Descriptive text below each slide

Hi, yes you can add captions using a custom slideshow template. Once it is setup it would be very easy for the end user to manage the captions.

The example shows you how to use the slide title as a caption, this is ideal for a short one sentence caption, if you want a longer caption I’d suggest adding slideshow excerpts.

Thanks Josh,

You advise in the “slideshow excerpts” link to add a line to the theme’s functions.php file in order to pull in metadata from the slide image. However, as I understand it, if I do that it will be overwritten next time the theme is upgraded.

If I am correct is there some way of doing the same thing without creating this problem?

Thanks again.

Josh,

Sorry but I have found another problem. Perhaps I put the meteor-slideshow.php into the wrong place but I don’t think so. I added it to
site-name/themes/weaver-ii. Is that correct?

What happened was that the title of the web page and the sidebar both disappeared. When I removed that file from that directory it returned.

Your help with this and the previous question is much appreciated.

Josh,

Sorry for the confusion. The problem I mentioned in my previous email seems to have been resolved. However it has raised another question in my mind – next time you update the plugin the meteor-slideshow.php file will not be updated and that could, I imagine, cause problems down the track. So is there any other way of inserting more than one line under the image in a slide?

Also I still have the concern about amending my theme’s functions.php file.

Thanks for your help.

The slideshow excerpts won’t pull metadata from the slides images, it adds an excerpt option to the slide posts which you can use to add longer captions. You would add this to your theme’s functions.php file if you are using a custom theme, or a child theme so that the changes aren’t lost.

But in your case, you can use the Meteor Excerpts plugin instead.

You’re correct that when Meteor Slides is updated it will continue to use the slideshow template in your theme that hasn’t been updated. Typically this isn’t much of a problem, the plugin is pretty stable at this point and any changes in the slideshow output would just be bug fixes to improve theme compatibility. Since it’s already compatible with your theme you don’t have to worry about that, but if something does come up you can always update the slideshow template in your theme and re-apply your changes.

Thank you Josh,

Sorry but I have no idea how to use the meteor excerpts plugin you have referred me to. Could you please advise how to install it?

There is a button on there to download the Gist, but it is a .gz file, which might be difficult for you to unpack.

Here’s the raw PHP code: https://gist.github.com/JLeuze/2725756/raw/b41d97583fa8a1bbe68676d801a6a465535434b2/meteor-excerpts.php

Take your favorite text editor and create a new file called meteor-excerpts.php, paste in that raw PHP code, and save it in the plugins directory of your site. You should then be able to activate that like any other plugin.

Thanks Josh,

I have done that – I presume I now have to add some php to the meteor-slideshow.php in order to call something from meteor-excerpts.php ? If so what and where?

Thank you so much for your patience!

Yes, do it just like in the captions example, but instead of the paragraph tags and the title, use this instead:

<?php the_excerpt();?>

That isn’t working for me so I wonder if I am not putting the caption info in the right place?

Is the caption information pulled in from the caption and description in the media attachment for each image?

Thanks

No, this is a new separate piece of content. It adds an except field to the slide posts, you add your caption in there and then it will load in the slides if you have added the excerpt to the template, You’d also need to style it to overlay on top of the slide image.

Here is a link to the page I am trying to put a caption on. https://www.oldmapsandprints.com.au As you can see there is no caption and when I look at the code in firebug I can’t find it there.

Are you able to ascertain whether I have the code correct from this link?

Many thanks once again.

I don’t see the excerpts in there either, if you want to send me a login, I can check out how you have it setup.

Thank you. I looked again and found that <?php the_excerpt();?> had disappeared. I have put it back in and now have an excerpt apprearig (albeit in the wrong place at the moment) but now I have a more-link under the image. Is there anyway of removing that? I noticed you said in response to a similar question from somebody else to look in the functions.php file but I didn’t understand that answer, given that the functions.php file hasn’t been changed.

When I say a more-link what I am referring to is “continue reading”.
Thank you