WP Alexa Flash Briefing

Description

Alexa Flash Briefing Plugin for WordPress

This is a WordPress plugin that creates a new post type of “briefing” that lets you create Alexa Flash Briefing compatible posts just like you would anything else in WordPress. It uses these posts to create a feed for Alexa skills through the API.

Create your briefings like regular posts. Here’s how it works to determine a text to speech or audio file:

• If you have ANY links/URLs in the post content, the plugin takes the FIRST link and uses it as the audio stream. It does not validate or catch errors!
• If there’s no link in the post content, it will assume you want text to speech (but this must also be selected on your Amazon dev end too).

It is safest to just put a HTTPS url to your audio file, but you may add other text in the post if you are also sending people to your site to listen. WordPress will oembed the MP3 file you post, so users will be able to listen on the web.

Alexa Usage

Use this URL for your Alexa skill:

https://your-domain.com/wp-json/alexa-fb/v1/briefings/

That will post the latest briefing from all categories (1). To change the limit (be advised Amazon’s limit is 5), use:

/wp-json/alexa-fb/v1/briefings/?limit=5

If you want to create multiple feeds, use categories. Just add the category param to the end point:

/wp-json/alexa-fb/v1/briefings/?category=myflashbriefcat

This lets you use the same install for many feeds!

The feed API will cache in transients the result per category per limit for a default of 1 hour. To change the cache time or turn off caching per feed, use the cache param. 0 turns off caching for that feed, 1 for 1 hour (default), 3 for 3 hours, 0.5 for 30 mins, etc.

Just add the cache param to the end point:

/wp-json/alexa-fb/v1/briefings/?cache=0

All params can be used together.

Notes

• You MUST use a secure domain and secure links to your audio files (https for the audio files and the feed URL).
• Your briefing content shouldn’t contain any HTML tags if you want to use TTS (text to speech).
• You can also draft and schedule briefings like regular posts.
• You can use the excerpt and featured image options if you will be sharing your briefing on social media without interfering with Alexa functionality.

(This plugin is not associated with Amazon in any way.)

Screenshots

Reviews

Exactly what I was looking for

barbarabax July 20, 2019

Just a message for the developer: I’d like to see more documentation. But thanks for this free and very useful plugin!

Works Great!!

comedyplugs March 15, 2019

After a couple of issues that I had using it with multiple Alexa skills, the developer was nice enough to go out of his way to immediately update the plug-in and help with any way he can – he went above and beyond even correcting an issue I had created myself within Wordpress. Nice guy – wonderful plugin! A+++

Saves me hours of work a week

andrewfitz December 3, 2018

I am biased, of course, because I wrote it! But this has saved me hours of work a week with my flash briefings.

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

2018-12-2 – v1.5
-added banners and assets for wp.org

2018-09-21 – v1.4
-changed feed output limit default from 5->1
-added limit API endpoint param to change feed item amount

2018-09-18 – v1.3.3
-added featured image capability
-added excerpt capability
-spelling
-removed custom taxonomy, used standard wordpress categories instead for compatability

2018-09-17 – v1.2
-added transient cache for API feed with category support

2018-09-17 – v1.1
-Initial release