Media Items

Media items are the core of your LightNet site. Each media item shows up on the search page and has its own details page. Use media items to describe your sermons, music, videos, and other media content. Each file in the src/content/media folder describes one media item. Every media item references at least one content URL, eg. a MP3 file, a YouTube video or a PDF file.

Here is an example of a media item:

{
  "commonId": "sermon-1",
  "title": "The Good Samaritan",
  "description": "A sermon about the Good Samaritan",
  "type": "video",
  "image": "./images/sermon-1-en.jpg",
  "categories": ["sermons"],
  "language": "en",
  "content": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1234"
    }
  ]
}

Reference

A media item is a JSON file describing a media item. We recommend to fill as many properties as possible to provide a good user experience. Here is a description of the available properties.

commonId

type: string
example: "sermon-1"
required: true

The commonId is a unique identifier for a media item. If your media item is available in multiple languages, you should create a media item for each language. In this case use the same commonId for all languages. LightNet uses the commonId to find translations of a media item.

title

type: string
example: "The Good Samaritan"
required: true

The title of the media item. The title should be in the language of the media item.

language

type: string
example: "en"
required: true

The content language of the media item. The language must be a BCP-47 language code like en, de, fr. The language is used to filter media items by language and to display the media item correctly. For every content language you need to provide a language definition in the astro.config.mjs file.

type

type: string
example: "video"
required: true

This property defines the media type of the media item. It references a file inside the src/content/media-types folder. For example if you have a file src/content/media-types/book.json you can set the the type property to book. The media type is used to determine the layout of the media item details page.

image

type: string
example: "./images/sermon-1-en.jpg"
required: true

The path to the image file that should be used as a cover image for the media item. The image should be in the src/content/media/images folder. By convention we name our image files with the following pattern: [commonId]--[language]. If the image contains text, it should be in the language of the media item. Provided image formats include jpg, png, webp. The image is optimized for performance. We recommend to use a image that is at least 1000px wide to ensure that it looks good on all devices.

content

type: { url: string, label?: string }[]
example: [{url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1234"}]
required: true (at least one content object is required)

This references the actual content of the media item. For example this references a video on YouTube or a file served from your server. The content property is an array of objects. The first object in the array is considered to be the primary content of the media item. The primary content is used for example with the embedded video player on the media item details page. All other content objects are considered to be additional content. They are displayed on the content section of the media item details page.

content: url

type: string
example: "/files/sermon-1.mp3"
required: true

Each object has a url property that points to the content. If you want to make a file available for your media item, store it inside the public/files folder and reference it with the url property. For example if you have a pdf file public/files/sermon-1.pdf you can reference it with url: "/files/sermon-1.pdf".

These URL types are supported:

URL type	Example
YouTube video	`"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1234"`
Vimeo video	`"https://vimeo.com/1234"`
Internal file	`"/files/sermon-1.pdf"`
External file	`"https://cdn.example.com/sermon-1.mp3"`
External website	`"https://example.com/sermon-1"`

content: label

type: string
example: "Sermon 1"
required: false

The label property is optional and can be used to give a name to the content. This label is displayed on the content section of the media item details page. If no label property is provided the label is derived from the url property. For example if the url property is "/files/sermon-1.pdf" the label is sermon-1. If it is "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1234" the content label is youtube.com. You can also use a translation key for the label.

dateCreated

type: string
example: "2022-01-01"
required: true

The date when the media item was created in this library. The date should be in the format YYYY-MM-DD. This date is used to sort the media items from newest to oldest.

description

type: string
example: "A sermon about the Good Samaritan"
required: false

A short description of the media item. The description must be in the language of the media item. Use Markdown syntax for formatting the text. The first 350 characters are included on the search page.

authors

type: string[]
example: ["John Doe", "Jane Doe"]
required: false

An array containing the names of the person(s)/organizations(s) that created the media item.

collections

type: { collection: string, index?: number }[]
example: [{collection: "sermon-series", index: 1}]
required: false

An array containing references to collections this media item is contained in. These are the properties of each collection reference object:

collections: collection

type: string
example: "sermon-series"
required: true

Identifier of the collections this media item belongs to. It must match a collection definition inside the src/content/media-collections folder. For example if you have a file src/content/media-collections/sermon-series.json you can set the the collections property to "sermon-series".

collections: index

type: number
example: 1
required: false

The index of the media item in the collection. The index is used to sort the media items in the collection. Entries with a lower index are sorted first. Entries without index are sorted after the entries with an index. Entries with the same index are sorted by their identifier.