Rotate posts on main page (Noticeboard)

  • Hi,
    I would like to make a noticeboard for our school which would display a message for a few seconds then remove that message and display the next message and so on until the end of the messages and then start again.

    I installed WordPressMU v2.6.5, the theme uTheme as a very simple display.
    However I wonder if it is possible to tell WordPress to cycle through the posts added by a user, displaying them one after the other in the main page rather than in a long list?
    Each post would then be displayed via a dumb terminal onto a large screen. These would then be dotted around our campus.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

  • I believe you’ll need some kind of script for this. PHP doesn’t handle animated effects. You can make it put up a random post on each page load, but not loading the page the initial time and have it randomly cycle through without reloading the page.

    You can probably find either a WordPress plugin that does this (look in “Extend” or Google for one) – if not, Google for a “random quote display” as AJAX or jQuery – probably your best bet. (A slideshow might work – you could probably modify that too.) You’ll have to modify it to pull in the dynamic content.

    Alternatively, you might be able to Google for some open-source Flash stuff that can pull in stuff from your database and randomly display it as well. But WordPress alone can’t do it – animated effects are something else as far as I know.

    Might find something with:
    https://www.google.com/search?q=wordpress+plugin+rotate+posts

    You will also want to know about the MU support forums at:
    https://mu.www.ads-software.com/forums/

    Thread Starter in the dark

    (@in-the-dark)

    Hi,
    Many thanks for the replies.

    The person who will be entering the data into the ‘Messaging system’ is not particularly computer literate. WordPress seems like a great way to start them off as it is so easy to use (fantasic large display on the editing side) for the novice.

    The PhP/javascript banner scripts I have seen are not as polished as WordPress and might cause some discomfort for the individual involved, also the messaging system might be expanded upon in the future.
    Found this site using-wordpress-to-make-a-secure-twitter-for-business/which looks really good and a great possibility for us to expand in to.

    Many thanks for the links from where I have found some interesting add ons for WordPress. I have found the ANT widget. This would do the trick but I can not get it to display into the main wordpress window, it’s configured to use the sidebar.

    Also found Featurific plugin which also looks promising if I can configure it!

    Thread Starter in the dark

    (@in-the-dark)

    Further on from my original posts, I have abandoned the ANT widget as I can not get the widget to run in the main blog’s window rather than the sidebar.
    I have tried to contact the widget’s author but no replies.

    I couldn’t get Featurific to do what I wanted again no reply from the author.

    I have found J Post Slider plugin.
    This is a very good plugin that will display excerpts of a post or series of posts over an image.
    I think it might work with what I’m trying to do, and have set-up a test blog to try and experiment further.

    Trouble is I’m no programmer and I have been unable to tell the plugin to use all of a post in the ‘slider’ rather than an excerpt.
    I suspect the code actually only calls a ‘post excerpt’ rather than the whole post and ask if anyone would be able to tell me if this is correct?

    I have contacted the plugin author and I’m still waiting for a reply, but if anyone could help who knows about these things I would be very grateful.

    Hey in the dark, very simple m8!

    Doing similar for my blog https://guvnr.com, if you want another example … give me an hour or so and it should be there.

    Anyhow, in wp-admin …

    plugins > editor > chooser “J Post Slider” …
    … run a search for “the_excerpt()” and replace that with “the_content()”

    That’s it … it should output all your blog post, together with the image.

    Ciao,
    guvnrDOTcom

    Thread Starter in the dark

    (@in-the-dark)

    Hi guvnr,
    Many thanks for the tip.
    I have altered the \wp-content\plugins\JPostSlider\JSlider.php file with “the_content()” instead of “the_excerpt()” and WOW, just want I was after!
    Many, many thanks for this tip, I’m not a programmer and delving into the code is a bit daunting but sometimes worthwhile.

    I’m experimenting with a single column theme which is not fixed but, should, change to fill any screen size.
    I originally used UTheme but now I’m looking at FamousSpeech theme which I’m trying to modify.
    I’m saving large graphics into the media area of WordPressMU and using them as the background. I’ve also altered the slideout box to fill the screen which contains the post.
    Still a long way to go, but https://www.greshams.biz/blog/test/ is a start.
    Cheers

    Thread Starter in the dark

    (@in-the-dark)

    Hi,
    Just for info, I have now created a messaging system which will allow a number of posts to scroll round using the J Post Slider plugin.
    Each post fills the whole screen (1024 x 768).
    IE is set to full screen (F11), the vertical scroll bar removed (CSS overflow:hidden; in the theme css) and the staus bar removed (Tools > Toolbars > Status bar)

    I’m now stuck with telling IE to refresh after a new post has been added, can anyone help with this?

    In response to doodlebee statement “PHP doesn’t handle animated effects”.

    Yes it’s true, but it is possible to have PHP load a different aspect of the same page every time that page is loaded in the browser.

    See an example at https://www.zialingua.com/.

    This widget https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/rotating-posts/ also seems to do the job.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
  • The topic ‘Rotate posts on main page (Noticeboard)’ is closed to new replies.

Tags