D13Slideshow is a simple WordPress plugin that creates animated, JavaScript slideshows with excerpts from selected WordPress posts and pages. By adding a simple tag to your template you can embed interactive adverts for your chosen featured posts and manage all of the settings instantly, using your WordPress admin pages. Unlike other components, d13slideshow uses the prototype and scriptaculous JavaScript libraries which means that if you already use Lightbox 2 then there’s no further downloads added to your page.
You can see d13slideshow in action on the homepage of this site.
Compatability
D13Slideshow is compatible with Wordpress 2.3.x, tested with Wordpress 2.6.2 and is available to download from the WordPress plugin repository.
Download d13slideshow
Installation
- Begin by downloading the plugin file using the link above.
- Extract the files to your local machine.
- Upload the whole d13gallery folder (including the folder itself) to your plugins directory - typically http://www.yourblog.com/wp-content/plugins/
- Activate the plugin using your Wordpress admin pages.
- Familiarise yourself with the documentation under “options > d13galleries”
- Get cracking!
Adding a slideshow
You can add a slideshow directly into your theme files using the following line of PHP code:
<?php d13slideshow(): ?>
You can add this anywhere within your theme but some standard places would include:
- Your homepage (add the code to index.php)
- Your header bar (add the code to header.php)
- Your sidebar (add the code to sidebar.php)
What’s new?
Version 1.0.2 has loads of fixes and updates based on the feedback received from users within the first week:
- I’ve streamlined the database calls on the admin pages - I think people were getting MySQL timeout or connection errors
- HTML is now stripped from post extracts
- All paths have been refined to use “wpurl”
- Options have been added for cycling once, forever or manually
- Options have been added to manually select posts to feature, automatically feature the last 5 posts or automatically feature the last 10 posts
- Slideshow links all use permalinks rather than GUIDs
Changing your settings
The inbuilt option screen lets you customise almost every aspect of your slideshow. Take control of transition length, fade colours, sizes and excerpt length to create a promotional slideshow that works just how you need it to.
The option screen also lets you select up to 10 posts or pages to use as features within your slideshow making updating quick and easy.
Working with custom fields
D13Slideshow images are driven by a custom field attached to each of your featured posts. Just create anew field for each post you want to feature using the key “promoimage” and an absolute URL of the image as the value.
Getting help
The inbuilt options screen features extensive support documentation helping you get the most from the plugin.
Just sign into your WordPress admin pages, click on “settings” and then “d13slideshow”. Scroll to the bottom or click on the “help” link find out more.
Need more support?
If you’ve followed the steps above or read the help documentation and still need assistance then add a comment here and I’ll see what I can do.
Work still to come…
- Investigate how WordPress embeds Script.aculo.us
- Add an option to use custom fields for all slideshow data
- Better “cropping” of extracts
i was able to get it working after enabling that though. Works beautifully!
I’m using WP 2.6.2, php 5
Benc says:
Great plugin !!!