Using Frontpage Slideshow on Drupal
Frontpage Slideshow is a picture slideshow add-on that was originally designed for Joomla, however, the company that created it has released a static version that can be used on any website that primarily uses PHP. What does that mean for us? That means it's compatible with Drupal, WordPress, VBulletin, etc. Frontpage Slideshow is a nice, easy way to give your website's look a fresh, dynamic edge. To see a demo of Frontpage Slideshow, check out www.frontpageslideshow.net.
To see a demo of FPSS on a Drupal site, check out www.fatalfitness.com.
It is a commercial add-on, but it runs something around 22 Euros. The current version (v1.7.2) also comes with seven different templates to choose from (you can demo these from the site as well). Because there wasn't a lot of documentation on installing this with Drupal, and I made a lot of mistakes when I added FPSS to my site, I am making this to help others who might be interested in running this product on their site.
First, get FPSS from www.frontpageslideshow.net.
1. Unpack the Static PHP version zip file.
2. Navigate inside the folder "fpss" to "slideshows", copy the folder "demoslideshow" (inside the same directory) and rename the copy to "myslideshow". This will act as the folder of your slideshow. I also advise keeping the demoslideshow as a backup.
3. Important: You need to maintain the structure of the slideshow folders. That means you ALWAYS put your slide images inside the "images" folder. Your slide contents are located inside the data.php file and the configuration options of your slideshow are located in the configuration.php file. The structure of your slideshow folder must always be:
fpss
-----slideshows
-----------yourslideshowfolder
-------------------images
-------------------configuration.php
-------------------data.php
You can obviously change only the "yourslideshowfolder" to whatever you want.
4. Upload (using FTP) the entire "fpss" folder to the root of your site. If your site is www.mysite.com then the folder would be located like so: www.mysite.com/fpss
5. The installation instructions say to add the code below into your theme's page.tpl.php file (anywhere between the html body tags). I opted to use it in a different way. (You can also use the method above to put it just on your front page by adding the code into page-front.tpl.php. If there is not one, just make a copy of page.tpl.php and rename it.)
I chose to instead make a new block that only shows on my front page, and chose to have it located in the content section, with a weight that puts it at the top. (Make a test page first, and have the block only show up on this page.) Use the PHP input format for your block and make sure that line breaks is turned off for the PHP input format (administer -> input formats). The code that you will use to call your slideshow is this:
<?php
// START of "Frontpage Slideshow" settings
$nameOfSlideshowToDisplay = "myslideshow"; // Enter the name of your slideshow. Slideshows are in folders inside /fpss/slideshows/.
$URLofyoursite = "http://www.mysite.com"; // Enter your site's URL.
$AbsoluteServerPathofyoursite = "/home/user/public_html"; // Enter the root path of your site on the server.
// do not edit below this line
include_once($AbsoluteServerPathofyoursite."/fpss/mod_fpslideshow.php");
// END of "Frontpage Slideshow" settings
?>Edit the code block to reflect your site's paths. Don't worry, if you get it wrong, you'll just get an error message.
6. Publish the block onto your test page and take a look. You will see the demo slideshow in place as you haven't yet edited your slideshow. This is what you'll do next.
7. Change the CONFIGURATION options of your slideshow. Locate the configuration.php file inside /fpss/slideshows/myslideshow/ and edit it per your needs. Make sure you read carefully what each option does. You'll have to mess around with the sizes and test them out with different templates to find what works best with your particular site.
8. Add your SLIDES: Edit your slideshow's data.php file (in the same folder) to add/delete slides. Simply copy/paste or delete the data blocks marked with "slide elements" and edit the properties of each block to reflect each slide's contents (slide title, category, tagline, text, image). The demo slideshow has 4 slides in it but you can copy and paste them to add as many as you want.
9. When you're done with editing the contents and configuration options of your slideshow, refresh your test page. Once you have your FPSS the way you want it, publish it from the test page to wherever you want!
