Description
YANewsflash (Yet Another Newsflash) plugin helps you create newsflashes in the easiest way possible! Just enter the text (HTML also allowed), the duration you want it displayed, if you want it to show up on your homepage and how many times a visitor must see it (0 for infinite) and you are set! It will be displayed in a box that you can also style easily through the admin!
Screenshots
This is the first thing you will see in the admin area. Notice the newsflash area red? That’s because it is not activated.
Once you fill it in and hit save, it will turn yellow!
Finally, with the default installation here is what the visitor will see.
Requirements
There is no requirement what so ever. Just have a WordPress installation!
Installation
You need to download the plugin. You can do that either with the plugin manager through your WordPress admin (search for YANewsflash). Alternatively, you can download it from here [download id=”12″]. Once downloaded install like any other plugin. Upload the folder “yanewsflash” in your WordPress plugin directory (most probably wp-content/plugins/) and then activate through the admin. Then visit the admin panel of the plugin under the Settings and you are on your way!
Usage
Once you visit the admin panel under Settings -> YANewsflash things are pretty obvious. The required fields you need to set are the newsflash body (which can contain plain text or HTML elements as well) and the date through which the newsflash will be active. Currently, both these fields are required so if you want an indefinite newsflash item just set a very very distant date (this might change on a future version). You can also choose if you want the item to appear only in your homepage or on all the pages and articles. You can also setup an amount of times you want the visitor to be exposed to this newsflash. For instance, you can set the times to appear to 5 so each visitor will be shown the newsflash for 5 times. Setting it to 0 will actually make it undependable of this.
One more thing you can tweak, if you wish, is the style of the box. If you want to integrate this with your theme in a better way, you can change colors, and just about anything. What you write in that box will be rendered as a CSS style to the div object. Use your imagination.
One little piece of advice. If you intend to not use this for quite some time, i.e. not have any newsflash for a long period of time, i would recommend deactivating the plugin. It’s not heavy but still it’s something.
Also note that this plugin uses the options table provided by WordPress, which means that no extra query is used to render the newsflash since most of that table’s values are preloaded at once, on core loading, including these variables.
Bugs / Suggestions
Please report any problems you may encounter or any suggestions you might have here or mail me using the email at the about me page.