Zernebok Radio/HTML Request Guide

Setting up a HTML + request interface in SAM³ Broadcaster

Well, if you're here, chances are you want to find out how to set up SAM³ Broadcaster (Hereon referred to as SAM) so that listeners to your broadcast can request for songs to be played on air. SAM has the ability to create dynamic HTML pages that automatically update on every song change, and upload them to a remote host via FTP. Here are some of the benifits:

• Listeners can use the website to find out what song is currently playing before they connect
• They can also see the artist of the songs that will play next
• They can browse all the media you have in your library
• There are links to Amazon to buy the music, a button that displays info on the currently playing song and a button to find the information page for that artist
• A Request button gives listeners the ability to select any song in your library

Setting up the HTML

The contents of my SAM3 folder

First things first, you need to upload the files that the website needs, such as images and templates.

Find the SAM folder on your hard disk (On my computer, it's F:\SAM3) and make sure it looks something like the example on the left. Get your FTP client ready, go into the "samHTMweb" folder and upload and files and folders that don't start with a _. The files that start with _s are the files that SAM processes and uploads itself.

When that's done, fire up SAM and go into the Config menu. Find the HTML Output menu and make sure it looks exactly like picture below.

SAM HTML Output

Make sure the "Remote web directory" points to the folder on the remote server that you uploaded the samHTMweb folder to, and make sure that the "Remote picture directory" is the same but with /images/ on the end.

If you put in all the FTP details correctly, SAM should automatically upload the right HTML files when you play a song! To test it, play a song in SAM, and look at Desktop B - FTP Log. If it appears to have worked, point your browser at the address you uploaded the files to, and see if it works! There should be a fairly simple looking page, that you can make look better by editing the _index.html file in the samHTMweb directory.

Well, done, if you've got this far, you've got a working HTML system! Don't breathe easy yet though, this tutorial is for setting up a Request system as well. However, this bit is quite a lot easier.

If you get upload errors in the FTP log, try unblocking port 1221 so it can upload properly. This is the same port as the one used for requests as mentioned in the next tutorial.

The Requests System

Providing you've set up the HTML output properly, there are only two steps to this. If you haven't got the HTML output to work, or you thought you could skip that bit, read up! If you're really having problems, tell orudge or jonty-comp on #tycoon or #z.radio and they should be able to help you out. Anyway, let's do the request system. The problem with this system is that it goes through the site www.audiorealm.com which is notoriously slow and often fails with requests completely, and you must make sure your firewall isn't blocking port 1221, the port SAM uses. You can still have a go at making it work though, and it probably will! The first step is to go into SAM, click Config, go to the "Request Policy" section and make it look just like the picture below.

The SAM Request Policy Configuration

In the box that says "Only allow requests from these IP addresses", type the host that your samHTMweb files are hosted on. Don't include the folder that the files are in, just the host, as SAM uses this to get an IP address.

If you want at this point, you can customize the options to suit yourself, but if you can't get it to work, put it like it is in the picture, see if that works and then work from there. The only other thing to do is to generate a playlist that listeners can view and request songs from, and seeing as you've already set up the HTML interface, this is as simple as clicking the "General" Menu, pointing to "HTML Output" and clicking "Generate Playlist". Give it a minute or so to catalogue everything and upload it to your server, and then go to the radio page and click "Playlist & Requests".

If everything has worked, you should see all the songs in your library! Click the Request button and a popup window should pop up, telling you whether or not the request was sucessful. Depending on what you set in the configuration, the song will go into the playlist as the next item, the last item or sit in the Requests box until you put it in yourself.

Happy DJing! Tutorial by Jonty, images courtesy of SAM Broadcaster. Tips on fixing upload erors added by roboboy.