Title: Plugin reports zero-length content
Last modified: May 2, 2018

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# Plugin reports zero-length content

 *  Resolved [WriterDan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/writerdan/)
 * (@writerdan)
 * [8 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-reports-zero-length-content/)
 * We have a custom theme for our site that I’m trying to implement the Amazon Polly
   plugin into. Everything seemed to work fine during the setup. My problem is that
   the plugin doesn’t seem to be finding my content.
 * There are three behaviors that are identifying this fact for me:
 * 1) When I click on the “How Much Will This Cost to Convert?” button (admin page),
   it reports that my content is zero (0) characters long.
 * 2) The audio player that is currently being inserted into the article page (currently
   hidden on the reported “need help with” page by a custom css rule: #amazon-polly-
   audio-table{display:none!important;} I’ve added) doesn’t play anything when I
   click the play button.
 * 3) When I try to download the file (by clicking on the button on the far right
   of the audio player) the browser informs me that there was an error because there
   is no file associated with the action.
 * I’ve configured the plugin to save the files to our local server instead of the
   Amazon CDN servers for now.
 * Also, I’m assuming that the plugin just translates the content that is in the
   main content box (textarea) for the post (visible on the admin page), and that
   is most definitely populated with content for the post of interest.
 * Some help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
 * The page I need help with: _[[log in](https://login.wordpress.org/?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwordpress.org%2Fsupport%2Ftopic%2Fplugin-reports-zero-length-content%2F%3Foutput_format%3Dmd&locale=en_US)
   to see the link]_

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)

 *  Thread Starter [WriterDan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/writerdan/)
 * (@writerdan)
 * [8 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-reports-zero-length-content/#post-10240981)
 * Update: I found the custom field value (amazon_polly_audio_link_location) that
   contains the actual location of the generated audio file. If I put that url directly
   into my browser, the audio file starts playing and it looks like it was converted
   correctly.
 * I’m not sure why the inserted player on the page isn’t using the file for the
   play or download functionality though.
 *  Thread Starter [WriterDan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/writerdan/)
 * (@writerdan)
 * [8 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-reports-zero-length-content/#post-10248058)
 * Okay. I’ve realized that this ticket is kind of a mix of two different issues.
   I’ll try to separate them here.
 * **First:**
    The issue that the “How Much Will This Cost to Convert?” button on
   the admin page is reporting that my content is zero (0) characters long. I’m 
   still not sure what is going on there, or why it’s reporting nothing.
 * **Second:**
    The player/downloader on the front-facing page isn’t working. I 
   figured out what was wrong here.
 * I set up the plugin to keep the audio files on my local server instead of using
   the Amazon CDN. The issue lies in that we’re using a CDN through another plugin
   to serve our media content to viewers of our site, and the plugin responsible
   for that functionality is replacing the url in the player from our site to the
   url of the cdn.
 * The easy answer to this issue is just to use the Amazon CDN.
 * The more complicated, but completely free way of doing it though (as long as 
   our CDN stays free) is to upload the polly-created files to our CDN.
 * I’m guessing that there is something missing in your plugin that is causing this
   action to not take place. I say this for two reasons:
 * 1) The action of uploading a file through other plugins doesn’t seem to have 
   this issue
 * 2) I can’t view the polly-generated files on our web server (despite the fact
   that they’re located within our uploads directory) when searching for them using
   the WordPress Media page.
 * At the very least, the polly-generated files should be showing up in the Media
   search tool. This for basic WordPress functionality. From there, the CDN plugin
   we’re using has inserted an “Update File to CDN” link to all files. This would
   allow us to push the polly-generated files to the CDN manually after they’re 
   created. Not optimal, but it would be a work-around until the automatic CDN-upload
   that is associated with uploading a file through the typical WordPress Media 
   adder, could be figured out and applied to your plugin’s actions.
 * Let me know if I should handle this in a different way (such as closing out this
   ticket and creating two new ones, or whatever), or if you need any more information.
 * Thanks.
 *  Thread Starter [WriterDan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/writerdan/)
 * (@writerdan)
 * [8 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-reports-zero-length-content/#post-10292266)
 * Hi. I really need to have some movement on this issue. I’ve just found out that
   the Amazon CDN option that I currently have to use because of this issue is charging
   me on a **per-page-load** basis for serving these Amazon Polly files instead 
   of on a **per-instance-played** basis. Thus, my costs for hosting the converted
   audio files on the Amazon CDN instead of having them available through the CDN
   that the rest of my site is using, is going to start costing me a bunch.
 * Can you please take a look at this?
 *  Plugin Contributor [tstachlewski](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tstachlewski/)
 * (@tstachlewski)
 * [8 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-reports-zero-length-content/#post-10295107)
 * Hi [@writerdan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/writerdan/),
    Sorry for not
   responding before. We are currently working on some improvement on the plugin
   and trying to arrange some things, also based on your comments (very valuable!
   thx!).
 * Regarding the initial problem which you had – it will be fixed. In short, probably
   if I’m correct, you are getting 0 length if you are are creating post with ‘Text’
   tab enabled instead of ‘Visual’.
 * Regarding the problem with another CDN. I do knot know how does this plugin works,
   and what does it exactly do, so it’s a bit hard for me to comment here. If you–
   or authors of this second plugin, will suggest some changes (I guess they know
   the best), we are happy to look into them.
 * Regarding WordPress Media page – yes, again +1 to you. Currently this is not 
   supported. We had already this comment one time. So we noted it, and if we will
   see that this is important for users, we will modify this.
 * Regarding the last think. Can you elaborate? Or could you drop me email with 
   information about it? stachlew – amazon – com
 * Cheers,
    Tomasz
 *  Thread Starter [WriterDan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/writerdan/)
 * (@writerdan)
 * [8 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-reports-zero-length-content/#post-10295528)
 * Hey Tomasz,
 * Thanks for the quick response.
 * 1) Yes, I use the “Text” tab. The visual tab kills me. I’m a developer though.
   So I like to see the code and have control over everything. 🙂
 * 2) I get the CDN issue. And there are so many CDN plugins out there, there’s 
   no way that you should be responsible for integrating with all possibilities.
   The one easy way that I can see out of this bind (for my particular case) is 
   to add the converted audio files into the WordPress Media Uploader tool. This
   is because my CDN plugin adds in custom functionality to re-up files to our CDN
   that are listed within the Media Uploader tool. They’ve just added a extra link
   to those that show up when you hover over a given item listed in the Uploader
   tool. I’ll contact the developer of the particular plugin we use and see if they’ve
   hooked in their CDN save functionality into some of the core WordPress functionality
   that would make your job in this regard easier. Will let you know what I hear
   from them.
 * 3) My most recent comment deals more with my understanding of the workings of
   the Amazon bucket that gets created as part of the service this plugin provides.
   Right now I’m in the free tier, but I found out recently (by an automated email
   from Amazon) that I won’t be able to stay in the free tier for long if I keep
   pushing these audio converted files to their CDN. This is because the free Amazon
   CDN bucket has a limit on the number of GET requests that are made against the
   files I host there, and a GET request is made every time a page on my site loads
   if I have the Amazon-Polly-rendered player included on it. When I signed up for
   their CDN service, I was under the impression that the GET requests would occur
   when someone listened to the audio. That’s obviously not the case though. Now
   that I’ve thought about how everything seems to work, I get it. I just hadn’t
   thought this all through before. It’s not really something that you can change
   directly; however, fixing the issues that I’m currently having (described here
   and elsewhere) will allow me to move the hosting of converted audio files to 
   our own CDN, and that way I won’t have to deal with the additional cost of the
   Amazon CDN. Does that make sense?
 * You guys have been great about responding to my issues. Thanks for working so
   hard on this. I really appreciate it.
 *  Plugin Contributor [tstachlewski](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tstachlewski/)
 * (@tstachlewski)
 * [8 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-reports-zero-length-content/#post-10323919)
 * Hi [@writerdan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/writerdan/),
    1) It will 
   be fixed on next release. 2) We will review it and how important this is for 
   users. If this will be important, we will try to do something here. (in other
   words, I will try fix it, but I’m not able to provide you timeline for it) 3)
   It’s still a bit unclear for me, why there is GET request every time a page on
   site loads. Audio file is not being download before somebody will press PLAY,
   so perhaps it’s browser behaviour that it do some kind of GET request just to
   get some meta data about audio :/ Hmm… I will try to test it. Definitely strange
   thing!
 * Could you send me a message to my mailbox? (I provided it before).
 * Cheers,
 *  Plugin Contributor [tstachlewski](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tstachlewski/)
 * (@tstachlewski)
 * [8 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-reports-zero-length-content/#post-10324159)
 * [@writerdan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/writerdan/)
    So if audio files
   would appear in Media Library would this solve the problem?
 *  Thread Starter [WriterDan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/writerdan/)
 * (@writerdan)
 * [8 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-reports-zero-length-content/#post-10324167)
 * Hey Tomasz,
 * Sent you a direct email.
 * Thanks.
 *  Thread Starter [WriterDan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/writerdan/)
 * (@writerdan)
 * [8 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-reports-zero-length-content/#post-10324177)
 * Essentially, as a work around, yes. We’d just have to re-up the audio files from
   the WordPress Importer every time we updated the post. Annoying, true, but doable
   until a more direct method of integrating with CDN plugins can be found.
 * Still haven’t heard back from that other plugin developer, by the way. Will ping
   them again.
 *  Plugin Contributor [tstachlewski](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tstachlewski/)
 * (@tstachlewski)
 * [8 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-reports-zero-length-content/#post-10324443)
 * We are working on possibility of adding audio files to Media Library – but at
   least for now, only if they are store on local server (not S3)
 *  Plugin Contributor [tstachlewski](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tstachlewski/)
 * (@tstachlewski)
 * [7 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-reports-zero-length-content/#post-10360999)
 * Hi [@writerdan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/writerdan/),
    In version 
   2.0 we have fixed: – error with calculating post length – possibility of adding
   local audio files to media library
 * Based on this I will close the topic. I know that you have reported a couple 
   of things, if others are still open, I will be grateful for opening new ticket
   for each of them (especially the one regarding CDN if it’s still valid).
 * Cheers,
    Tomasz
 *  Thread Starter [WriterDan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/writerdan/)
 * (@writerdan)
 * [7 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-reports-zero-length-content/#post-10362229)
 * Sounds good, Tomasz. I’ll check this out, and if there’s still something that
   needs to be changed to have this work, I’ll put together a new ticket.
 * Thanks for all of the great updates!

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)

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 * Last activity: [7 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-reports-zero-length-content/#post-10362229)
 * Status: resolved