futusign

Description

Simply put… WordPress is one of the best content managements systems available today. Digital signage management is a content management problem. As for futusign itself, hearing how others are using it is the best way to understand the possibilities.

The Digital Signage Case Study: Warrington College of Business illustrates a medium-sized futusign deployment at an educational institution.

Installation

Install and activate the futusign plugin via the WordPress Plugins admin screen.

FAQ

How do I use futusign?

Using your favorite presentation tool, e.g., PowerPoint, create a slide show with the same resolution and aspect ratio of the target display screen; for example 1920px by 1080px for an landscape HD screen. Save it as a series of images.

From the WordPress administrative screens.

1. Add a new Image (or multiple) from the admin menu; uploading the image file.
2. Update the Image Duration as desired.
3. While adding the image, also add it to a new Playlist.
4. Add a new Screen from the admin menu.
5. Update the Polling Cycle as desired.
6. While adding the screen, also subscribe it to the created Playlist.
7. View the Screen.

When editing a screen; a list of the currently playing media is provided.

To create a digital sign, connect a television to a computer with Chrome browser and have it load the Screen’s URL. The loaded web application will check every hour (configurable) to automatically apply changes made on the admin screens.

Additional information available at www.futusign.com.

Reviews

excellent tool, ease-or-use, low cost, enterprise features

simonsben August 1, 2017

Having used other solutions for several years, we switched to using futusign for its balance of ease-of-use, enterprise features, and low cost of ownership. Support requests are timely and enterprise feature sets with a subscription are beyond expectations for such a low cost option in the digital signage sphere. Highly recommended.

Best plugin

zsceglow June 5, 2017 1 reply

Best plugin for schools- electronic billboard: for teachers, parents and students… Support image, pdf and video. Thank you:)

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

3.0.5

Remove ApplicationCache functionality as now breaks Chrome

3.0.4

Fix for futusign Monitor disconnection

3.0.3

Fix layer unblocking.

3.0.2

Fixed YouTube player to not show progress bar or info. Allows shortening startup spinner to 1 sec.

3.0.1

Fixed bug with no resetting player on media changes.

3.0.0

Removed deprecated Slide Decks; streamlined player.

2.6.0

Fixed bug with conflict with Yoast SEO and screens edit.
Added filter to hide screens, images, and slide decks in link builder.

2.5.3

Continuing to rework documentation.

2.5.2

Fix word-wrapping in documentation.

2.5.1

Update plugin directory documentation.

2.5.0

Supporting WordPress 4.8

2.4.2

bug fix: Overlay position typo fix.

2.4.1

bug fix: allow null version

2.4.0

feature: Server time.
feature: version and reload
feature: new overlay positions
feature: YouTube player CC

2.3.1

Fixed for ugly URLs.

2.3.0

Fixed and validated against older PHP 5.3

2.2.7

Still tracking down bug with customer site; adding more debugging.

2.2.6

Still tracking down bug with customer site; adding debugging back in.

2.2.5

Fix bug with relative require causing endpoint to fail; thus the screen player to fail.

2.2.4

Added debugging points to find error in endpoint API for a customer.

2.2.3

Bug fix: Hopefully final attempt to fix problem during upgrade; current work-around is to deactivate and activate the plugin.

2.2.2

Bug fix: Try to fix problem during upgrade; current work-around is to deactivate and activate the plugin.

2.2.1

Bug fix: On upgrade to 2.2.0, the plugin needed to be reactivated before screens would play again.

2.2.0

Enhancement: Currently playing / layers summary on screens.

Enhancement: Screen polling cycle choice; default hour.

Enhancement: No longer dependent on ACF to Rest plugin.

Performance fix: Collapsed poll from 10+ polls to a single poll.

2.1.1

Band-aid fix; changed polling from once per minute to once per hour. Eating up too much CPU cyles on WordPress instance. Future will default to an hour but let you change.

2.1.0

Enhancement: Updated to support Media Decks commercial feature; replacement for Slide Decks.

2.0.0

Slide Decks are now deprecated and will be removed in a future version; primarily due to unresolvable issues with the PDF rendering library.

Images are now included in the core futusign plugin; also replaces Slide Decks in offline behavior.

Media play alphabetically by title.

1.5.0

Bug Fix: Reset polling to 1 minute (accidentally set to much longer).

Enhancement: Supporting futusign Override.

1.4.2

Tweak instructions for Screens and Slide Decks.

Bug Fix: With futusign Priority not showing first priority.

Enhancement: Remove spinner on cycling or priority changes.

Bug Fix: Updated limit of items to max; 100.

Enhancement: Update order to use titles instead of post date.

1.4.1

Bug fix; continue showing spinner until next media plays. Manifested itself with futusign Web plugin (in development).

1.4.0

Bug fix; slow memory leak when playing Slide Decks.

Bug fix; with futusign Overlay, not removing widgets when removed overlay from screen or delete overlay entirely.

Refactor player; Replace fade with spinner (when required).

Supporting futusign Priority.

Supporting futusign Web.

1.3.0

Add support for futusign Layer commercial plugin.

1.2.3

Security hardening of the PHP code; tests to ensure run through WordPress.

1.2.2

PDF viewer delay from 1 sec to 2 sec; allow smoother fade in. Fix bug in offline mode where it doubled up on the last slide.

1.2.1

Support WordPress multisite. Purge use of index files.

1.2.0

Add support for futusign Overlay commercial plugin.

1.1.0

Add support for futusign Monitor commercial plugin.

1.0.0

Add support for offline operation; play first Slide Deck in subscribed Playlist.

Add support for automatic updates on plugin update.

0.4.0

Minor bug fix for hiding select with empty playlist.

Cosmetic instructions on screen.

Cosmetic custom post type icons.

Player upgrade to support additional media; image and YouTube video provided by future WordPress plugins.

0.3.5

Minor code cleanup in screen web application.

Add ‘key’ to Advanced Custom Fields registration to address bug introduced in ACF Pro v5.5.8 (fixed in v5.5.9). Future-proofs code.

0.3.4

Fix bug in activation caused by refactor.

0.3.3

Refactor plugin based on WordPress-Plugin-Boilerplate.

Fix bug where screen would fail connect when using “Plain” permalinks.

0.3.2

Broken deployment.

0.3.1

Rolling back to 0.2.2 functionality.

0.3.0

Broken deployment.

0.2.2

Fix JavaScript player to bust API caching; some hosting service not handling caching right.

0.2.1

First public release.

0.2.0

Refactor playlist structure.

0.1.6

Fix bug in player; now reuse PDFWorker.

0.1.5

Changed playlist to hiearchical

0.1.4

Using tabs consistently in plugin file.

0.1.3

Fixed bug with handling alternate plugin folder names.

0.1.2

Fix bug with flushing permalinks.

0.1.1

Fix bug in loading screen.

0.1.0

initial release