How to achieve a free digital signage solution with WordPress

I have written before about how WordPress can be used as a digital signage solution but never gone into much detail.  I figured the prompt Charles gave me was enough to get me to publish something more verbose..  So here goes…

1. Create a wordpress blog..  I recommend schools use PrimaryBlogger (I’m massively biased) as it has all the plugins already available..

2. Next, goto plugins and activate Showtime Slideshow.

3. Create a new post, Paste in [showtime] to the body of the post

4. Click add an image, upload some images that you want to be visible on your home page slideshow.  Click save all changes

5. Select a suitable theme, remove any widgets you don’t want..  [See Appearance] — I used “Strange little town” in the example.

6. Is your slideshow too fat/thin?  You can change the settings in Media -> Showtime Slideshow

7. To bring in a sliding animated news feed goto plugins and enable Vertically scroll rss feed

8. Click widgets, drag the scroll rss feed widget over to your sidebar.

9. Enter the RSS feed of your choice..  If you don’t know any then maybe use the RSS feed from your blog or from the CBBC news feed or something..

Alright, that’s it..  Visit your blog, press f11 to go full screen and then go from there..

You will probably want to add more widgets and play around more with the objects available on the screen, you can do this by tinkering and having fun 🙂

Enjoy!