This plugin for WordPress adds a widget that displays a static or animated odometer style counter that can display a set value or can animate between a starting and ending value. Unfortunately this plugin does not count jellyfish for you but it is a great visual effect for travel blogs or any website that wants to display a running total of anything.

You can have as many counters as you wish, all can have individual settings for totals and appearance. The counters are created via css and require no external graphics files.

Demo

You can see a counter in action on this page or in context here at http://sharkaroo.net/map Using an animated counter adds visual and narrative impact to an otherwise static value.

This plugin uses a modified version of a javascript odometer class written by
Gavin Brock , see http://gavcode.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/cssjavascript-animated-odometer/

Usage

Add a counter widget to your sidebar and adjust the settings to suit your
requirements. If you specify different start and end values the counter will
count upwards when the page loads until it reaches the ending value.

If you just want a static counter make the start and end the same value or make
the end value lower than the starting value.

You can configure the digit height, width and font as well as animation
speed and “bustedness” (misalignment of the digits).

Installation

Extract the zip file and just drop the contents in the wp-content/plugins/
directory of your WordPress installation and then activate the Plugin from
Plugins page. Go to the widgets admin page to add a counter widget, each widget
has it’s own settings.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does the counter reset when a page is reloaded?

The counter is primarily intended to display a predefined static value that you update in the widget admin whenever you like. It does have the ability to animate to add focus to the end value, BUT if your start and end value are very different then it’s unlikely that anybody will ever see the end value. If displaying the  end value is very important either ignore the animation option and have it as a static value or set the start value a few numbers below the end value to add some final count up drama.

Can the counter count over a long period of time and remember it’s value?

Not at present. But it may do in the near future…

Download

The plugin can be downloaded from the main WordPress plugin respository here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/jellyfish-counter-widget/