WordPress Plugin

The Pipe Recorder plugin for WordPress simplifies the integration between the Pipe Platform and your WordPress website. The plugin allows you to easily configure and embed our recording client in your website’s pages or posts, manage recordings made through the plugin’s shortcodes and view or embed recordings created through the plugin’s shortcodes.

Features #

• Create audio, video and screen recordings directly from the WordPress backend
• Capture audio video and screen recordings from your website users and visitors using re-usable short codes for embedding the recording client.
• View and manage recordings made by users or visitors through the plugin’s shortcodes
• Delete recording entries from the local WP database
• Embed recordings for playback in your posts and pages

Installation #

Installing from the local downloaded plugin .zip file #

The plugin can be downloaded directly from our website here.

In order to to install and activate it on your WordPress website, simply navigate to the Plugins page, click on “Add New Plugin”, followed by “Upload Plugin”, select the .zip file with the plugin and click on “Activate Plugin”. By doing so, the plugin will be successfully installed and activated on your WordPress website.

When you activate the plugin, two new tables will be created in your WP database: wp_addpipe_records and wp_addpipe_shortcodes.

Configuration #

To be able to use the plugin, you are required to enter your Pipe Platform Account Hash and a specify a default Environment Code in the plugin’s “Settings” page.

• The Account Hash can be found in your Pipe account by clicking on the top right Account link after signing in
• The Environment Code can be found in your Pipe account’s environments page. Each environment has a unique code

Populating the Plugin’s List of Recordings (Optional) #

This section explains how to set up a webhook to populate the plugin’s list of recordings. It is an extension to the installation process, and it’s necessary if you want the recordings made through the plugin’s shortcodes to show up on your plugin’s Recordings page.

Follow these steps precisely in order to correctly set up the Pipe webhook:

1. Sign into your Pipe account dashboard and switch to the desired environment
2. Navigate to the Webhooks section
3. Click on “Add New Webhook”, you’ll be taken to the add webhook page
4. In the Webhook URL field enter the URL value found in the “Settings” page of the Pipe Recorder plugin for WordPress, under “Webhook”. It will look something like this: https://your-domain.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=addpipeWebhook
5. For Events check video_recorded, video_converted and video_copied_pipe_s3. video_recorded is required and the other two provide additionall data.
6. For Content type, leave the default value: application/json
7. Click on Save webhook

All 3 webhooks events are important. Here’s what information they provide:

• If the video_recorded event is not received, the plugin won’t be notified when a new recording is made. As a result, the recording won’t appear in the plugin’s Recordings page
• If the video_converted event is not received, the plugin won’t be notified when a recording is converted tp MP4. As a result, the recording won’t have a playback or download MP4 option and won’t have length and dimensions displayed
• If the video_copied_pipe_s3 event is not received, the plugin won’t receive a notification when the recording is copied to Pipe’s complimentary storage, the shortcode won’t be generated and you will not be able to preview or download the recording from your WordPress dashboard. If this event is received without the video_converted event, you will still be able to download the raw recording file, but you will not be able to start a playback or embed it into the website

Embed a Recorder #

To embed a new recorder into a page or blog post, you first need to generate a shortcode in the “Embed Recorder” page of the plugin. All generated shortcodes will appear under the “Copy and paste one of these shortcodes” section.

In order to actually display the recorder in a page, use WordPress’s page edit mode. Here’s how:

1. In the editor, insert a “shortcode” block (Gutenberg users) or switch to Text mode (Classic Editor users).
2. Paste in the shortcode: Something like [pipe_recorder 1].
3. Save the page, and you’re done. Your recorder is now live on your site.

Viewing Recordings #

The recordings generated through the Pipe Recorder plugin for WordPress can be viewed in two ways:

Viewing Through the Pipe Account Dashboard (All Recordings) #

You can view all recordings, including those made through recording clients delivered through the plugin’s shortcodes, directly in your Pipe account dashboard.

Viewing Through the Pipe Plugin (Recordings Made via Plugin Shortcodes) #

If you set up the Pipe webhook correctly, recordings made through the plugin’s shortcodes for embedding the recording client, will show up directly in your WordPress admin dashboard, in the plugin’s Recordings section.

If you are using our complimentary storage, the list of recordings will also display snapshots for video recordings and the playback shortcodes.

Uninstalling #

Deactivating de plugin #

When you deactivate the plugin, the “Account Hash” and “Default Environment code” values from the WP wp_options db table are deleted. If you re-activate the plugin you’ll be asked to provide the values again. Other than that, the plugin data (shortcodes from the wp_addpipe_shortcodes table and recording data saved in the wp_addpipe_records table ) is kept. The Pipe recording client and playback shortcodes will stop being parsed and transformed into working video recording clients and HTML video embeds respectively.

Deleting the data and the plugin #

Through the plugin’s Recordings page you can delete entries from the local recordings db (wp_addpipe_records table).

Deleting the plugin deletes the plugin files from the disk but it does not delete the plugin’s two tables from the WP database.