I had someone approach me yesterday on Twitter (thanks @dingl_) and ask why my site’s tile on Windows 8.1 was not a live tile.
Personally I thought the code had been added to my site a long time ago to make that happen but turns out I was actually remembering setting up the right-click context menu when IE9 came out.
So my benefactor on Twitter was correct – my site was not setup for live tile functionality.
He pointed me towards a blog post from Scott Hanselman, Make a Windows 8.1 Pinned Live Tile for YOUR website in minutes, and his post has all the code and other tweaks to give your site a great pinned live tile.
However, as I was reviewing Scott’s post he highlighted the fact that someone had created a plugin to make this happen for WordPress based websites.
The plugin comes from Nick Halsey and is called Windows Pinned Sites Plugin for WordPress.
Just download the plugin from your WordPress backend and activate it. To modify the setup just go to Settings>Windows Pinned Tiles and you will find this simple setup page:
Just select how often you want the tile to be updated with your latest posts, provide an icon that represents your site (make it 310 x 310 pixels minimum or all tile sizes will not work) and then select the color of the tile. Of course, make sure you save your settings before leaving WordPress.
Next just browse to your site using Modern Internet Explorer and swipe up to get the IE App Bar and then follow these three steps to pin the tile to your Start Screen:
- Tap the Favorites star
- Tap the Pin icon
- Use the navigation arrows on each side of the image to select between the four available tiles sizes and then tap Pin to Start.
Once you have done this tap the Windows Key to get to your Start Screen. Once you are there swipe all the way over to the right to see your newly pinned tile.
You can customize this tiles size and turn off its live tile just like you can any other tile on the Start Screen.
Here are examples of the tile pinned in the four different sizes available:
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Note: The smallest tile size does not show live content.
If you use this method to create a Live Tile for your site please share a link in the comments so it can be checked out by everyone.
