Title: FreeDAM Web Notices
Author: freedomsoftware
Published: <strong>September 17, 2020</strong>
Last modified: August 18, 2024

---

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![](https://ps.w.org/freedam-web-notices/assets/banner-772x250.png?rev=2383304)

This plugin **hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress**.
It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when
used with more recent versions of WordPress.

![](https://ps.w.org/freedam-web-notices/assets/icon-256x256.png?rev=2383304)

# FreeDAM Web Notices

 By [freedomsoftware](https://profiles.wordpress.org/freedomsoftware/)

[Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/freedam-web-notices.1.5.2.zip)

 * [Details](https://test.wordpress.org/plugins/freedam-web-notices/#description)
 * [Reviews](https://test.wordpress.org/plugins/freedam-web-notices/#reviews)
 *  [Installation](https://test.wordpress.org/plugins/freedam-web-notices/#installation)
 * [Development](https://test.wordpress.org/plugins/freedam-web-notices/#developers)

 [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/freedam-web-notices/)

## Description

Retrieves your web/funeral notices from your FreeDAM database for displaying on 
your website. Create notices in the FreeDAM software to be “published” to the web,
which are picked up by our service and displayed on your WordPress site by this 
plugin.

Enter your API Key linked to your specific database to authorize yourself against
our service (API). Customize the layout & style of the notices. Pick how many web
notices to display on a page and set restrictions on which notices display based
on the funeral date.

Notices are paginated, giving the ability to move through the notices via next &
previous buttons.

#### Note

Some level of HTML and CSS knowledge is expected to customize the layout and appearance
of the notices.

### Third-Party Service Usage

This plugin makes requests to a third-party service (Freedom Software API). It uses
the service to retrieve your FreeDAM web-notices from your FreeDAM database.

_This service (and by extension, the plugin) is intended for use by **Freedom Software
clients only** and would not be of use to anyone that doesn’t have a FreeDAM database._

The third-party service’s address is `api.freedam.co.nz` and will be making use 
of the `web-notices` endpoint via “https://api.freedam.co.nz/web-notices”.

For information on the endpoint itself visit: https://api.freedam.co.nz/web-notices.
def

For information on our terms of service / terms of use: https://api.freedam.co.nz/
terms-of-service

For enquires about usage of the third-party service or obtaining an API Key to gain
access to the service, please contact Freedom Software via:
 * Email: support@freedomsoftware.
co.nz * Website: https://freedomsoftware.co.nz/contact-us/

## Installation

 1. Upload `freedam-web-notices` folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory.
 2. Activate the plugin through the **Plugins** menu in the WordPress **Admin** section.
 3. Add your supplied FreeDAM database **API Key** to the plugin’s settings page, located
    under the **Settings** sub-menu in the Admin section.
 4. Place `[freedam-web-notices]` in a **Shortcode block** on a page. Should be possible
    to add directly to a theme by adding `<?php echo do_shortcode("[freedam-web-notices]");?
    >`.

## FAQ

### How do I change the appearance of notices (add style)

 1. Create a child theme for the styles
 2. Use a custom css plugin
 3. Add the custom CSS to your theme’s “Additional CSS”. https://wordpress.com/support/
    editing-css/#access-the-css-editor
 4.  a. From the “Admin” section, navigate to Appearance > Customize.
     b. Navigate to a page where you have added a Shortcode block for the plugin. (helps
        with previewing the style changes).
     c. Select “Additional CSS” on the left-hand panel.
     d. Write your styles.
 5. Edit the plugin CSS files (Warning! changes will be lost when plugin is updated
    or refreshed)
 6.  a. From the “Admin” section, navigate to Tools > Plugin File Editor
     b. Select “FreeDAM Web Notices” as the plugin to edit
     c. Open file public > css > freedam-web-notices.css
     d. Either adjust the existing styles or add to them

https://wordpress.com/support/editing-css/

The main elements that can be targeted are:
 * `freedam-web-notices-container`: 
Main container for plugin output. * `ul.freedam-web-notices`: Container for the 
list of web-notices. * `li.freedam-web-notice`: Container for individual web-notices.

Any other elements are from your own custom template, specified in the plugin’s 
settings.

### No web notices are displaying where I added the Shortcode block

 * Make sure your Freedom Software supplied **API Key** has been added to the plugin’s
   settings. This API Key is how our API can authorize your access and identify 
   which of our clients to pull the data from.
 * Make sure your **FreeDAM Database is online** and available to the internet. 
   Good way to check this is if you can access your data from the FreeDAM Online
   Interface (web app).
 * Make sure there are **published** web-notices in your database. Cases are not
   automatically available to the web-notices system. A web-notice needs to be created
   for a case; this is so you can customize the information that will show to the
   public. Finally, the web-notice needs to be “published” by enabling the checkbox
   on the same page you made the web-notice.
 * It could be that none of the published web-notices match your limiting criteria
   from the settings page. Try increasing the limits if using funeral/death based
   filtering or adjust a cases ‘publish from’ / ‘feature until’ dates to include
   today.

### How can I change the format of dates & times

The plugin’s settings page has a section called “Date Formats / Rules” which allows
picking from a selection of formats.

 1. From the “Admin” section, navigate to the “Settings” sub-menu “FreeDAM Web Notices”.
 2. Select the “Date Formats / Rules” navigation tab along the top of the page.
 3. Adjust the listed settings to your liking.
 4. Press “Save Changes”.

### How can I change the layout of the notices

The plugin’s settings page has a tab dedicated to adjusting the template HTML for
the notices.

 1. From the “Admin” section, navigate to the “Settings” sub-menu “FreeDAM Web Notices”.
 2. Select the “Notice Template” navigation tab along the top of the page.
 3. Adjust the HTML in the template textarea to your liking.
 4. Press “Save Changes”.

### What tokens can I use in my notice template

The notice template consists of a collection of HTML and tokens. The plugin uses
this template as the skeleton for constructing the individual notices by replacing
the tokens with data returned by the API service.

Tokens consist of opening characters (`{{`), a keyword (`deceased-name-title`) and
closing characters (`}}`). Token keywords are in a format that is easy for the script
to find your intended data. For example, `deceased-name-title` indicates to use 
the deceased’s title from the name node.

To find what keywords are available for use in the template, reference the example
of the “success” exit in the [endpoint’s definition](https://api.freedam.co.nz/web-notices.def).
Additionally, there is a table of accepted tokens below the notice template editing
form.

### How can I hide sections of a notice if there is no data

We have built in a system to the notice generator to help with this issue. It identifies
class-names in the template, matching tokens in the template, adding styles the 
elements to hide them if the associated token has nothing to display.

 1. From the “Admin” section, navigate to the “Settings” sub-menu “FreeDAM Web Notices”.
 2. Select the “Notice Template” navigation tab along the top of the page.
 3. Adjust the HTML in the template textarea.
 4.  a. Identify the element you wish to hide when the data is empty.
     b. Identify the token in the template that the hiding action is dependent on.
     c. Add a class name to the identified element that matches the identified token (`
        class="deceased-name-maiden"`).
 5. Press “Save Changes”.

## Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

## Contributors & Developers

“FreeDAM Web Notices” is open source software. The following people have contributed
to this plugin.

Contributors

 *   [ freedomsoftware ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/freedomsoftware/)
 *   [ Aidan Dunn ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/aidanchey/)

[Translate “FreeDAM Web Notices” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/freedam-web-notices)

### Interested in development?

[Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/freedam-web-notices/),
check out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/freedam-web-notices/),
or subscribe to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/freedam-web-notices/)
by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/freedam-web-notices/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss).

## Changelog

#### 1.5.2

 * Test on WordPress 6.6.1
 * Expands instructions page to include direction on conditionally hiding notice
   template elements using css display style
 * Allows older versions of IOS to display web-notices (simplifies REGEX expression
   for token replacement, please notify of notices appearing odd after update)
 * Fixes parsing of example web-notice so notice properties can be seen when writing
   the template

#### 1.5.1

 * Test on WordPress 6.4.2

#### 1.5.0

 * Test on WordPress 6.1.1
 * Updates required PHP version to 8.2 (7.2 is out of support)
 * Hides the ‘After’ date input for notice filtering if the date type is publish
   date as it’s not used in that mode
 * Corrects ordinal used by the date format selectors

#### 1.4.0

 * Adds ability to limit retrieved notices by office

#### 1.3.0

 * Test on WordPress 6.0.0
 * Adds ability to display the thumbnail of notice’s assigned image
 * Adds stream url & note for each notice
 * Fixes issue with pagination so it displays the pagination under more circumstances
 * Fixes issue with pagination that did not disable ‘next’ button incorrectly
 * Adds messages that displays when no results and on a page greater than 1
 * Adds messages that displays when no results and is searching (filtering by terms)
   for a notice
 * Notice searches now ignore time limits (except for publish_from) to make it more
   useful
 * Improves the default notice template so the venue displays better

#### 1.2.1

 * Test on WordPress 5.6.0

#### 1.2.0

 * Adds search capability to notice navigation
 * Adds notice ordering date type option, allows ordering by funeral or death date
 * Improves default notice styles, enabling use of carriage returns in tribute text
 * Bug fixes

#### 1.1.1

 * Test on WordPress 5.5.1
 * Improve sanitation of data from user & database

#### 1.1.0

 * Readme improvements
 * Adds ability to customize funeral date/time format
 * Adjusted the layout of settings, separating them into tabs
 * Adds ability to hide template section based on token data availability
 * Adds an “Instructions” tab to settings page

#### 1.0.0

 * Initial stable version

## Meta

 *  Version **1.5.2**
 *  Last updated **2 years ago**
 *  Active installations **10+**
 *  WordPress version ** 5.4.2 or higher **
 *  Tested up to **6.6.5**
 *  PHP version ** 8.2 or higher **
 *  Language
 * [English (US)](https://wordpress.org/plugins/freedam-web-notices/)
 * Tag
 * [notice](https://test.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/notice/)
 *  [Advanced View](https://test.wordpress.org/plugins/freedam-web-notices/advanced/)

## Ratings

No reviews have been submitted yet.

[Your review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/freedam-web-notices/reviews/#new-post)

[See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/freedam-web-notices/reviews/)

## Contributors

 *   [ freedomsoftware ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/freedomsoftware/)
 *   [ Aidan Dunn ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/aidanchey/)

## Support

Got something to say? Need help?

 [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/freedam-web-notices/)

## Donate

Would you like to support the advancement of this plugin?

 [ Donate to this plugin ](https://freedomsoftware.co.nz)