Some questions

Set the Showcase Options >> Home Page TAB >> Home Page Layout Type >> to "Modular Layout (advanced setup required). And then don't set any of the options on "Modular Layout Options - SC Home Page" for any of your categories. This will let you display just the Slider, Cats block and any sidebar blocks you want.

 

You are able to choose which categories items are pulled from.

Category Pages have their OWN Slider settings. There is a Global Option that you can set that each Category page will use as default settings and then each Category has options to Override the default settings. THis allows you to have sliders on some categories, but not others as well as different settings for different categories.

 

The 3rd party JS has some limited "auto" features, however, the configuration setup that Showcase is using is NOT meant to work with any of the "auto" settings for the 3rd party JS.

 

This is a suggestion, not a question. IIRC, there is already an existing suggestion for this, however, Im not sure if its here or at my private dev site, so do a quick look here first before creating a suggestion thread.

 

A very long story short.... NO. Not going to bore you with the technical reasons (which are many).

 

No (and yes). Let me explain. The only sort type options that are available are located in the sort type dropdown.



There is one sort type that is unique and that is the sort type "Featured". When set to "featured", the model fetches content that is marked as "featured" and the fetching method uses the MySQL sort type rand().



CUSTOMIZATION: The fetching methods in the Item Model do have other sort types available to developers (one of which is 'random', however, this is added purely for Customization purposes). I know of several license holders that have had addons created that extend showcase to do things like add RANDOM fetching to the [bd] Widget Framework Rendersers that come with Showcase as well as Sliders for Forum Home (and probably SC Home as well).

I made the decision years ago that I would not include direct support for rand(); fetching with the exception of FEATURED content.

 

You COULD do that, however, its NOT designed for that purpose. I was simply explaining the existing functionality to you.

What you want (the ability to fetch all items sorted by rand()) does not exist as a core feature. What does exist is fetching featured items sorted by rand().

 

No.

This is correct. You won't have any problems doing this (as long as the node permissions allow people to view the threads).

 

No. The slider configuration that is being used in Showcase (infinite carousel) is not able to utilize the auto slide functions. It would require modifications to be configured slightly different than it is, in order to use the auto slider functions.

For XF2 versions of my addons, I use the Carousel JS that is included with Core XF.