We’re always on the lookout for feature requests from clients that are more generic than specific to one particular site. When we spot these (for instance if several clients ask for Feature X) then we try to build these in a way that makes them available to everyone who uses the platform. This is, after all, why a platform approach is so powerful!
With that in mind, here is a quick overview of a few improvements we’ve made to the sitewide options panel recently…
Opening Times
This was an easy one to see coming – it’s so common that museums want to display opening times of one kind or another around their site – but then a pain to have to edit these in more than one place if they change! So – we made a simple but adaptable shortcode and set of options in the dashboard. Now museums can input their opening times and display these wherever they need on their site. Need to change anything – no problem, update it in one place and everywhere on the site updates automatically…
Mailing List embeds
Another commonly asked for thing is the ability to make simple mailing list forms. Now, although we could (and do) provide a Gutenberg block to drop in specific mailing list code, we also wanted a global way of doing this. This one is a bit harder than the other options here, though – WordPress (for good reason) strips out all JS and CSS from any field content provided unless the user is an administrator for security reasons. So instead we built in a function call which uses Generate Press’ Elements and a call to a custom hook. This way editors can easily use a simple shortcode anywhere on their site – and we just pull in the corresponding Mailchimp / Mailerlite / whatever embed code. Easy!
Sponsor Logos and Social Links
A minor addition but quite a useful one – we realised that several clients had asked for sponsor logos in some form on their websites. So there is now a “sponsor logos” section built into the Site Settings section of the TMP dashboard:
The logos can be added and corresponding site links as well if need be.
Then on the front end we have a global function which can be used to surface these wherever or however we need – in a block, as a footer, as an accordion or slider…
The Social Links option works in pretty much the same way.
