So I am setting up an internal communication solution in our office. The plan is to use a PC to run XIBO and distribute it to android or miniPCs that will be connected to the displays throughout the office (approx. 5)
After looking into the APIs and other means of pulling external information, I have decided that using a Wordpress CMS that is locally hosted on the same computer as XIBO may be the way to go. The reason being, we require non-tech people to be able to access and update information rather easily. I also have a lot of web experience, which makes the process easier and more manageable on my end.
I plan on creating a website that looks exactly like the desired output result, however splitting that website into 3 regions.
One region will be a Wordpress post, the region on the right would be a sidebar of widgets that would rotate with the help of JavaScript, and the bottom widget would be a scroller that would do the same. The regions will probably stay consistent in XIBO and allow Wordpress to manage the time displayed and post scrolling.
This will allow the non-tech employees to simply fire up Remote Connection, login to the Dashboard, make/change posts easily, and import items such as events and birthdays from a CSV a bit more easily and user-friendly than XIBO.
I have attached an image to give you an idea.
My question is, is there anything about this plan that seems like I may run into issues or is not feasible due to something unforeseen in XIBO (I am not very XIBO savvy at the moment).
I don’t see any issues as long as you properly design each portion of it and properly spec your players for the load you’re trying to do - especially animations are problematic on less powerful players.
However, from your example, a web page is an entirely different medium as broadcasting and whoever designs the screens will have to account for that. Even on a 32" or 44" there is too much text and the font sizes are too small. There is an overwhelming amount of information across 3 sections, this screen simply won’t be read because you can’t just glance and get all the information you need.
We’re happy to take criticism - what do you find about Xibo that is not user-friendly?
Perhaps you can lock your “content creators” to only seeing the “Media Manager” dashboard and perhaps the “DataSet” page (for birthdays) - you’re then talking about text entry, which seems fairly similar between Wordpress and Xibo?
Perhaps this falls on me and my lack of experience with XIBO, but the issue is as follows:
In Wordpress I can set up a dashboard that is limited to Posts and Items. Then, my co-workers that are less tech savvy can simply login, create and/or edit posts and reorder as they see fit. Same for the “Items” which would represent the birthdays and events. By having myself set it up to scroll through the posts on a timer, I eliminate almost any effort beyond typing and publishing for them.
In Xibo: The datasets are fine, that I could easily get setup for them and have working. It is the text regions and the ticker that worries me. If there was an easy way to have it set up WITHOUT the non-tech savvy folks entering the realm of display design, that would be great. Simply enter the post information into an Excel file and click save? Great. That is doable. Anything beyond that simply wouldn’t be feasible for many people whose tech knowledge is limited.