I’m writing this post thanks to the contribution in the support forum of a guest, Robone.
It’s something that many people have asked for, and until now I always had to tell them no. The slideshow is a widget, there is no plugin version, so it can’t be used in posts.
But now, thanks to Robone, this is going to change!
The process of using a widget in a post is a bit elaborate, but not complicated. And it really works great.
How does it work?
First, you have to install the widget, create an instance of it in the Widgets admin panel, set it up correctly and get it working.
Then, go to the html code of your website in your browser (right click on the browser window and choose the appropriate voice in the popup menu). Find the slideshow code and copy it. You have to copy everything from <object> to </object>.
Create a new post, write your story, go to the editor’s HTML view, and paste the code in. This is the code from the slideshow on this site.
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" width="279" height="184"> <param name="wmode" value="opaque" /> <param name="movie" value="http://www.creativeclans.nl/wp-content/plugins/creative-clans-slide-show/CCSlideShow.swf" /> <param name="FlashVars" value="config=http://www.creativeclans.nl/wp-content/plugins/creative-clans-slide-show/xmlconfig334758931.xml&slides=http://www.creativeclans.nl/wp-content/plugins/creative-clans-slide-show/xmlslides334758931.xml" /> <embed src="http://www.creativeclans.nl/wp-content/plugins/creative-clans-slide-show/CCSlideShow.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" wmode="opaque" width="279" height="184" FlashVars="config=http://www.creativeclans.nl/wp-content/plugins/creative-clans-slide-show/xmlconfig334758931.xml&slides=http://www.creativeclans.nl/wp-content/plugins/creative-clans-slide-show/xmlslides334758931.xml" /> </object>
And this is the result of pasting it in the post:
Attention: if the slideshow doesn’t appear on the frontpage, but only when you go to the single post page (for example, clicking on the post title, or on ‘Leave a response’), it means that WP strips the object html tags from the excerpts. I resolved this problem installing the advanced excerpt plugin, and activating ‘No Custom Excerpts’ and ‘Don’t remove any markup’ in the plugin’s admin panel.
Once you’ve saved the post and checked if the slideshow shows, you can return to the Widgets admin panel, and move the widget into the ‘inactive widgets’ box. Doing so, it won’t show up in the widgets area of your template anymore, but it will continue to show in the post.
You can still make changes to the settings of the widget, and they will show in the post.
Attention: if you change height/width of the slideshow after you copied the code, you’ll have to adjust those values by hand in the post’s html code.
Good luck with this exiting new possibility. Any questions/problems are to be posted in the support forum. If you’ve got any suggestions or just want to tell me something, leave a reply.
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This sounds great but….. How do you add the photos in??
For each individual post I need to create a different rotating slideshow — How do I do that? I have 9 jpg’s in a NEXTGEN gallery now. I want to have those 9 photos rotate at the top of one single post ………
HELP —– I do not know how to write code but can copy – paste
Thanks
Sheryl
Hi Sheryl, I answered your questions in the support forum.
Keep checking the source code in your browser (right click and select view source in IE or view page source in Mozilla). I’ve had this working beautifully several times; made minor changes (size of image) and had the WordPress editor add forced line breaks. It was less of a problem after I’d installed the advanced excerpt plugin. (I’d already installed advanced tiny MCE trying to fix the problem. – not completely successful.)
It also helped me to move the files with the configuration information (xmlconfigX.xml) and the list of slides (xmlslidesX.xml) to a new folder (from the wp-content/plugins/creative-clans-slide-show/) and
edit the post accordingly before moving the widget to the inactive list.
WordPress seems to clear the list of files from the slides file as soon as I made it inactive. (VERY annoying).
Hi Christine, thanks for these tips. I haven’t had those problems myself, but I’m sure they’ll be very helpful for others.
Hi!
I’ve gotten it to work in the widget sidebar, but so far, no success following these instructions to get it into the main body of the post. Can you help me figure out what I’m doing wrong?
Michael
It looks like you just pasted the code in the post. You have to click on the HTML tab of the post editor, and then paste the code.
I was getting some of the data between to print out and no images. If I pasted into a text editor and made all the indented lines into one long line, and the cut and pasted that into the WordPress editor then everyhing worked fine.