d13design

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.

An example of a d13slideshow in action

Compatability

D13Slideshow is compatible with Wordpress 2.3.x, tested with Wordpress 2.7.1 and is available to download from the WordPress plugin repository. If you’re using a 1.x version of the d13slideshow plugin and need support then click here.

Keep us going

Do you like this plugin? Is it doing what you need it to do? Want to say thanks or even bribe us into adding that much needed feature? Why not donate a few dollars or pounds to buy us a beer or a bacon sandwich and keep us going.

Installation

Installing the D13Slideshow plugin is quick and simple:

1. Begin by downloading the plugin file (ZIP)
2. Extract the files to your local machine
3. Edit lines 15 and 16 of “d13slideshow.php” to determine how posts will be selected*
4. Upload the whole d13slideshow folder (including the folder itself) to your plugins directory - typically http://www.yourblog.com/wp-content/plugins/
5. Activate the plugin using your Wordpress admin pages
6. Familiarise yourself with the documentation under ’settings > d13slideshow’
7. Add the slideshow code to your theme

* Editing this setting is important as some blogs with a large number of posts can crash when editing the slideshow settings. If this happens to you then edit these lines to set $post_input = ‘manual’.

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 2.10 is the latest release of the plugin and includes a whole host of fixes and new features:

• The ability to select posts by text entry or by dropdown
• Improved CSS, HTML and IE support
• HTML valid to XHTML Strict
• Cleaner JavaScript embedding
• Refined admin screens
• Fully re-written help content
• Customisable styles
• Support for using styles within theme stylesheets
• Use of post excerpts, if they exist
• Use of first post images rather than promo images, if required
• Feature posts marked as “sticky”
• Feature posts from a specified category
• Override system settings and specify feature “playlists” when adding your PHP code
• Link features to external sites with the “promourl” custom field
• Clickable promo images
• Extra animation styles
• Automatic inclusion of the prototype and Scriptaculous frameworks in your theme - no more manual theme editing!
• HTML and captions are now stripped from post extracts
• All paths have been refined to use “wpurl”
• Options have been added for cycling once, forever or manually

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.

Manage the settings of your slideshows through the comprehensive admin screen

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, you can even get the plugin to auto-select posts for you based on date, category or stickiness.

Working with custom fields

The d13slideshow plugin gives you a few ways to feature images in your slideshows. The first is to just let the plugin take the first image in your post - this is quick and easy but can lead to image resizing. The second option is to use a custom field to define which image to use.

When you’re editing your post, just add a new custom field called “promoimage” and set its value to the full URL of the image you want to use.

Adding promotional images with custom fields couldn't be easier!

With version 2.1.0 of d13slideshow you can even use a custom field to get your featured slides to link to external websites! Just set an extra custom field called “promourl” with a value of the URL you want to link to.

Creating playlists

If you’d like to bypass the way that the plugin chooses which posts to feature you can do this when you add the PHP code to your theme:

<?php d13slideshow( array(1,5,10,25) ); ?>

Using a statement like this would create a slideshow to feature the posts or pages with the IDs 1, 5, 10 and 25.

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.