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Digital Signage Press Review: First Digital Signage WordPress Plugin
Digital Signage Press is the first digital signage WordPress plugin. It was developed using HTML5 and works as a plugin and a theme, essentially allowing you to turn your WordPress site into a hub for your business’ slideshows and digital signs.
Let’s take a moment to go over what digital signage is in case you’re unaware. Digital signage is a digital form of displaying business signs, such as the sale signs in a window of a store or a large menu along the wall of a restaurant.
These signs use digital LCD/LED displays rather than relying on the physical materials and manufacturing process that traditional signs rely on. There are many benefits that come with digital signage, including:
- Not having to wait for new signs to be printed every time you want to promote a new sale or message.
- Use of motion, animation and video makes signs more visually appealing.
- Larger signs are cheaper to display with digital signage rather than having them printed.
- You can change what’s being displayed at any time of day without having to physically change the sign.
Digital signs normally need to be implemented by professionals, but this plugin, which was built by professionals who have experience in the digital signage industry, allows you to create your own digital signs using an easy-to-use software inside of WordPress.
Let’s go through a quick rundown of this plugin’s features before we get into it.
Features
- Powered by WordPress: This is a WordPress plugin and theme, allowing you to create your own digital signs using a platform you already know.
- Drag-and-Drop Formula: This plugin uses a somewhat drag-and-drop user-interface to help you build your own slides and signs with ease.
- 149 Templates: This plugin comes with 149 landscape and portrait templates, saving you the trouble of having to come up with your own.
- Embed Content: You don’t need to rely only on text and images. You can embed YouTube videos, tweets and more.
- Videowall Function: Display videos in large formats using multiple LCD/LED panel displays.
- SMIL Support for Videos: Utilize SVG animations in videos with SMIL support for videos.
- Editable Schedules: Choose what gets displayed when with the plugin’s advanced scheduling feature.
The Editor
Let’s get right into how you’ll actually use this plugin. The editor is where you’ll get your work done. You can find it by clicking the Digital Signage Press selection in the left-hand panel of the WordPress admin. You start off with a few basic steps:
- Name your layout.
- Select a layout.
- Create a new slide.
- Select a template.
Once you have all that set up, you can start adding content. From left to right, here are the buttons you see under the Media heading in the image above:
- Image: Lets you upload or add images from your Media Library.
- Text: Lets you add text. Once you add text, you’ll be able to use the buttons on the right-side of the editor.
- Color: Lets you add a color as a background using a digital color wheel.
- Website: With the Website button you can embed your website into a digital signage page.
- Video: Add a video by entering its URL or by adding it from the WordPress Media Library or from Youtube.
- HTML: Add your own custom HTML code here, or add code from an embedded tweet.
- Menucard: This is a great option for restaurants and shops. This setting places a menu in your playlist:
- Slideshow: Add a slideshow inside of a single slide in your playlist.
Scheduling
This plugin lets you select your own schedule for each individual slide in your playlist. That means you can also select the times and dates each slide displays on.
If you’re creating a playlist for a restaurant, you can choose to display different specials for different days and display them only on the days you offer those specials. You can also click the More Options selection to limit showtime on a specific date or day of the month.
Devices
The Devices is screen is where you can store information about the various devices you or your client will be using to display your playlists. You can name the device, select the individual playlist you’d like to display and give details on where the device is located, such as a particular shop.
This lets you create an organized list of easy-to-manage playlists according to the various devices they’ll be played on.
Videowalls
A videowall is a panel of multiple LCD/LED screens that come together to display a single video in a large format. Each rectangle in the still of the tiger video in the image above represents one screen. The software supports multiple videowall sizes. You can define your own screen size in the plugin by setting the number of columns and rows to represent your setup.
You can choose a resolution for the video and change its settings to indicate where the videowall will be used. These settings are similar to the Devices settings.
Pricing
Prices reflect available prices as of May 2016.
- Live Demo Available: You can request a live demo by contacting the developer directly if you’d like to try before you buy. Click here to do so.
- Price for Base Plugin: €149
- Price for License Renewal Every Year: €49
What’s Included?
- Free updates while your license is valid.
- Free premium support while your license is valid.
- 25 screens.
- Free help with WordPress installations if you’re not an experienced developer.
- All of the features mentioned throughout this post.
Click here for more information on pricing.
Equipment
These are digital signs, so you may need to purchase extra equipment to display them. The developers of this plugin work in cooperation with the electronics brand Philips as they claim their displays have the best support for HTML5 video. Read below to learn more about how Philips displays work in coordination digital signage.
Simple content set up with Philips Professional Display Solutions
Using the SmartBrowser feature from Philips Professional Display Solutions, customers can simply enter a URL from the DigitalSignagePress plugin, and content is perfectly synced. Furthermore, with the SmartCollection feature set, not only is content simple to stream and play, it also allows for complete control over the suite of displays. For instance, the upcoming D-Line features an extra mPCIe slot, allowing for 4G LTE communication, perfect for using the DigitalSignagePress plugin, even if a LAN connection is not available. The D-Line also features automatic screenshots, so that you can be assured that content is always running, and you’ve never got the dreaded blank screen. It’s all designed to make digital signage as simple and intuitive as it should be.
The Developers
This plugin was developed by a three-person team based out of Germany. The team members are Christian Otto, Jens Lodahl and Pammi Mudhar. The team has years upon years of combined experience in the digital signage industry, technology industry and business industry, so you can rest assured with the knowledge that your playlists will meet industry standards.
Christian Otto has worked in the digital signage industry and has a strong commercial background running successful start-ups, being the leader and mentor of energetic teams, and experience in venture capital projects.
Jens Lodahl has experience in the electronics industry, particularly with R&D and combining software and hardware solutions on such platforms as Android, WordPress, Java, IPTV, and SmartTV.
Pammi Mudhar has a lot of experience in business and marketing, especially corporate management, commercial planning, product planning, and sales. Pammi also has experience in electronic R&D.
This team knows what a great electronic and digital product needs, as you can see, but it also knows what your business needs, so there should be no doubt in your mind that this plugin will strengthen your blog’s marketing efforts.
Learn more about the team here.
Final Thoughts
This is definitely a unique plugin, but the developers have done a wonderful job of making a highly technical marketing tactic simple. This plugin can be used by anyone, whether you’re a business owner interested in taking up digital signage themselves or a developer/marketer wanting to incorporate digital signage in their business.