Wrrds

Overview

This is a web app I put together over a couple of evenings that allows people to add messages to be displayed on a screen, using the Canvas Letters script I created a while ago.

It could be used at events to allow people to add messages via their phones/tablets/laptops, and have them displayed on a large screen, without having to sign up for an account/SMS/tweet/etc.

There are three parts to the app:

The form

This is the basic input form that allows people to add messages

The visualiser

This is the web page to load up on the screen/projector, to display the messages

Admin

An administration area to allow you to manage which messages are shown, and also archive old messages so the system can be re-used at a later date without having to touch the files on the server.

Set up is quick, just add the files to a web server, and edit the config.ini.php and add your MySQL database access details.

There are also a couple of configurable options:

• moderate: Moderate all new messages and only display those that pass (the rest can be toggled via the admin section)
• repeatMessages: If set to true, it will repeat a random old message if no new ones have come in. If set to false it will wait for a new message before updating the display

It is possible to password-protect the admin pages via .htaccess / .htpasswrd - there are sample files in the admin directory

This was just a quick proof-of-concept project, there are a lot of potential updates. It doesn’t use any libraries so it’s fairly lean, but very basic. It should really use websockets instead of polling for content. Etc…