[Update: Version 9 of CoolPlayer is out and you no longer need to use the hack mentioned in this post]

I've been playing with the Cool Player plugin for WordPress since yesterday. The plugin allows you to play multimedia files in your blog. I've only tested the plugin with mp3 and wmv (Windows Media Video) files, but the plugin is suppose to work with all of these types of files:

Google Video, Youtube Video, vSocial Video, ASF, ASX, WM, WMA, WMV, WAX, WVX, OGG, APE, AVI, MID, MIDI, WAV, SWF, SPL, MP3, FLV, RM, RMVB, RA, RV, RAM, SMIL, PDF, FDF, XFDF, XDP, XFD, MOV, QT, MQV, MPEG, MPG, M1S, M1V, M1A, M75, M15, MP2, MPM, MPV, MPA, FLC, FLI, CEL, RTSP, RTS, 3GP, 3GPP, 3G2, 3GP2, SDV, AMC, MP4, SDP, GIF, JPG, BMP, PNG, XPM

The plugin is suppose to work with IE, Firefox, Opera, and other browsers. I can confirm it does work with IE, Firefox, and Opera.

A nice feature about the Cool Player is being able to specify more than one file at a time (see example below). In addition, a user can can enter a media url to play by double clicking the bottom of the player.

Here's an example of the Cool Player plugin configured with two files.

Captain America
Reason for Living

I must warn you that configuring the plugin is not as easy as other plugins. Why you ask? Because the plugin site is in Chinese. Funny in a way. I'm Chinese, but I can't read Chinese. It has been real fun trying to figure out how to use the plugin. Are you ready? OK, let's get started:

1. Download the plugin here (coolplayer.zip)
2. Uncompressed, upload the coolplayer folder to your plugin directory, and activate the plugin
3. Insert the player code into your post by modifying the code below. Feel free to change the width, height, autoplay, and loop. Note: If your file autoplays even when it is set to false, see Lewie Paine's comment below for a fix.

<coolplayer width="320" height="240" autoplay="false" loop="false">
<a href="http://yourdomain.com/yourfolder/blahblah.wmv">Your Video Title</a>
</coolplayer>

The plugin does not like single quotes in the title (ie – You're the Reason I'm Living) so don't use them. If you want to include more than one media file, just add another line between the coolplayer tags:

<coolplayer width="320" height="240" autoplay="false" loop="false">
<a href="http://yourdomain.com/yourfolder/filename.mp3">Your MP3 Title</a>
<a href="http://yourdomain.com/yourfolder/blahblah.wmv">Your Video Title</a>
</coolplayer>

By default, the player points to a RPC server in China. You can improve the performance by downloading the server to your own site:

[Update 2007.02.03: You can set the location of the RPC Server in the admin menu of the new version of CoolPlayer.]

1. Download coolplayer_rpc.zip from the plugin site
2. Uncompressed the files to your coolplayer folder
3. You need to change the location of the RPC server in two files: rpc.php and coolplayer.js

[Update 2006.12.21: The previous instruction was for v8.3. I included v8.5 below.]

Version 8.3
In coolplayer.js, change (around line #17) from:

coolplayer_rpc.use_service('http://coolcode.cn/wp-content/plugins/coolplayer/rpc.php');

To (line wrap not intentional):

coolplayer_rpc.use_service('http://yourdomain.com
/yourplugindirectory/coolplayer/rpc.php');

Version 8.5
In coolplayer.js, change (line #1) from:

coolplayer_plugin_path = "http://www.coolcode.cn/wp-content/plugins/coolplayer/";

To (line wrap not intentional):

coolplayer_plugin_path = "http://yourdomain.com/yourplugindirectory/plugins/coolplayer/";

Version 8.3 and 8.5
In rpc.php, change (around line #11) from:

$coolplayer_rpcpath = "http://www.coolcode.cn/wp-content/plugins/coolplayer/mbstring.php";

To (line wrap not intentional):

$coolplayer_rpcpath = "http://yourdomain.com/your-plugin-directory/coolplayer/mbstring.php";

After you have modify the server entries, upload all of the RPC files to your server (you don't need to activate the RPC server). It might be easier to just upload the entire coolplayer again. You are now done configuring the files. Have fun.