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WordPress

Shaun Taylor
Shaun Taylor
2,654 Points
Posted by Shaun Taylor
Shaun Taylor
2,654 Points

Interactive Time Line

Hi guys,

I hope someone can help! I have a website to spec up in Wordpress and they require a 'historic timeline' - in fact, similar to this one: http://world.time.com/2013/12/05/nelson-mandelas-extraordinary-life-an-interactive-timeline/

This is just a simple Wordpress plugin, kept unto date with data from a published google spreadsheet.

So far, so easy, however... They would like visitors to the website to be able to add events to the timeline.

They would add their own 'memories' accompanied with a picture, youtube video link or other content of something that happened locally. - Perhaps they need to create a user account and log in first, to stop just anyone posting things but I'm not sure yet...

So, I guess my question is...

What would the best way to approach this be?

I'm not sure If I can build it into the existing timeline plugin, and the thought of creating an interactive timeline from scratch is really daunting as I'm intermediate Wordpress developer, with little knowledge of Javascript and building custom applications.

IS there an existing plugin which would enable users to perhaps log in and add their own data to the timeline?

Thanks a lot for reading! I hope someone can help :)

Shaun.

3 Answers

Andrew Shook
Andrew Shook
31,709 Points
Andrew Shook
Andrew Shook
31,709 Points

Shaun, how does this plugin gather the information to create the timeline? Is there a special tag or post type that the plugin uses?

Shaun Taylor
Shaun Taylor
2,654 Points
Shaun Taylor
Shaun Taylor
2,654 Points

Hi Andrew,

This particular plugin gathers info from a google docs spreadsheet.

The admin creates a new row in the spreadsheet for a new 'event' then publishes it.

When you set it up you enter the URL of the published spreadsheet into a field in the plugin settings.

The plugin is from here: http://timeline.knightlab.com

Andrew Shook
Andrew Shook
31,709 Points
Andrew Shook
Andrew Shook
31,709 Points

So to meet your build requirements with this 3rd party API, you need a way for users to summit info to the site and then a way for that info to be exported into a correctly formatted google docs spreadsheet?

Shaun Taylor
Shaun Taylor
2,654 Points
Shaun Taylor
Shaun Taylor
2,654 Points

Hi Andrew,

Sorry for the late reply. In essence, yes, but export the form data into an existing google spreadsheet, not a new one.

I've just spoken to the client, they would ideally like the posted info to now be sent to them for an approval stage, then they would approve it by hitting an 'approve' button perhaps and it would then be inserted into the existing google spread sheet and therefor be live on the website.