There are dozens of Joomla extensions that play MP3 files but I love Simple MP3 Bar as it is indeed simple and in many cases more than adequate. Of course MP3's are great for music but why not consider adding an audio introduction or audio instructions on your site? Your audience might appreciate hearing you rather than reading a lengthy explanation. The following instructions assume you already have an MP3 file, but if you don't, check out Audacity which is a free audio editor.
2. Install the extension as normal. View Build a Joomla Website tutorial #12 to watch a demonstration of this process.
3. Upload your MP3 file(s) using Media Manager. It makes sense to create a new folder to store MP3 files so you can easily find them later.
4. This extension is a module so you need to choose an appropriate module position in your template. If you want the player to work inside an article, watch my video on how to insert a module into an article. Go to Extensions - Module Manager, find Simple MP3 Bar and click it to enter Edit mode.
5. If necessary, review Build a Joomla Website lesson #9 on modules. The important settings are:
Enabled: Yes
Position: the template position where the MP3 player should be displayed
Menu assignment: if the player is going on every page, leave this set to All. Otherwise change it to Select menu items from the list and choose the appropriate pages.
Most of the settings in the right column can be played with later but one that might throw you is Height. If you intend to play multiple files and display their names in a playlist, the height will be too small so set this to 100 for the moment and when you have it working, come back and experiment with this setting.
Quantity: if you just have one file, leave this as One. For multiple files choose Playlist.
Folder: the location of your audio file(s) e.g. images/stories/audio/
Files: your audio filename(s). In the case of multiple files, separate each one with a comma and space e.g.
file1.mp3, file2.mp3, file3.mp3
Song titles: the name of each file as you want them to appear in the playlist. As above, these need to be separated with a comma and space e.g.
My first audio file, My second audio file, My third audio file
If you run into trouble, visit the developer's site
