“Live News” Documentation by “DAEXT” v2.04
“Live News”
Created: 2016/12/13 (ISO 8601)
By: Danilo Andreini
Email: andreini.danilo@gmail.com
Thank you for purchasing my plugin. If
you have any questions that are beyond the scope of this help file,
please feel free to email via my user page contact form here.
Thanks so much!
Table of Contents
- Video Tutorials
- Installation (Single Site)
- Installation (Multisite)
- Create a
news ticker with manually added news
- Create
a news ticker with news from the posts
- Create a
news ticker with news from an RSS feed
- Create a news
ticker with news from Twitter
- Performance
- Credits
- FAQ
A) Video Tutorials
This video series covers the functionalities of the Live News plugin.
Please note that not all the aspects and implications are covered in
this section, it's recommended that you read the entire documentation
(FAQ included) before using this plugin in a production environment or
asking for support to the plugin author.
B) Installation (Single Site)
With this procedure you will be able to install the Live News plugin on
your WordPress website.
- Visit the Plugins -> Add New
menu
- Click on the Upload
Plugin button and select the zip file you just downloaded
- Click on Install Now
- Click on Activate Plugin
C) Installation (Multisite)
This plugin supports both a Network
Activation (the plugin will be activated on all the sites of
your WordPress Network) and a Single
Site Activation in a WordPress
Network environment (your plugin will be activated on a single
site of the network).
With this procedure you will be able to perform a Network
Activation:
- Visit the Plugins -> Add New
menu
- Click on the Upload
Plugin button and select the zip file you just downloaded
- Click on Install Now
- Click on Network Activate
With this procedure you will be able to perform a Single
Site Activation in a WordPress
Network environment:
- Visit the specific site of the WordPress
Network where you want to install the plugin
- Visit the Plugins menu
- Click on the Activate
button (just below the name of the plugin)
D) Create a news
ticker with manually added news
This procedure will guide you on the creation of a news ticker that
make use of your manually added news:
- Visit the Live News -> News
Tickers menu
- Enter the name of the news ticker in the Name
input field
- Select where the news ticker should be applied with the Target
select box
- Enter the URL where the news ticker should be applied with the Target URL input field (this value
will be considered only if URL
is selected in the Target
select box)
- Open the Source section and
select Manually Added in the
Source select box
- Click the Add News Ticker
button to create the news ticker
E) Create a news
ticker with news from the posts
This procedure will guide you on the creation of a news ticker that
make use of the titles, excerpts and permalinks of your posts:
- Visit the Live News -> News
Tickers menu
- Enter the name of the news ticker in the Name
input field
- Select where the news ticker should be applied with the Target
select box
- Enter the URL where the news ticker should be applied with the Target URL input field (this value
will be considered only if URL
is selected in the Target
select box)
- Open the Source section and
select Posts in the Source
select box
- Use the Category select box
to determine if the news should be retrieved from all the posts or
only from the posts of a specific category
- Click the Add News Ticker
button to create the news ticker
Before using an RSS feed please verify (by inspecting the RSS feed source
code) that the following information are available:
- The title tag (used in the
featured news title and in the sliding news)
- The description tag (used
in the featured news excerpt)
- The link tag (used to link
the featured news title and the sliding news if the Enable
Links option is active)
This procedure will guide you on the creation of a news ticker that
make use of the information available in an RSS feed:
- Visit the Live News -> News
Tickers menu
- Enter the name of the news ticker in the Name
input field
- Select where the news ticker should be applied with the Target
select box
- Enter the URL where the news ticker should be applied with the Target URL input field (this value
will be considered only if URL
is selected in the Target
select box)
- Open the Source section and
select RSS in the Source
select box
- Enter the URL of the RSS feed in the Source
RSS input field
- Click the Add News Ticker
button to create the news ticker
If you plan to generate a news ticker based on the information provided
by Twitter it's very important to note what follows:
Use Twitter as a source only with real
web servers
Local development environment (like WAMP, XAMPP, etc.) are usually not
properly configured to retrieve the information from Twitter. For this
reason it's recommended to use Twitter as a source only on real web
servers.
A Twitter App should be created to get
the proper keys
To get the proper keys from Twitter (these keys are used by Twitter to
identify who is sending the requests to their API) you have to follow
this procedure:
- Create a Twitter App from this
page
- In the Permissions tab keep
the Access to Read
Only (this plugin doesn't need to write or delete data)
- Visit the Keys and Access Tokens
tab (you will be using the information available on this page during
the configuration of of the news ticker)
Create the news ticker
- Visit the Live News -> News
Tickers menu
- Enter the name of the news ticker in the Name
input field
- Select where the news ticker should be applied with the Target
select box
- Enter the URL where the news ticker should be applied with the Target URL input field (this value
will be considered only if URL
is selected in the Target
select box)
- Open the Source section and
select Twitter in the Source select box
- Enter the Twitter username for which you want to retrieve the tweets
- Enter the Twitter Oauth Access
Token of your Twitter App
- Enter the Twitter Oauth Access
Token Secret of your Twitter App
- Enter the Twitter Consumer Key
of your Twitter App
- Enter the Twitter Consumer Secret
of your Twitter App
- Click the Add News Ticker
button to create the news ticker
In case you want to remove links from the retrieved tweets use the Twitter Strip Links option, to
remove hashtags use the Twitter Strip
Hashtags option and to remove usernames use the Twitter
Strip Usernames option.
The Performance section
available in the Live News -> News
Tickers menu allows you to avoid common problems associated
with the high number of AJAX requests required to retrieve the news.
Cached Cycles
This value determines the number of cycles performed by the news ticker
without updating the news. If you set 10 then every 10 cycles the news
will be updated with an AJAX request.
If you website is hosted on a shared hosting environment or if you have
an high number of visitors you can reduce the number or requests sent by
the news ticker to your server simply by increasing this value.
You can also decide to update the news at every cycle by setting the
value of this option to 0, but this is not recommended in most cases.
Transient Expiration
With this option you can set the transient expiration in seconds or 0
if you don't want to use a transient for the news ticker.
A transient gives you the following advantages:
- When AJAX requests are sent the news will not be retrieved with a
query on your database, a request to the RSS feed (which may ban the
IP address of the server if too many requests are performed) or a
request to Twitter (which may deny you the access if too many requests
are performed), but directly from the transient.
- The time required to complete the AJAX requests is reduced if the
news are retrieved from a transient.
- When a transient is available for a news ticker no queries or AJAX
requests will be performed when a user visits the page (AJAX requests
will be sent only when the number of cached cycles is reached)
Please note the a transient is created when the news ticker is loaded
for the first time or when the previous transient is expired. The
transient of a news ticker will last for the number of seconds defined
with the Transient Expiration
option.
When a transient is available for a news ticker an icon will appear on
the Live News -> News Tickers
menu:

Click on the icon to delete the transient, this is required if you want
to see the changes applied to a news ticker (that make use of a
transient) actually reflected on the news ticker generated on the
front-end.
I) Credits
This plugin makes use of the following resources:
For each library you can find the actual copy of the license inside the
folder used to store the library files. The license information of the json2xml JavaScript function are
available just above the function code.
J) FAQ
Which versions of PHP are supported?
PHP 5.2.4 and later versions are supported.
Which versions of WordPress are supported?
WordPress 4.0 and later versions are supported.