If you’ve been using Digital Signage you probably found it is an effective and engaging way to connect to your audience. But it can also be cumbersome to maintain as it introduces yet another system to manage.

Three cases where Digital Signage is conveniently managed from the trusted WordPress CMS, just like your website. All three cases are using the free and open source Foyer – Digital Signage for WordPress plugin.

1. Install & GO

Rotown is a cozy music venue in the city of Rotterdam, The Netherlands, hosting upcoming national and international talent since 1987.

Typography is an important part of Rotown’s visual style. And because Foyer automatically uses your website’s fonts, Digital Signage for Rotown was just a matter of install & go.

A TV screen was attached near the entrance of the café facing visitors walking in, Foyer was installed from the WordPress > Plugins page and some slides were added, one for each upcoming show.

Rotown went with the default Foyer looks and features, without any customization. Just great looking content.

Ingredients

  • WordPress website.
  • Foyer – Digital Signage for WordPress (free).
  • TV screen with HDMI.
  • Android mini PC with Chrome browser.
  • Creative marketing staff that knows how to sell shows with the right copy.

2. Build your own slides

Clipper Vacations operates the Seattle to Victoria, BC ferry. When looking for a Digital Signage solution for their Seattle terminal and ferry boats they decided to give Foyer a try.

The displays above the check in desks and the café counter use Foyer built-in features like videos and images.

For the displays above the gate and the displays on board however, Tony Johnston, senior developer at Clipper, built his own custom web pages. One containing upcoming departures and weather info and one containing a map with the boat’s current location for the passengers to follow their voyage in real time. The pages were added to Foyer channels using the External web page slide format. This demonstrates the power of Foyer combined with smart in house development!

I love your plugin! Exactly what I’ve always wanted from a digital signage plugin – extreme flexibility without all of the complexity. We use it in our Seattle terminal for informational and advertising displays and I haven’t had to touch it since the initial setup. Thank you!

Tony Johnston
Senior Developer, Clipper Vacations

Ingredients

  • WordPress website.
  • Foyer – Digital Signage for WordPress (free)
  • 20+ TV screens with HDMI
  • 20+ Chromebits (Chrome browser).
  • Clever in-house development of web pages displaying operational data.

3. Custom everything

LantarenVenster is a large art house multiplex and concert venue, offering over 9600 film screenings and 120 concerts every year.

The visual style of LantarenVenster, designed by the acclaimed 75B design studio, is instantly recognizable on city billboards, the venue website and throughout their building.

LantarenVenster wanted the same high level of visual detail for their Digital Signage, so they commissioned their designers and web developer (that’s me by the way!) to design and build Digital Signage slides, using Foyer.

A new slide format was built displaying todays films and concerts in a compact single slide overview. Another new slide format advertises todays concerts, if any, supplemented with live music photography from earlier shows. And the built-in Foyer slide formats were carefully styled to match the overall design.

Because all event details and images are already available within LantarenVenster’s WordPress, featuring the upcoming events on Digital Signage doesn’t require any effort. When marketing staff enters new events to the website, which they do as part of their weekly website workflow, the events are automatically featured on all Digital Signage displays. Done and done!

Ingredients

  • WordPress website.
  • Foyer – Digital Signage for WordPress (free).
  • Theater for WordPress (free).
  • 15 commercial-grade displays.
  • 15 Windows mini PCs with Firefox browser.
  • Marketing professionals, designers and web-developers working together to create the perfect custom solution.

Conclusions

There are many ways to manage your Digital Signage, and using WordPress is just one of them. But if you have a website (you do?) and manage the contents with WordPress, it makes sense to manage your Digital Signage from that same CMS.

In the first place because you know WordPress. You’ve mastered working with WordPress and managing your Digital Signage will be just as easy.

Secondly, most of the content you might like to feature on your displays — like news, events, images, PDFs, videos — is already available within WordPress, just waiting to be selected.

And last but no least, because WordPress uses common web technology, you can work with your web developer to customize the look and feel of your Digital Signage and quickly add custom features. Your slides will automatically look good so you can focus on the content.

Want to give Foyer a try? Install Foyer from your WordPress Plugins page (search for ‘Foyer’), or download Foyer here.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and see what you made with Foyer, so drop me a comment below!

Best,

Menno Luitjes
Developer of Foyer – Digital Signage for WordPress