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Hello,
As of early last year, I was told that you cannot use flash or animated banners for wordpress.com sites.
I'm just curious is this is still the case, as I'd like to make by blog a bit "sexier" and exciting by installing a rotating flash banner.
Thanks,
Jerry
The blog I need help with is coloradooutdoorsmag.wordpress.com.
Dunno for sure, but I can tell you I block Flash animations and most other things that move on web pages.
Since your site is Private we can't see what theme you're using, but many of the newer themes, have Featured Post Sliders which can do what you want.
See here: http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/features/post-slider/
@Jerry: WP says you cannot, but this was never the case. See these posts of mine:
http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/list-of-posts/4/
@panos (justpi)
MyWordpress.com site is kankakeegazette.com. I have the CSS upgrade.
I spent last weekend reading all your posts about flash and shortcodes. And here you are commenting! I found a professional flash news ticker (no dancing text) but it has XML. Spiralaxis.com Flash News Ticker Component ver. 1.0.0. My converted shortcode is currently in the bottom widget in the secondary sidebar so you can see it.
I don’t know how to put the other three files on my WordPress.com site – maybe not allowed. Is it possible to make this work or do I keep looking? The program itself does work when I open the html file housed in my computer documents.
Thanks for all your tips! Joanie
a) No, you cannot use the other files.
b) The gigya shortcode is just a formula for the WP editor; it translates into an iframe. So when I view the sourcecode of your page I see the iframe, not the shortcode. But from the iframe code I can tell that your shortcode won't work. For one thing, there's no URL for the flash file: the flash file has to be uploaded somewhere.
@Panos (justpi) Thank you! I originally thought that Spiralaxis was going to host. They have no suggestions for where I can upload the file. I've contacted a friend who has a self-hosted website to see if that's a possibility.
Since I received your reply, I've devoted many hours looking for a storage site, like Box.com. Box Content Preview seems to support previewing .swf on an external site as I understand it. But when I posted the shortcode, a message appeared that they are working on it and referred me to view it on Box.com. Most other sites you can upload to say they don't support .swf files or you can only view on their site.
Do you know a storage site that I can upload to and then run the ticker on my blog? At this point I'd pay if I could find some place. Google also has blocked external links from flash files uploaded to their blogs. Security risk and uses lots of bandwidth?
I used the shortcode to run another newspaper's ticker and it works fine. So if I ever find somewhere to upload my .swf file, I'm ready!
Thanks for your help!
Joanie
Most other sites you can upload to say they don't support .swf files or you can only view on their site.
Google also has blocked external links from flash files uploaded to their blogs. Security risk and uses lots of bandwidth?
You should heed their advice.
If you insist on doing things that you have been advised are risky and annoying, pay for a web hosting account and host the files yourself.
@notawoodpecker. I didn't know that flash files are risky for an individual site. I thought the risk was associated with letting a million people upload to your shared-hosting business and using up lots of your bandwidth.
Are they risky to one website linking to another? If that's the case, I wonder why so many large newspapers in the country post their news ticker code so you can link to them from your little website?
Wouldn't they stop if they'd been hacked for years? Who knows, maybe not!
Thank you for mentioning this.
Joanie
They are indeed risky. Major news organizations take stupid risks all the time.
They also pay very high rates for hosting and tech support.
The fact that they are generating the flash means they control the security. When you seek to add code from elsewhere to your blog here, you introduce potential risks to all blogs using the same theme as you.
To set things straight, "risky" means there's a security loophole in flash, and a hacker could take advantage of that loophole to create a malicious flash file. This particular file would be harmful when used. It doesn't mean that all flash files are a threat: the vast majority are innocent little things, and it's extremely unlikely that an app such as the Spiralaxis ticker (designed by an eponymous developer, available in many download sites, already downloaded and used by thousands of users over the past few years) would be malicious or harmful.
Why not just use GIFs anyway?
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kankakeegazette
