search

BCcampus / eypd

Early Years Professional Development
https://earlyyearsbc.ca
1 stars 4 forks source link

Install YouTube thumbnail plugin #519

Closed mandily-p closed 6 years ago

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

Description

There is a brain development blog post that has a youtube playlist linked within it. In order to provide the best user experience for our site visitors, I'd like to present the playlist to them on default, instead of requiring them to click the teeny tiny playlist icon in the top left of the player.

I researched some open source and paid options, but found that this paid option meets all of the requirements best. Here's the demo.

screen shot 2018-08-21 at 12 59 54 pm

alex-418 commented 6 years ago

@mandily-p Here's the process we usually go through to evaluate new plugins, it helps reduce risk and technical debt. For example, if there's an update/change to either WP/Youtube API/This plugin and it stops working (inevitable)... we'll be at their mercy to fix it with an update. Otherwise we'd have to reverse engineer it and fix it, but by doing we'd loose ability to update it and have to now support it ourselves. Also important to test for any conflicts with other plugins or JS libraries.

If we've gone through these and @kathreenriel is comfortable with the risks/impact this plugin has, then by all means please proceed to test/install.

plugin-decision

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

@alex-418 With regards to the second decision - Can I do what I need without a plugin? - I suspect you could code this yourself, but I don't have that skill. It's a bit more complicated than just adding everything in once for this blog post. Kathreen has mentioned that it would be nice to have this available for future promotion of Youtube lists as well.

Alex, how would you suggest to proceed from here? Do you want to take a look and see if you want to code something from scratch or should I go ahead with evaluating the competing products?

alex-418 commented 6 years ago

@mandily-p Please go ahead with evaluating, I think I'll be updating that process so it's clearer what we're concerned about from a technical/maintenance perspective, and separate that out from the tasks you guys can do to help expedite this type of decision.

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

I sent an email to the developer to ask about impacts to the site. I wasn't sure how to get answers without going that route.

Here's a copy of the questions in that email:

alex-418 commented 6 years ago

@mandily-p That's great, good idea to verify if we can get a response from the developer incase we ever needed support for this. Usually I could help answer those questions by looking at the source code, but this isn't an open source solution... so that would only possible after you've purchased it.

We could definitely code this functionality ourselves, just depends if it's worth the time based on our priorities. If there's a solution out there that does the job that won't create any technical debt/issues with our site or other plugins, i'm all for it.

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

He was quick to respond!

  1. The plugin uses Vimeo and YouTube API so we don't store or send any information. We are only using Vimeo and YouTube API
  2. Similar performance
  3. Since is a paid plugin, there's o ad on your WP admin. The only ad which might appear when you watch a video is the one added by YouTube, just like when you use an YouTube iframe The ad is not inserted by us but by YouTube and it has no connection with our plugin. It doesn't matter if you use our player or an iframe, the ad will appear if YouTube decided to show it.
kathreenriel commented 6 years ago

@mandily-p That's great! Sounds like this is low risk. @alex-418 any other concerns to address?

alex-418 commented 6 years ago

@kathreenriel would like to ensure it doesn't conflict with any existing functionality or plugins. That would require testing it on cert.

kathreenriel commented 6 years ago

@alex-418 Thanks Alex. @mandily-p please set up the page on cert and test

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

@kathreenriel Will someone be providing thumbnails and descriptions for each of these videos or are we (me?) supposed to be coming up with both?

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

It looks like "responsive" and "mobile-friendly" meant that it works with touchscreens and shrinks down to fit small screens. Not that there's a unique mobile experience that would use the space better. Desktop screen shot 2018-08-27 at 3 59 58 pm

Mobile screen shot 2018-08-27 at 4 04 02 pm screen shot 2018-08-27 at 4 01 44 pm

It does support full screen though, so maybe it's not so bad? @kathreenriel What do you think? img_5888

kathreenriel commented 6 years ago

@mandily-p if they change the thumbnails after the plugin is installed and the post is created will thumbnails on the post automatically change too?

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

My best guess is yes because it's just a link I add into the plugin, so my guess is that it pulls from Youtube every time. It's not hosted on WP anywhere. I'm not sure how to test it to be sure though. @alex-418 Do you have any thoughts on this?

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

@kathreenriel Are you ok with me moving forward and installing this plugin on prod? We don't need to populate it in the post yet, but I'd like to get it installed if you're ok with the mobile look and feel of the plugin.

kathreenriel commented 6 years ago

@mandily-p yes, please proceed with installation of plugin on prod and formatting of this post page.

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

Plugin is installed and configured the same as what I've done on cert. Unfortunately it's not showing up properly in the post though. I've sent an email to the developer with details on what I've tried to debug and asking for assistance in next steps for troubleshooting. He's been fairly responsive in the past so I'm confident he should get back to me soon.

kathreenriel commented 6 years ago

@mandily-p The issue I've had with blog posts in the past is this Images Glitch with Blog Posts #268 But I don't think this is related.

alex-418 commented 6 years ago

@kathreenriel I can confirm these would not be related.

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

I did a little more debugging this morning and realized that it works with 3 items, but as soon as a scroll bar would appear with the fourth - it no longer works. I've emailed the dev with a screenshot of the log errors to see if he can help.

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

The dev responded:

This file is modified or corrupt in a way: https://earlyyearsbc.ca/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/mouse.min.js If you use this one http://two.lambertgroup.ro/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/mouse.min.js it will not throw the error.

@alex-418 The file he’s suggesting we use is minified, so I can’t tell what this is actually running. Should we (you) be trying to figure out why our file is corrupt and fix it, or is it ok to use the one he’s suggesting after testing on cert?

alex-418 commented 6 years ago

@mandily-p That is definitely not the cause of this issue... those two files are actually identical. jQuery is part of WordPress core, and both of those links are to the exact same file. So definitely won't be swapping that out. I also ran them through a diff checker to be sure (even without doing that you can see they are the same version of jQuery).

alex-418 commented 6 years ago

@mandily-p @kathreenriel If the plugin developer is suggesting this plugin isn't compatible with the built in jQuery UI libraries that are part of the WordPress core, then that's a pretty big red flag. Could cause us some problems. (And dare I say, a clue that it's poorly built)

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

I sent another email back to him:

I ran a diff on the two mouse files and they’re the same. I’m on WP 4.9.8. I updated the Youtube ID, but it didn’t seem to make a difference.

This is a tricky one!

I’m assuming the demo isn’t running on WP, but it also only has three videos in it. By any chance do you have a site where this is installed with 4 or more and is working?

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

Another option might be not using a plugin. I accidentally bought/downloaded the jquery version of the plugin. @alex-418 What do you think?

codecanyon-7964882-youtube-and-vimeo-video-player-with-playlist.zip

kathreenriel commented 6 years ago

@mandily-p @alex-418 No please stop further development with this plugin. I think the post/page should be designed manually.

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

By "Manually" so you mean without the use of a script? So just html and css?

kathreenriel commented 6 years ago

@mandily-p yes

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

How about this? Native Youtube player with instructions for accessing the playlist.

screen shot 2018-08-31 at 4 43 21 pm
kathreenriel commented 6 years ago

This would help to clarify the location of the content but I would like to see each video illustrated with a thumbnail and a short description.

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

At the moment, all of the thumbnails look relatively the same - just the same guy with half a blue screen, and the description of each video is exactly the same too.

If we have a list of video thumbs - they'd link to youtube.com, away from the site. It's probably better to keep them on our site, is it not?

I'd suggest using what we've got, knowing the user can click that icon to get the full list - until we are able to get unique descriptions and thumbnails from the group that uploaded these videos.

screen shot 2018-08-31 at 4 57 33 pm
kathreenriel commented 6 years ago

@mandily-p I agree it's optimal to keep them at our site

Here's original request they sent us Actually, the preferred format would be for each of the video segments to be posted separately. That requires going into the playlist and pulling out each link, and posting each one.

I think they want each video to be more prominently illustrated on the page.

kathreenriel commented 6 years ago

In the end this plugin did not work as expected. Blog post was created with all of the videos on one page.

mandily-p commented 6 years ago

The developer emailed back again, adamant that our file was corrupt. He said he swapped out his for ours and it worked fine.

From: kathreenriel notifications@github.com Sent: Wednesday, September 5, 2018 9:49 AM To: BCcampus/eypd Cc: mandily-p; Mention Subject: Re: [BCcampus/eypd] Install YouTube thumbnail plugin (#519)

In the end this plugin did not work at expected. Blog post was created with all of the videos on one page.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/BCcampus/eypd/issues/519#issuecomment-418801413, or mute the threadhttps://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ATesZGmAXl8nBqhLRWsrOeuac7h1OPQNks5uYACmgaJpZM4WGfqX.

bdolor commented 6 years ago

Is there a reason to prefer iframes, over oembed with youtube content?

alex-418 commented 6 years ago

@mandily-p Please see my comment in https://github.com/BCcampus/eypd/issues/519#issuecomment-417766361 That file is part of WordPress core. We never modify WordPress core files.