Yesterday I announced that I had submitted a breaking news banner plugin to the WordPress Plugin Directory. A few hours after that post went up, I got the news that JM Breaking News had been accepted into the plugin directory.
The plugin uses a custom post type with three custom fields — link, target and time limit — to display a breaking news banner. The user creates a new “breaking news” post with the title being the text that accompanies the banner along with the link if they have one, whether or not the link should open in a new window and how long the banner should display.
The plugin was created primarily for the Giornalismo WordPress theme I’m working on, but it can be used with any theme. The best usage is in the header with a parent div around it.
I’ll probably only make minor changes and fixes to the plugin for the time being, but the plan is to at some point allow the user to pick a post in like a dropdown or something to use as the link for the breaking news if they want. But that’ll probably be a ways off.