Creating your own Winamp "currently playing" signature

[Bifta]

This requires a hosting account running PHP, e.g. any I-web account and Winamp (of course)

create a directory, e.g. music
chmod directory 777
create an empty text file called song.txt
chmod song.txt 777
upload to the folder you've created
create (and upload into the same folder) a file called update.php with the following content:

<?php
$password = putapasswordhere;
if (!$_GET[passwd]){ print "NO PASSWORD ";}
if (!$_GET[song]){ print "NO SONG ";}
if ($_GET[passwd] == $password) {
 $fp=fopen("song.txt","w");
 $song = stripslashes($_GET[song]);
 fwrite($fp, $song);
 fclose($fp);
 } else {
   print "password error ";
}
?>

change putapasswordhere to a password of your choice

create (and upload again) another php document called img.php with the following content:

<?php
$last_update = date ("U", filemtime('song.txt')); 
if ($last_update < time()-3600) {
$txtsong = "Not Listening Right Now"; }
else {
 $handle = fopen ("song.txt", "r");
 while (!feof ($handle)) {
 $txtsong = fgets($handle, 4096);
}
}
$font   = 2;
$imgw  = ImageFontWidth($font) * strlen($txtsong) + (10* ImageFontWidth($font) +30);
if (strlen($txtsong) > 45) { 
$txtsong = substr($txtsong, 0, 43).".."; 
$imgw  = ImageFontWidth($font) * strlen($txtsong) + (10* ImageFontWidth($font) +30);
}
$imgb = ($imgw -1);
Header("Content-Type: image/png");
$im = ImageCreate($imgw, 15);
$bgc = ImageColorAllocate($im, 255, 255, 255);
$black = ImageColorAllocate($im, 0, 0, 0);
ImageFill($im, 0, 0, $bgc);
ImageString($im, $font, 3, 0, "Listening to : $txtsong", $black);
ImageLine($im, 0, 0, 0, 14, $black);
ImageLine($im, 0, 0, $imgb, 0, $black);
ImageLine($im, $imgb, 0, $imgb, 14, $black);
ImageLine($im, 0, 14, $imgb, 14, $black);
Imagepng($im);
?>

Download the "dosomething" plugin for winamp from:

http://www.oddsock.org/tools/dosomet...thingv2_12.exe

install it, open winamp, go to options/preferences, look under plug-ins/general purpose for DoSomething Plugin, double click it. Where the six check boxes are up the top, uncheck everything apart from "Enable ID3 info gathering", in the "Actions" pulldown menu, select "Submit a URL", in the URL field it brings up enter the following: http://www.yourdomain.com/music/upda...tapasswordhere then click "Add -->" near the bottom right. Close winamp, open it back up.

In your control panel here, go to signature and use some img (with the []'s round them) tags with the url to your img.php file, e.g. http://www.yourdomain.com/music/img.php

And that's it.

[Dave Stones]

wow, it works! nice

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by Dave Stones

wow, it works! nice

More like wow, my instructions made sense!

[Dave Stones]

copy and paste is a remarkable thing

is there a way to change the colour/font at all so they dont all look the same, or is that *too* far-fetched?

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by Dave Stones

copy and paste is a remarkable thing

is there a way to change the colour/font at all so they dont all look the same, or is that *too* far-fetched?

There is, $bgc is the background colour and $black is the font colour, both RGB values seperated by comma's. I'm not sure how to alter the font face, without using truetype somehow and I lost the document I had that incorporated that but you can alter the font size with the $font variable (all of this is in img.php)

[Dave Stones]

nice, it should now hopefully integrate with my website colours

[poolking]

I assume that for those who do not have i-web accounts you would need PHP compiled with GD?

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by poolking

I assume that for those who do not have i-web accounts you would need PHP compiled with GD?

Correct, but I've never had to install GD myself so relied on most commercial web hosts already having it available.

[heyyo]

i heard its a risk installing this and people can hack in to your computer...is this true?

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by heyyo

i heard its a risk installing this and people can hack in to your computer...is this true?

No

[heyyo]

trying it out now, thanks

[iain_herts]

almost

[Rob M]

I think you've got the password wrong mate, might be worth checking it.
__________________

Shut down winamp and then restart, make sure it's not being blocked by your firewall as well

[iain_herts]

tryed that i keep getting

error opening (http://***********.co.uk/music/updat...&passwd=******)
write : error(invalif argument

[Rob M]

Which line does it say the error is on?

When you created the text file how did you do it? When I created mine, even though it said it was creating a text file, it didn't put the .txt extension on it. Might be worth checking that.
__________________

Make sure you've got the permissions on your music directory and song.txt set to 777 as well.

It's no good using the number boxes on the I-web control panel (if that's what you're using) you need to tick all of the check boxes and then hit save.
__________________

Of course, I'm assuming that you're using I-web, you probably aren't.