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Free Plugin by interconnectit v1.3.10

Spots

Content manage those little snippets of text that you need across your WordPress site and in widgets properly. Forget the text widget.

Spots

The facts

Rating
5★ from 10
Active installs
800+
Price
Free
Last updated
29 Sep 2022
Added
Sep 2011
Requires WP
4.0
Tested up to
WP 6.0.14
Downloads
38,481

Our analysis

AI-assisted

Spots is a WordPress plugin designed to create custom post types for managing content elements like widgets and notices on a website. It features a visual editor for end-users and provides developers with hooks to integrate these elements into themes easily.

The plugin includes caching to optimise performance and is prepared for translation. It allows for replacing hard-coded text in themes with dynamic content managed through the plugin.

Best for: This plugin suits developers and site owners looking to manage content dynamically within their WordPress themes.

What it does well

  • Creates custom post types for content management
  • Includes a visual editor for user-friendly widget creation
  • Provides hooks for developers to integrate into themes
  • Utilises caching for improved performance
  • Prepared for translation

Where it falls short

  • Limited information on specific features and usage
  • No details on support or documentation

Verdict

Spots offers a practical solution for managing content elements in WordPress, particularly for those who want to simplify the process for both users and developers.

From the developer

interconnectit's own description of Spots, lightly tidied.

Here at interconnect/it we have a policy of developing client sites with the premise of “content manage everything!” That means the little notices on sites, minor widgets and so on should not only be content managed, but they should be easy for both an end-user and a developer to work with.

To that end, we developed Spots. This creates a custom post type that allows you to create widgets using a visual editor, whilst also giving developers an easy hook for the creation of content managable elements within a theme.

The plugin now uses caching in order to help ensure that the load on a typical site is kept to a minimum. Performance is important!

The plugin is prepared for translation, if you’d like to drop us a line about your translation you can contact us through our website.

Developer Notes

Spots provides 2 template tags for developers to use shown below with their supported arguments.

icit_spot( $id_or_name, $template );
  • $id_or_name: Required. A numeric ID or the name of a spot as a string.
  • $template: Optional. A string used in a call to get_template_part()

This template tag always echos out the spot.

icit_get_spot( $id_or_name, $template, $echo );

Same as the above with an extra argument:

  • $echo: Optional. Defaults to false. A boolean to indicate whether to echo the spot content or just return it.

Basic Usage

You can use spots to replace boilerplate text in your themes. If you have areas in your themes where typically you would hard code the text you could use the following code:

<?php
if ( function_exists( 'icit_spot' ) )
    icit_spot( 'Copyright' );
?>

The above code would output the contents of a spot titled ‘Copyright’. If the spot does not exist it will be created as a draft. Spots in draft mode are only visible to logged in users with editing capabilities.

Read the full description on the official page →

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