Most of our magazine WordPress themes have a news ticker included to display latest headlines in a dynamic way to keep your visitors up to date or just to feature some articles - like announcements. The news ticker comes with a few options located in the Theme Customizer which you may use to your own liking. In case you have any issues related to the news ticker, please see the following overview of solutions to the most common issues that you might have experienced.
- How to enable / disable the news ticker
- How to enable the news ticker on mobile devices
- How to select specific categories for the news ticker
- The news ticker is not moving / not working
- How to increase / decrease speed of news ticker
- Can you display other content than posts in the news ticker?
- How to customize the design of the news ticker
- You have not found a solution to your issue?
How to enable / disable the news ticker #
When you activate your WordPress theme, the news ticker usually is enabled out of the box. If you want to manually enable / disable the news ticker, then you can do this in your WordPress dashboard under Appearance => Customize => Theme Options => Header => News Ticker.
How to enable the news ticker on mobile devices #
For mobile devices, the news ticker is disabled by default because there simply is not enough space available to display the full headline and post meta data in a nice and appealing way. That means in case you have enabled the ticker for your website, on mobile devices the ticker will not be displayed, instead your visitors usually will see a search bar (if enabled) to search through your website.
How to select specific categories for the news ticker #
Out of the box the news ticker will display your latest posts, but you can display posts from certain categories only as well. When you navigate to Appearance => Customize => Theme Options => Header => News Ticker in your WordPress dashbaord, you can enter the preferred category ID's into the custom categories field, each category separated by a comma. In case you don't know how to find the ID for certain categories, please see this tutorial: How to find the WordPress category ID.
The news ticker is not moving / not working #
If your news ticker is not moving or not working as expected, this can have several reasons. Make sure you have enabled the news ticker under Appearance => Customize => Theme Options => Header => News Ticker in your WordPress dashboard. Also make sure that the ticker options are set correctly to display latest or selected article headlines (based on valid category ID's). Another reason for your issue could occur from plugin conflicts. That means if the previous recommendations didn't solve your issue, then please disable all your plugins and clear your browser cache as well.
How to increase / decrease speed of news ticker #
We have set the news ticker speed to a reasonable speed where usually everyone can quickly grasp the latest headlines. However, in case you want to increase or decrease the speed of your news ticker this would require code modifications. If you're familiar with coding, you could have a look at the code for the news ticker which usually is located within the file /js/scripts.js of your theme and you can adjust the speed value (in ms) as you like - default is 4000ms:
setInterval(function(){ tick()}, 4000);
Can you display other content than posts in the news ticker? #
The news ticker is supposed to display the latest headlines of recently published articles to keep your website visitors up to date with just one glance. You can further select to display posts from certain categories or tags in the ticker. Showing other custom content (e.g. pages, custom headlines, etc.) though is not possible out of the box and would require custom development.
How to customize the design of the news ticker #
If you want to customize the design or layout of the ticker beyond what is possible via the given options, this requires CSS customizations. By using a few lines of CSS code you can for example hide the date or category from the post items in the ticker. If you're familiar with CSS, feel free to customize the news ticker as you like. We've collected a few examples of custom CSS code for our popular MH Magazine theme in this support article: Common CSS Customizations for MH Magazine.
You have not found a solution to your issue? #
In case you have not found answers to your questions in this support article, please also take a look at our other support topics, as it is very likely that you will find your answer there. If you have purchased a WordPress theme by MH Themes and have a valid license to gain access to theme updates and support, then you may also send a support request for additional assistance.
