The development of a WordPress digital signage platform at Newcastle University.

1. CampusMessaging
WORDPRESS-POWERED DIGITAL SIGNAGE AT NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY

2. What is digital signage?
Digital signage is a means of displaying content in public areas for
informational or advertising purposes.
Digital screens are usually strategically positioned in areas of high footfall
where they can target specific user groups with relevant and engaging
content.

3. Background …
 Newcastle University first installed 70 digital screens in 2007, powered by
a bespoke PHP CMS.
 Schools and departments were allowed to display up to 50% of their
own content while the rest was provided by central sources.
… all sounds good, so why change it?

4. The problems!
 No ownership of the service - no responsibility taken for the content
 Very few regular content editors
 Outdated, irrelevant content - messages from 2010 still visible in 2014!
 Lack of flexibility – no choice of channels, prioritisation or
customisation of the screens
 Lack of editorial guidelines – no assistance on how to write
messages for digital screens or the type of content to upload

5. Something had to change …
 In 2013 the system was up for review – this meant either replace or
remove
 I was tasked with finding a suitable replacement – either by
procuring a third party system or designing a bespoke application
… the first step was to engage with our users and find out their
expectations of a digital signage platform …

6. Requirements gathering …
 Meetings were held with marketing and communications staff
around the university – this included existing and potential new users
 The discussions revealed the following key requirements:
 Multiple channels of content (using existing feeds where possible)
 Content prioritisation
 Video playback with captioning
 Social media integration
 Multiple external news sources
 Promotional messages
 High-priority messages

7. What are the options?
 OneLAN
 Pros – supports multiple content channels, screen-specific messages, video
and full-screen imagery.
 Cons – expensive bespoke content players, software not web-based
(Windows application)
 SignageLive
 Pros – inexpensive site licencing, multiple content channels, screen-specific
messages, web-based content editing app
 Cons – unintuitive outdated interface, difficult to administer
 WordPress
 Pros – open source, very active developer community, plugins readily
available for most features
 Cons – requires very regular maintenance (due to popularity of platform
security vulnerabilities are discovered more frequently)

8. What did we choose?
 We settled on WordPress, thanks to …
 Readily available plugins for many required features
 Digital signage theme readily available
 Ease of use and familiarity
 Ability to rapidly develop new features

9. Design - the platform
 WordPress with multisite enabled -
 Each site is a ‘digital screen’
 Scalable – any number of screens (sites) and users can be added

10. Design – content provision
 “Shared content” blog created -
 Categories represent channels which can be subscribed to by other screens
 FeedWordPress auto-blogging plugin used to import RSS feeds as posts into
specific categories – this includes internal content and external news feeds
 Using a bespoke plugin, screens can subscribe to any number of channels
and external news sources - an equal amount of content is selected and
displayed from each channel
 Local content can be posted on individual screens (sites)
 Internal units within the university can run their own channels – anyone can
subscribe
 All content in the system is made available as cached RSS and JSON - is
used by other services including our mobile app

11. Design – user management
 User accounts created using Add Multiple Users plugin
 User authentication handled with the Shibboleth SSO plugin

12. Design – the interface
 Interface based on the excellent WordPress Digital Signage theme
by Nate Jones - http://pixelydo.com/work/wordpress-digital-
signage/
 Bespoke plugin allows full
customisation of screens, including –
 Channels
 News ticker
 Social media
 Widgets
 Colour scheme

13. Maintenance …
 Simple for administrators to add new screens by creating a new site –
 URL = PC hostname
 Site title = location of screen
 Post Expirator plugin used to automatically expire and archive content
 FeedWordPress plugin automatically removes posts no longer
appearing on RSS feeds
 OptimizeDB plugin cleans up the shared content blog database
(drafts, deleted items, etc)

14. Live demo time!
Fingers crossed 

15. That’s all, folks!