poster movie and the url of the movie itself. I store this information here rather than in the actual post text in order to separate content from styling and presentation, allowing me to refer to the same clip in a number of different ways from different areas of the site.
For example, the main index page of the site lists the 8 most recently posts made to the “clips” category as clickable thumbnails which link to individual post pages. Here is the code from the index.php file for the thumbnail section, mouse over the links for a little explanation or click for a lot:
<?php query_posts(’category_name=clips&showposts=8′); ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<div class=”thumbs”>
<a href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>” rel=”bookmark” title=”<?php the_title(); ?> directed by <?php $cat = get_the_category(); $cat = $cat[0]; echo $cat->cat_name; ?>”><img src=”<?php $thumb = get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘thumbnail’, TRUE); {echo $thumb;} ?>” alt=”<?php the_title(); ?>”/></a>
</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</div>
I use similar techniques on each of the ad post pages to generate QuickTime object and embed tags (almost) automagically and to include extra credit information for each spot.
Here’s the QuickTime object/embed code from the single.php file
<div class=”movie”>
<object classid=”clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B” width=”<?php $width = get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘width’, TRUE); {echo $width;} ?>” height=”<?php $height = get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘height’, TRUE) + 16; {echo $height;} ?>” codebase=”http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab”>
<param name=”SRC” value=”<?php $posterurl = get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘posterurl’, TRUE); {echo $posterurl;}?>” />
<param name=”CONTROLLER” value=”FALSE” />
<param name=”BGCOLOR” value=”000000″ />
<param name=”AUTOPLAY” value=”TRUE” />
<param name=”CACHE” value=”FALSE” />
<param name=”HREF” value=”<<?php $movieurl = get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘movieurl’, TRUE); {echo $movieurl;} ?>> E<autoplay=true controller=true>” />
<param name=”TARGET” value=”myself” />
<embed
src=”<?php $posterurl = get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘posterurl’, TRUE); {echo $posterurl;} ?>”
width=”<?php $width = get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘width’, TRUE); {echo $width;} ?>” height=”<?php $height = get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘height’, TRUE) + 16; {echo $height;} ?>”
controller=”FALSE”
bgcolor=”000000″
autoplay=”TRUE”
cache=”FALSE”
href=”<<?php $movieurl = get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘movieurl’, TRUE); {echo $movieurl;} ?>> E<autoplay=true controller=true>”
target=”myself”
type=”video/quicktime”
pluginspage=”http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/”>
</embed>
</object>
</div>
<div class=”postmetadata”>
Click image to play.
</div>
<?php } ?>
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