This month I was hired by NixonMcInnes in Brighton to revisit a site they launched last year and add some social voting to a custom build of the VideoPress (WordPress) Flash video player.
Virgin Media Pioneers is a beautiful custom video blogging site built by NixonMcInnes based on the WordPress VideoPress system.
I helped NixonMcInnes heavily customise the look & functionality of the built-in Flash video player, who’s source code is released as part of the VideoPress package.
Virgin Media Pioneers - Custom Video Player
This year we have added greater customisation by adding a ‘Like’ button to the video player’s GUI controls.
The ‘Like’ button sends your vote to the Pioneers database, and also integrates with the front end via a JavaScript function, to update the ‘Likes’ shown on the page (see below).
Virgin Media Pioneers - Like Button
Once you have ‘Liked’ a video the player displays the current count in the GUI. If you click this, it then ‘Un-Likes’ your vote.. once again updating the database and front end.
Virgin Media Pioneers - Like Count & Un Like Button
The system, was complicated further, by allowing anonymous voting (i.e. you didn’t need to be logged in), and also the voting had to work from it’s embedded state on other sites or blogs.
So, for the simple brief of adding a ‘Like’ button, lot’s of technologies were implemented by the NixonMcInnes team (@empika & @twelmo) and as always it was a pleasure working with them on the Flash elements.