Please help me install this audio player!

Question

Hello anyone reading this,
I am very new to designing a website, and decided to venture out and add some audio to it.  I am a piano instructor and am VERY determined to do this.
I recently purchased some files from this site:
http://www.flashcomponents.net/component/advanced-mp3-player-with-play list-totally-customizable-xml-driven.html
That is the same exact one I purchased.
I recently engaged in a little email session with the author / developer and he was sending me emails that had a lot of technical language of which I couldn't understand.  I needed help, and he didn't seem to pay much attention to my problem, just kept repeating the same thing.
I eventually was able to research his terminology and I finally got around to being able to comprehend his 'steps' listed for me to get this thing up and running.
He basically said everything I needed was in a folder titled 'deploy' ... and that I just copy that folder into my Dreamweaver site project , along with my images, root folder, etc.  Ok, easy enough.  I did that.
His next step was to insert the .swf file into my web page in Dreamweaver.  Ok, easy enough.  Did that.  BUT, there is a problem.  A fairly large grey box shows up with an F inside it.  This is in 'design' view.  In 'Live view', I see nothing at all of the player, just a large grey box with no F inside it.
The peculiar thing is that there are 3 files inside this 'deploy' folder that when I double click them ... a beautiful audio mp3 player pops up and performs perfectly.  It's the real thing.  Just when I insert the .swf file into my site, nothing at all happens.  And this was what the guy told me to do.
Since then he stopped corresponding with me.  Not sure why.  Here are the files I have in 'Deploy'.
playlist.xml
playerstyles.css
playersettings_v4.xml
Mp3player_v4.swf
index.php
index.html
BG.jpg
AC_RunActiveContent.js
The 2 index files open up a perfect audio player as shown on the site.  So does the Mp3player_f4.swf.
I also have a folder called 'scripts' that has 2 scripts listed for the audio player.
swfobject_modified.js
expressInstall.swf
Please oh please, if any of this makes any sense and if what I typed is a symptom of something, please help me.  I am desperate as all the research I've done is getting me nowhere!!!

Answer 1

Your testing confirms my suspicion that it’s a pathing problem
“Then I tested out the index.html and the index.php files that are located in 'deploy'
They didn't work.  no image at all ... nothing. “
That is working correctly. If you path it to work from the Web page, of course it will not work from “index.html” in the deploy folder… it’s not supposed to. It’s supposed to work from the Web page one folder level up. Did you test it from YOUR Web page after changing the paths?
“I noticed that as I said the index.html and the index.php didn't work ... but the mp3player_v4.swf STILL worked perfectly fine.  All 3 of those files are under 'deploy'”
This is also to be expected, because when testing the .swf directly (not on YOUR Web page), the paths in the xml file to the mp3s is correct. But remember, when you place that .swf on YOUR Web page, you are removing the .swf from “deploy” and placing it in the same folder as your Web page….. it’s not in deploy anymore.
“Also, a peculiar thing happened as well as I was playing around with things. “
Well for testing you could take everthing out of “deploy” and move it into the same folder as YOUR Web page and just change the path on your web page to the .swf (delete the “deploy/” part). Now every thing is in the root folder, there is no deploy folder, only a “sound” folder which holds the mp3s and the palyer would work just fine, because RELATIVE to the location of the .swf on the WEB PAGE, all the paths are correct.
But then you don’t really learn how to resolve pathing issues.