An WordPress Plugin and React software widget.

Gitthub: https://github.com/win2023/TECHEDTV-ticker

Touch-based interaction with the Ticker, to scroll and connectivity with any RSS Feed.

Install TECHEDTV-Ticker from directly by downloading it from here or from WordPress (Current version 1.2.0)

You can configure the Ticker to work with your own RSS Podcast Feed or just any RSS Feed in general, as long as it conforms with RSS Format.

TECHED.TV Ticker

A slim scrolling news ticker for any RSS or Atom feed. Displays the latest items from a feed as a horizontal scrolling strip with thumbnail, title, and date, pausing when hovered or focused. Supports interactive touch, you can scroll left and right with your finger, or mouse to drag the ticker in any direction.

✨ Features

📺 Reads any RSS or Atom feed – podcast, YouTube, Medium, another WordPress site
🔄 Falls back to this site’s own /feed/podcast if no URL is given
🖼️ When the feed is local, thumbnails come from the real featured images
🌐 Otherwise falls back to itunes:image, media:thumbnail or an enclosure image
⚡ Cached in a transient, so the feed is fetched rarely, not per page view
📍 Place it with a shortcode, a widget, a template tag, or automatically
🎯 No jQuery, no build step, no external requests beyond the feed itself
🛠�� Respects prefers-reduced-motion: falls back to a static scrollable strip
🎨 Theme-neutral styling with customizable accent and background colors
📱 Touch-enabled with swipe gestures (swipe left/right to navigate)
⏱️ Auto-resume after 3 seconds of inactivity
⚡ Supports touch for user interaction with the ticker, load your RSS and swipe-right or left and make a choice.

🚀 Usage

Shortcode

Insert the ticker using the shortcode:

[techedtv_ticker]

With custom parameters:

[techedtv_ticker feed="https://medium.com/feed/techedtv" count="8" speed="60" label="From Medium"]

Available shortcode parameters:

feed – RSS/Atom feed URL (defaults to site’s podcast feed)
count – Number of items to show (2-30, default: 10)
speed – Seconds per pass (10-240, default: 45)
label – Custom label text (default: “Latest from TECHED.TV”)

Widget

Add the “TECHED.TV Ticker” widget to your sidebar or widget area through Appearance: Widgets.

Automatic Placement

Configure automatic placement in Settings: TECHED.TV Ticker:

Top of page – Uses wp_body_open hook
Bottom of page – Uses wp_footer hook

⚙️ Settings

Navigate to Settings: TECHED.TV Ticker to configure:

Setting	Description
Enabled	Toggle the ticker on/off
Label	Text shown before the ticker items
Feed URL	RSS/Atom feed URL (leave blank for site’s podcast feed)
Count	Number of items to display (2-30)
Speed	Seconds per full pass (10-240)
Placement	Shortcode, Widget, Top, or Bottom
Front page only	Show only on front page
Cache hours	How long to cache the feed
Accent color	Theme accent color (label, pulsing dot)
Background color	Ticker background color (any hex color, e.g., #000000, #ff0000)
Open in new tab	Open links in new window/tab

🛠️ Technical Details

Feed Processing

Uses WordPress fetch_feed() (SimplePie wrapper)
Falls back to itunes:image, media:thumbnail, or enclosure image for thumbnails
Caches feed data in WordPress transients
Automatically clears cache when settings change

JavaScript Animation

Vanilla JavaScript (no dependencies)
Clones track content to create seamless infinite scroll
Calculates animation duration based on content width
Respects prefers-reduced-motion media query

CSS Architecture

Theme-neutral design (inherits from parent theme)
Custom property --techedtv-accent for color customization
Fixed positioning option for sticky ticker
Responsive layout with proper box-sizing

Frequently Asked Questions

The ticker is empty

Open Settings : TECHED.TV Ticker. The box at the top reports how many items were read from the feed. If it says none, the feed URL is wrong or unreachable from the server. Try the URL in a browser first.

I changed the feed but nothing changed

The feed is cached. Saving the settings page clears the cache automatically; there is also a “Clear cached feed now” button at the bottom of that screen.

It scrolls too fast or too slow

Settings : TECHED.TV Ticker : Seconds per pass. Higher is slower. The plugin scales the duration to the width of the content, so the perceived speed stays constant no matter how many items you load.

Does this work with any WordPress theme?

Yes! The plugin is designed to be theme-neutral and works with any modern WordPress theme.

Can I use this with custom post types?

Yes, as long as your custom post type has an RSS feed, you can use it with the ticker.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

Fork the repository
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
Push to the branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
Open a Pull Request

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

License: Apache-2.0

Author

Dr. Edwin A. Hernandez

Related Projects

TECHED.TV – Official TECHED.TV website
WordPress.org – WordPress Plugin Directory

Acknowledgments

Built with WordPress
Uses SimplePie for feed parsing
Inspired by modern news tickers and podcast distribution

⭐ If you find this plugin useful, please consider giving it a star on GitHub or leaving a review on WordPress.org!

About

This is a news ticker for WordPress that connects to a Podcast RSS feed or ATOM feed.

TECHEDTV TICKER