NoticePilot – Remote Campaign Hub for WordPress Plugin & Theme Authors

Description

NoticePilot is not another admin notice plugin. It is a self-hosted remote campaign distribution platform built specifically for WordPress plugin and theme authors.

If you maintain a WordPress plugin or theme that runs on hundreds or thousands of sites, you need a reliable way to push announcements, update prompts, sale banners, or deprecation warnings to your users — without shipping a new plugin release for every message. NoticePilot solves this with a hub-to-remote architecture: you manage campaigns centrally on your own site, and a lightweight PHP SDK bundled in your plugin automatically fetches and displays them on every remote installation.

Who Is This For?

NoticePilot is purpose-built for WordPress plugin and theme developers who need to communicate with their users across multiple remote installations from a single, self-hosted dashboard. It is not a tool for managing or suppressing admin notices on a single site — there are many plugins already serving that purpose.

What Makes It Different?

Unlike most admin-notice plugins, NoticePilot is a complete developer communication platform:

• Hub-to-Remote Architecture — One central dashboard pushes campaigns to unlimited remote WordPress sites via a REST API. No third-party SaaS, no external dependencies — everything runs on your own WordPress installation.
• Single-File PHP SDK — Bundle one PHP file into your plugin or theme. Initialize with a single line of code. The SDK handles fetching, caching, rendering, and dismissal automatically.
• Privacy-First Analytics — Track impressions, clicks, and dismissals across all remote sites without collecting personal data. Remote site URLs are MD5-hashed before storage — no IP addresses, usernames, or cookies are ever saved.
• Audience Targeting — Deliver the right message to the right users by targeting campaigns based on plan type (free or pro), plugin version (with comparison operators like <, >, =), and WordPress user roles.
• Campaign Scheduling — Set start and end dates for time-sensitive campaigns. Expired campaigns are auto-disabled via WP-Cron — no manual clean-up required.
• Rich HTML Support — Write full HTML including inline CSS, <style> blocks, and custom layouts. Your content renders exactly as authored on every remote site.
• Smart Dismissal Handling — Users who dismiss a notice won’t see it again for a configurable duration. Dismissals are stored locally on the remote site using a FIFO strategy, keeping only the 20 most recent dismissed IDs.
• Scalable Analytics Engine — Raw events roll up into daily summaries via an hourly WP-Cron job with automatic pruning. Built for scale — no unbounded table growth.

How It Works

1. Create a Product — Each product represents a plugin, theme, or service you maintain. NoticePilot generates a unique REST API endpoint for it automatically.
2. Add Campaigns — Write rich HTML content, set optional scheduling and audience-targeting rules, then enable the campaign.
3. Integrate the SDK — Download the single-file PHP SDK from your product card, bundle it with your plugin or theme, and initialize it with one line of code. The SDK polls your hub on a configurable schedule and renders active campaigns as WordPress admin notices on remote sites.
4. Track Performance — Monitor impressions, clicks, dismissals, and click-through rates from the analytics dashboard. Drill down by product or by individual campaign with daily breakdowns.

Real-World Use Cases

• Plugin authors: Push update prompts, deprecation warnings, or feature announcements to all users of your plugin — without shipping a new release.
• Theme authors: Announce seasonal sales, new theme versions, or compatibility updates directly inside the WordPress admin on every active installation.
• Agency developers: Broadcast maintenance windows, policy changes, or onboarding tips across all client sites from a single central hub.
• Freemium plugins: Show upgrade prompts exclusively to free-plan users while displaying different messaging to pro users — all without code changes on the remote site.

A Self-Hosted Alternative

Plugin authors today face a difficult choice: build a custom notice system from scratch for every product (duplicating effort), or rely on third-party SaaS platforms (adding external dependencies and data-privacy concerns). NoticePilot offers a self-hosted, privacy-respecting, zero-external-dependency alternative that runs entirely on your own WordPress installation — giving you full control over your data and your users’ experience.

SDK Integration Guide

This section explains the complete end-to-end workflow for wiring the NoticePilot SDK into your own plugin or theme. Follow these steps in order — they cover everything from creating your first product on the hub through to verifying notices appear on remote sites.

Step 1 — Set Up the Hub

Install and activate the NoticePilot plugin on your central management site (not on the sites of your customers). This is the one WordPress installation that will act as your private campaign server.

Once activated, navigate to NoticePilot in the WordPress admin sidebar. This is where all products and campaigns live.

Step 2 — Create a Product

A “Product” is the bridge between the hub and one of your plugins or themes.

1. Click + Add New Product.
2. Enter the name of your plugin or theme (e.g. Super SEO Form). NoticePilot automatically generates a URL-safe slug (e.g. super-seo-form). This slug is the identifier your SDK will use when polling for campaigns.
3. Toggle Enable this site to ON.
4. Click Save Site.

Each product gets its own REST API endpoint in the form:

https://your-hub-site.com/wp-json/noticepilot/v1/content/your-product-slug

Step 3 — Add a Campaign

With your product created, you can add one or more campaigns (notices) to it.

1. Click + Add Content on your product card.
2. Fill in the fields:
   • Content Title — Internal reference only (e.g. Black Friday Sale 2025).
   • HTML Content — The full HTML notice rendered on remote sites. Supports inline styles, <style> blocks, and any custom layout.
   • Enable this offer — Toggle ON to make the campaign live immediately.
   • Start / End Date (Optional) — Schedule the campaign for a specific window. Expired campaigns are auto-disabled by WP-Cron.
3. Click Save Content.

You can attach multiple campaigns to a single product. All active and in-schedule campaigns are returned together when the SDK polls the endpoint.

Step 4 — Download the SDK

1. On your product card, click the How To Integrate button.
2. Click Download SDK to download class-remote-notice-client.php.

Alternatively, copy the file directly from the sdk/ directory of the NoticePilot plugin.

Step 5 — Bundle the SDK Into Your Plugin or Theme

Copy class-remote-notice-client.php into your plugin or theme directory. A recommended location is an includes/ subdirectory:

your-plugin/
├── your-plugin.php
└── includes/
    └── class-remote-notice-client.php

The SDK is fully self-contained — no Composer, no external libraries, no additional files required.

Step 6 — Initialize the SDK

Add the following code to your plugin’s main PHP file (or to your theme’s functions.php). Replace the placeholder values with your own product slug and hub URL:

// Load the NoticePilot remote notice SDK.
require_once __DIR__ . '/includes/class-remote-notice-client.php';

add_action( 'plugins_loaded', function() {
    Noticepilot_Remote_Notice_Client::init( 'your-product-slug', [
        'api_url'          => 'https://your-hub-site.com/wp-json/noticepilot/v1/content/your-product-slug',
        'schedule'         => 'daily',
        'capability'       => 'manage_options',
        'dismiss_duration' => WEEK_IN_SECONDS,
    ] );
} );

Copy the exact URL from your product card’s “How To Integrate” panel to avoid typos — the slug in api_url must match the product slug precisely.

SDK Configuration Options

• api_url (required) — The full REST URL to your product’s content endpoint on the hub. Find it in the How To Integrate panel on the product card.
• schedule (optional) — How often the remote site polls the hub for new campaigns. Accepted values: hourly, twicedaily, or daily. Default: daily. Use hourly for time-sensitive campaigns; use daily to reduce server load.
• capability (optional) — The WordPress capability a user must have to see notices. Default: manage_options (administrators only). Change to edit_posts to show notices to editors as well.
• dismiss_duration (optional) — How long (in seconds) a dismissed notice stays hidden before it can reappear. Default: WEEK_IN_SECONDS. Pass 0 to make dismissals permanent for that campaign ID.

Step 7 — (Optional) Pass Targeting Context

If you use the audience-targeting feature (plan type, plugin version, or user roles), pass a $context array as the third argument to init():

Noticepilot_Remote_Notice_Client::init( 'your-product-slug', [
    'api_url'  => 'https://your-hub-site.com/wp-json/noticepilot/v1/content/your-product-slug',
    'schedule' => 'daily',
], [
    'plan'    => 'free',            // 'free' or 'pro' — matches Plan Type targeting on the hub.
    'version' => '2.3.1',          // Your plugin's current version string — matches Version targeting.
    'roles'   => wp_get_current_user()->roles,  // Current user's roles array.
] );

The SDK sends this context to the hub, which filters campaigns before returning them. Campaigns with no targeting rules set are always returned regardless of context.

Step 8 — Verify the Integration

1. Trigger the first fetch manually: After adding the initialization code, log in to a remote WordPress admin that has your plugin active. The SDK registers a WP-Cron event on first load (plugins_loaded). To force an immediate fetch without waiting for the cron, use WP-CLI on the remote site:

   wp cron event run noticepilot_rnc_fetch_content_your-product-slug

2. Check the stored contents option: In the remote site’s database, look for the option noticepilot_rnc_your-product-slug_contents. It should contain the JSON-encoded campaign data returned by the hub.

3. View the notice in the admin: Navigate to any admin page on the remote site. Active campaigns appear as standard WordPress admin notices at the top of the page. Each notice has a dismiss (✕) button.

4. Check the analytics: Go back to your hub site → NoticePilot → Analytics. After a page load on the remote site triggers a beacon, you should see an impression logged against your campaign within the hour (after the next rollup cron runs), or immediately after clicking ↻ Refresh Data on the Analytics page.

How the SDK Works at Runtime

Understanding what the SDK does automatically helps you diagnose issues:

1. Cron registration — On plugins_loaded, the SDK schedules a repeating WP-Cron event (e.g. noticepilot_rnc_fetch_content_your-product-slug) on the remote site if one is not already registered.
2. Remote fetch — When the cron fires, the SDK sends a GET request to the api_url endpoint on your hub. The hub checks each campaign’s enabled flag and schedule, then returns the active ones as JSON.
3. Local caching — The fetched campaigns are stored in the remote site’s wp_options table (key: noticepilot_rnc_your-product-slug_contents). Notices are rendered from this local cache on every page load — no live HTTP request is made on each admin page.
4. Rendering — On admin_notices, the SDK outputs each cached campaign as a standard .notice div. Campaign HTML is filtered through wp_kses() before output to prevent script injection.
5. Analytics beacons — Immediately on render, and on link click or dismiss, the SDK fires a navigator.sendBeacon() call to the hub’s analytics tracking endpoint. This is fire-and-forget and does not block the page.
6. Dismissal — When a user clicks the ✕ button, an AJAX call stores the campaign ID in noticepilot_rnc_your-product-slug_dismissed_ids. Only the 20 most recent IDs are kept. After dismiss_duration seconds, the campaign can reappear.
7. Cron cleanup — On plugin deactivation (your plugin), the SDK’s cron event is automatically unscheduled.

Developer Notes

• Namespace safety — The SDK class is named Noticepilot_Remote_Notice_Client. It checks class_exists() before declaring itself, so it is safe to bundle in multiple plugins on the same site without conflicts.
• No singleton collision — Each init() call is keyed by its product slug. Multiple plugins on the same remote site can each run their own SDK instance independently.
• Hub availability — The SDK caches results locally, so if your hub server is temporarily unreachable during a cron run, the last successfully fetched campaigns continue to display until the next successful poll.
• Detecting the hub — In your plugin’s own code, you can detect whether the hub is installed on the current site with class_exists( '\NoticePilot\Core' ). This is useful for offering hub-specific admin links in a bundled UI.
• Forcing a re-fetch — To trigger the fetch action programmatically (e.g. after a plugin update), use: do_action( 'noticepilot_rnc_fetch_content_your-product-slug' );