Plugin
Genki Announcement
Description
Display an announcement on your blog
Features
- easily switch on and off through Admin Options
- display message without editing theme files (above 1st post or through widget)
- display different message to different roles/users
- timer to switch off announcement (only in WP 2.1)
Review
Genki Announcement does one job and does it well.
Installation is normal and easy. Genki gives you three methods of adding the announcement.
The first is to allow the plugin to add it automatically before the first post. The second method is using the Sidebar widgets if you have the Widget Plugin installed. This will display the announcement in your sidebar. You will need to display it at the very top for your visitors to notice it easily.
The last method is to add the code manually to the template where you want it to be. This is my preferable method, though it involves the editing of the template. I like this because I have complete control of where I want to display the announcement.
The plugin allows you to set a single announcement to be displayed to all users, or you can set individual announcements for different user roles. The ability to customize the announcement from within WP-Admin ensures that you don’t have to keep running to your template file.
The last good feature of the plugin is the ability to auto-expire announcements. It can be used if you are counting down to an event and then then expire once the event time is reached.
One good use of this plugin is to display announcements when you put your blog into maintenance. You may continue wish to display content, but you would like to want visitors and your authors not to post comments or posts.
Are you using Genki Announcement on your blog? What is the reaction of your visitors / authors?
I used this this Saturday itself, when I was going out of station.
The good thing is that it allowed me to use full html.
As far as reaction is concerned, my blog isnt really big enough to get any reaction. I did get a few emails from my readers, but none were related to the plugin.
It is a simple plugin, but quite useful, and extremely easy to modify. I use it to display alerts or notices related to events posted to me site (as in, when a venue changes or there is some other last minute piece of information). It means I can post small time-sensitive information directly to my front page without making an actual entry that goes out on RSS and such, which is just what I wanted.
This is a perfect little plugin – does exactly one thing, and does it well. I’m going to try to make it work with a countdown plugin, so that I can put a banner at the top of my site with a rolling countdown to a certain date.
Thanks alot, I’ve been waiting for something like this without even realizing it. In the past, I was either hard-coding announcements or posting to the blog, neither of which is nearly as good as an announcement plugin. Hope it works in WPMU!
Thanks for the wonderful review and comments 😀