Build Stories Using Multimedia With The Storyteller WordPress Theme

Storyteller is an interesting concept by Katharina Brunner. It’s a WordPress theme that when combined with the AddQuickTags plugin, provides the ability to build multimedia stories.

Once activated, you’ll need to import a special JSON file into AddQuickTags. This file automatically adds alignment code to the Storyteller specific quicktags making it easy to align the title and content of a slide.

Alignment Code Added To Quicktags

The theme works best when used on a fresh install of WordPress. This is because it changes a couple of key components in the backend for the purpose of Storyteller.

Posts > Slides

Categories > Stories

Add Post > Add Slide

To see Storyteller in action, check out the following demo page. Images take up the entire view of the screen. The slide title and text are displayed above the image and are located on the page based on which quicktag is selected. Two arrows on the bottom right of the screen act as pagination to navigate between slides. Storyteller is a responsive theme that will resize the content based on the size of the screen. Slides are not limited to just images, you can use videos as well. It uses Backstretch.js and FitVids.js to create full screen images and videos.

Storyteller has one option to configure where you can select between four different fonts. The option is located in an Options top-level menu. There’s no reason why one option deserves its own top-level menu. I’d like to see it moved underneath the Settings menu and renamed to Storyteller. Options is confusing and at a glance, doesn’t seem like it’s connected to Storyteller.

Storyteller Options

I had hard time getting used to Slides replacing Posts and Stories replacing Categories. It creates a new workflow that takes time to get used to. The demo page highlights the potential of Storyteller but because it’s best suited for a fresh install of WordPress, it limits the amount of scenarios it can be used in. During testing, I used it on an existing WordPress site with a lot of content and it was a mess.

Storyteller is in its infancy as a product and I have no doubt that Brunner will continue to improve the theme as more users discover it. The items she has on the to-do list include:

Option for individual width for text

Write a FAQ/docs

Sharing options

Option to scroll rather than click

Better video integration

Brunner encourages users to give feedback and report bugs to the theme’s Github page.