WP Flash Titles Plugin

Date: 15th February 2008 at 11:53 pm | Filed under: development, flash, plugins, wordpress | Author: Sam Burdge

This Plugin has been updated to version 2.0

This WordPress plugin allows you to display your post titles in any font, colour and size you want using Flash. It will also retain your original html styling of your titles and display that to users who don't have Flash installed. It is fully customisable via the Options tab in wordpress. It is search engine friendly and easy to implement.

Example:

I am happy with my WordPress theme as it is, so I have set up this example page for you to see the Flash Titles in action: {{post id="wp-flash-title-plugin-example-page" text="WP Flash Titles Example Page" target="_self"}}

Installation:

  1. Upload the wp_flash_titles folder to your wp-content/plugins folder.
  2. Activate the plugin from the Plugins page.

Usage:

  1. Go to Options -> WP Flash Titles to choose your font, size and colour scheme for your titles.
  2. You need to modify your template file slightly. First you need to locate the code that relates to the post title. This will typically be something like:
    <h3 class="storytitle" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
    <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark">
    <?php the_title(); ?>
    </a>
    </h3>
  3. You then need to add two lines of code. First paste this line in directly before the page title code:
    <?php if(function_exists('wp_flash_titles')){wp_flash_titles($post->ID,'start')} ?>
  4. Then this line directly after:
    <?php if(function_exists('wp_flash_titles')){wp_flash_titles($post->ID,'end')} ?>
  5. To embed any font you want you must have Flash CS3. Open the source file 'wp_flash_title.fla' which is located in the 'Source' folder of the plugin. In flash simply change the font of the text area to any font you wish. Do a 'Save As' and then publish the swf. Once you have created the swf you must upload it to the folder: wp-content/plugins/wp_flash_titles/flash
    It will now appear in the list of fonts in the Options -> WP Flash Titles page!!

Download Plugin:

Version 1 Beta is no longer available. Please visit the WP Flash Titles 2.0 page to download the new version.

21 Responses to “WP Flash Titles Plugin”

  • Comment by Brewskie
    Date: February 17th, 2008 at 5:48 pm

    I am amazed at how nice this looks on my site!

    http://www.criticalreactor.com

    It looks as though I am using a custom font. But one that everybody can see.

    Thanks for your time you put into this. Good job!

    One small question however. Are there any free apps that can edit .fla files? Flash is pretty expensive :)

    Again..good job on this :)

  • Comment by Brewskie
    Date: February 17th, 2008 at 6:24 pm

    A small wish list:

    Animations.

    Like animate on load, hover , click etc.

    More fonts :)

    An option to have more than one instance. This would allow a cutsom logo/banner or whatever.

    Widgetized.

    This would allow flash anims for the blocks in the sidebars. Either for the title of the block or the whole content of them.

    By using flash for the sidebars there's a lot of cool things you can do. Like tabbed blocks :)

    Thanks again for this :)

  • Comment by Sam Burdge
    Date: February 17th, 2008 at 8:15 pm

    Hi Brewskie
    Thanks for your comments. The Flash Titles really look great on your site! I have plans to add some of the features you mentioned for a future release and also have some more Flash based plugins in the pipeline… As for free apps that can edit fla files, I’m not sure sorry
    Cheers,
    Sam

  • Comment by Erik Tiekstra
    Date: February 21st, 2008 at 4:33 pm

    Hi,I hope to be able to like your plugin, I just can't seem to download it. Also from the Wordpress plugin site the fla is missing..?!Could you help with that?/Erik

  • Comment by Brewskie
    Date: February 24th, 2008 at 3:45 pm

    Something strange happened.

    I went to make a small correction to the dimensions of the flash and when I saved the whole thing went blank. As in nothing was saved and it reverted to empty boxes in the admin.

    I haven't installed any other plugins since this one so I know it couldn't be the problem.

    I've been playing around with it for a while but I really can't figure out what would cause this behavior.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks!

  • Comment by Carnevalle
    Date: February 25th, 2008 at 11:07 am

    I'm having som problems with this plugin. First of, my installation is not in the root-directory, so the document_root path to the flash-directory is not working. But this is an easy fix.

    The bigger issue is, that at first it is working and displaying the flash titles, but if I try to edit the configuration it goes blank and there is no way back. What could the problem be?

  • Comment by kike
    Date: March 1st, 2008 at 5:55 pm

    It would be great to change also the link from the sidebar, I have some errors, the titles dont show and in the admin when I put update does not show anything, I have the latest version of wordpress. Please answer on my mail, thanks enrique from Argentine

  • Comment by Sam Burdge
    Date: March 2nd, 2008 at 4:50 pm

    A note to all users who have had dificulty using the plugin:

    1. Check folder and file permissions - refer to this article WP Digi Clock Plugin - Folder and file permissions - I know this relates to another plugin, but the principles are the same.
    2. If your wordpress is not installed in the root directory you may have problems using the plugin, unfortunately you may have to wait until the next release of the plugin for these issues to be resolved, sorry for the inconvenience.

    I hope this helps some of you.

    Sam

  • Comment by Sam Burdge
    Date: March 2nd, 2008 at 4:51 pm

    Brewskie - try a fresh install of the plugin and see if that resolves the prob?
    Sam

  • Comment by Gilbert Purtee, Jr.
    Date: March 22nd, 2008 at 7:08 pm

    Cant update   goes blank perm set correct cant get it to work

  • Comment by Sam Burdge
    Date: March 23rd, 2008 at 5:33 pm

    Hi Gilbert
    Can you give me some more info please? What platform is your server running?
    Sam

  • Comment by stephen
    Date: April 13th, 2008 at 11:08 pm

    I also get the disappearing prefs I am afraid. It seems to set all values to blank and thus no titles appear on my blog if enabled.

    As for platform info, I am not entirely sure what you mean, but I am running wordpress 2.5 on php 5.2.3, Linux 2.4.3, Apache 2.0.61…if you want the full phpinfo, I can send it to you.

    Thanks!

  • Comment by Johno
    Date: April 16th, 2008 at 8:40 pm

    Not working in IE7, but then I can’t get sIFR to work at all with IE7, Any ideas?

  • Comment by Sam Burdge
    Date: April 17th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

    Hi Johno

    Might seem obvious but, do you have flash installed / Javascript enabled in your browser?

    I’m not that familiar with sIFR, but my plugin works on a similar basis.

    Sam

  • Comment by Sam Burdge
    Date: April 17th, 2008 at 2:28 pm

    Note to all users of this plugin. The new version is coming soon (within the next couple of weeks. There will be new fonts and new options available. The disappearing preferences some users have been experiencing will also become a thing of the past!

    Sam

  • Comment by Sam Burdge
    Date: April 22nd, 2008 at 3:09 pm

    Version 2.0 is here. Hopefully any problems with version 1 have been resolved. Thanks to all commenters for your feedback.
    Sam

  • Comment by Anthony
    Date: May 12th, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    Hi Sam,
    Your plugin works very great !
    But I want to know if there is a solution to have a relative height (for example 100%) for the block, ans not a fixed height. It’s because sometimes my titles are in three lines, ans sometimes in one single, and it display a white space after short titles… I hope you’ll undersand my request !
    Anthony (french blogger)

  • Comment by kit
    Date: August 7th, 2008 at 8:57 pm

    having similar issues with it not showing up in IE7. anyone find a fix yet?

  • Comment by kit
    Date: August 7th, 2008 at 9:27 pm

    ok so i found that if i empty my cache and load a page it works no problem, but as soon as i go to another page it disappears and won’t show up until i empty my cache again. PLEASE helP!

  • Comment by Sean
    Date: May 29th, 2009 at 10:34 pm

    Any new updates on this. I can’t seem to get it working for my site with the new version of wordpress.

  • Comment by Titi
    Date: August 2nd, 2009 at 12:52 pm

    Hi,

    thanks for this great plugin!
    I’ve the same problem what Kit, under internet explorer (work fine under firefox), the titles disapears when i go to another page. Any idea?

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