THE IDIOTS GUIDE TO POSTING MUSIC ON THE SPILL!

OK, here’s the beginnings of chapter one. I asked Maki to give me his list of instructions for posting music and then I added my thoughts and re-wrote it all, hopefully in a manner that’s foolproof. I’ve tested this and it worked. If this is acceptable we’ll continue and add instructions for posting titles, artists, pictures, videos, youtubes, text, links etc, plus posting links, pics and music into the comments area. For the benefit of potential new users or current ones who’re not clear about Dropbox I thought it would be helpful to start there.

Before I start to try to do a posting for the Spill I find it useful to place all my MP3 music cuts, JPG pictures and pre-written text into a labeled file on my desktop, it makes it easier later on. There’s another advantage to this, you’ll be copying & pasting http code for each cut into the ‘new post’ page at WordPress, it’s handy to also paste it into this folder for reference in case you need to come back to it, WordPress has been known to cause frustration by occasionally not not playing by the rules and it’s handy to have those html codes handy if you need to start over.

 Begin by registering with Dropbox, [https://www.dropbox.com/home#:::] thereafter you’ll be asked to log in. You can upload music to Dropbox and anything you upload  will be kept in your ‘My Dropbox’ file, next to that you’ll see ‘Public’:  to use music on the Spill you need to have it in the Public folder so transfer it from your dropbox into Public. If you’re considering multiple cuts it’s a good idea to keep them in a labeled folder.
Having got this far, now click on one of your titles in Dropbox and you’ll notice a blue downward arrow off to the right, click on this and you’ll see a dropdown menu that has ‘Copy Public Link’ as one of it’s options, click on this and a window will open that contains a line of http code with an option to ‘copy to clipboard’, do so.
Now open WordPress [you may be required to log in] and on the left you’ll see a column that includes ‘Posts’ and below it ‘Add new’, click on that. A  window will open that contains a rectangle with ‘Visual’ and ‘HTML’  at the top right corner, choose HTML. Now is the time to decide how you want your post to look, ie the placement of text, pictures and music, for now lets say that the music player goes at the bottom and you’re only having one tune. Type

If you now click on ‘Preview’ [top right] you should see a player icon situated at The Spill which if you click it should play your tune!

If you want to add more tracks:

1. Do not close the player – ignore the bit about closing the code with another square bracket.
2. Place a comma and a space after the first code.
3. From the public folder in Dropbox click your second piece of music and repeat the instructions above re. copying and pasting it into WordPress.
4. Paste it immediately after the comma after the first code, add a comma and a space and repeat ad-nausium ’til you have all the music cuts pasted.
5. When you have added the last html code don’t add a comma, just close it with a square bracket.
6. For 5 cuts it should give you a player that looks like this:

All these commas, spaces and square brackets are crucial, miss any one of them and you’re doomed to failure.