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Here’s a question:
Why do some websites feel alive while others feel so… dead?
There are a few tricks web designers use to make sites feel more active, and adding a newsticker is one of them.
With current news listed across your site, an animated news ticker can breathe life into your site. It’s small touch but one that can instantly build trust with new visitors.
I know what your next question is…
How can I add a newsticker to my site!?
It’s easily done with a plugin. The key is to find the right plugin.
In the collection below, you’ll find the highest-rated and best designed WordPress plugins for adding a newsticker to your site.
Keep reading to find the top choices now.
News ticker plugins
Each plugin listed here has a nice design and plenty of customization options. You’ll find a mix of both free and premium plugins.
Here are my top picks for the best WordPress newsticker plugins.
1. Live News
Plugin Description
Live News is a simple and customizable plugin for making newstickers. It’s the most obvious choice in my opinion due to its smart design choices and flexibility.
What do I mean by “smart design?” Live News can automatically add items to the ticker from four different sources. Besides listing your latest posts, you can include items from an RSS feed or Twitter feed. Given that there are services that allow you to mashup RSS feeds, you can essentially automate your newsticker with a latest news feed from any collection of sites on the web. That said, you can still manually write out titles for Featured News you want to include.
You’ll also love that this premium plugin has 72 customization options. Change the colors, choose which pages to display it on, change the scroll speed, disable/enable on mobile devices, adjust the font sizes and more!
2. Modern News Ticker
Plugin Description
If you want a quick and simple plugin to add a news ticker to your site, you’ll like Modern News Ticker.
The style you had in mind for your newsticker is probably very similar to the look of this plugin. While it’s not super customizable, it does have 15 different themes. Each theme switches up the colors of the background and text included in the ticker. There are also four different animation styles and four layouts.
Rather than being included at the top or bottom of your site, Modern News Ticker includes a shortcode. The benefit of a shortcode is that you can copy and paste it anywhere into your site. Add the ticker to a post or a dedicated news page on your site.
While this is a premium plugin, it’s $9 price tag makes it extremely affordable.
3. Ticker Ultimate
Plugin Description
Ticker Ultimate is a free plugin with a nice style for a newsticker. It comes with a customizable shortcode which you can use to output the ticker on any post or page. The shortcode can be adjusted to select specific post categories and change the colors.
One cool feature in this plugin is its compatibility with custom post types. This means you can publish normal posts while having a completely separate type of “post” used for the news ticker. It’s also been updated to work with the Gutenberg post editor – there’s a custom newsticker block available.
Ticker Ultimate also has a premium version with a few extra benefits. You’ll get custom colors, control over the effects and animations, and you can use an RSS feed as the source of the news items.
4. jQuery News Ticker
Plugin Description
jQuery News Ticker is another simple option for newsticker creation. It’s a lightweight option that loads fast and won’t slow your site down.
You might appreciate that you can create multiple news tickers with this plugin. Rather than displaying at the top of your site or using a shortcode, jQuery News Ticker provides a widget. Using the widget, you can display any of your news tickers in any of your widget areas.
If you want a simple newsticker plugin that’s fast to set up and customize, jQuery News Ticker could be the best choice for your WordPress site.
5. Ditty News Ticker
Plugin Description
Ditty News Ticker comes with an excellent set of customization options. There are some pretty creative options included like vertical tickers and multiple animations. In fact, Ditty News Ticker includes three different ticker modes:
- Scroll
- Rotate
- List
This can help you create exactly the style you had in mind, or maybe even something better than you imagined!
Ditty News Ticker has a shortcode and widget available for outputting the ticker on your site. As for sourcing the news items, the only method available in the free version is to manually enter them. However, there are paid extensions available for automatically sourcing news items from your posts, Twitter, RSS feeds, Instagram, and more. There’s also a bundle available that will give you access to every paid extension.
Which newsticker plugin is best for you?
Live News stands out as the best option because of its sensible design and 70+ customization features. Unlike other newsticker plugins, the ticker can be automatically output at the top or bottom of your site which may be what you had in mind to begin with.
If you’re looking for a free option, Ditty News Ticker is probably the best choice. While the news items have to be added manually, there are premium extensions that allow automatic importing from other news sources.
Still have questions about these newsticker WordPress plugins? Post in the comments section below.
