Introducing WordPress Embed Stack - a new approach to integrate Wordpress with Rapidweaver

[Ricardo]

Just launched! WordPress Embed Stack

It takes a new approach to add WordPress content to your Rapidweaver Website.

One of the issues of embedding dynamic content (such as blog, pages, post categories) is that we don’t know how many items will be displayed, and therefore the height of the content.

That’s where the WordPress Embed comes in!

Just drop the WordPress stack into your page, set the location of your WordPress installation, then enter the slug for the WordPress content that you are trying to display and the WordPress Stack does the rest.

You can display Wordpress pages, single posts or all posts from a category.

Check our product page for more information.

Demo site here.

Happy weaving!

Ricardo

[Webdeersign]

Sounds very interesting.

Some more details on what specificaly is the WP content on the demo site would be very useful.

Could you add a WP Shortcode into your stack to add a function such as a property search or holiday home search to a RW page, that when submited as a completed search, would then jump into the appropriate WP page?

[Ricardo]

Hi @Webdeersign,

It’s actually easier to point out what’s not Wordpress content. The homepage, contact page, press page, and the shop (which is done with the Ecwid Stacks), except for the wholesale page is a WP embed as well. This “demo” site will soon become a live site for a friend.

Since this is an embed of WP, the stack only displays the content that you point to. However, you can set up a page with the short codes and point the WP Embed Stack to that page (using its slug).

Cheers,

Ricardo

[wolf]

@Ricardo

… you can set up a page with the short codes and point the WP Embed Stack to that page (using its slug) …

Puh, that’s a bit too much for my old brain. What are “short codes” and where do I find them…?

[Ricardo]

Hi @wolf,

I have a couple of links that explain shortcodes:

How to Use WordPress Shortcodes (with Examples)

Shortcodes

There are a couple of plug-ins that you can use in your WP:

There are many other plug-ins for that as well.

Cheers,

Ricardo

[wolf]

Thanks a lot, Ricardo! :-)

[Webdeersign]

@wolf

Puh, that’s a bit too much for my old brain. What are “short codes” and where do I find them…?

Imagine you need to create a global holiday home rental website and you need to provide a search facillity for date, number of beds, location, distance from location, country, price range, etc… Then, when a client creates such a search, you also want the entire back end that shows galleries of images, full property details, prices and also a booking system with document download and a password system for individual property owners to update, add images, etc. and then also a money transfer system to do a monthly bank transfer to the site owner, etc…

That is a good example of how you would add a shortcake for this type of service into the RW page and the whole thing takes place in a style matched WP set of pages all dynamically created. The code is just a series of numbers specific to that service.

As a cool and real example, if you wanted to implement a complete Estate Agency (realtor) site with complete CRM system then you could use the free Hive plugin by adding the Hive short code to a page. And yes I said free.

See https://wp-property-hive.com

[wolf]

Thanks so much Gary for your explanation of that example. Makes all sense. :-) Crazy that a plugin like Hive actually is available for free…

[Webdeersign]

Yes it is, but their business model is to sell the addon plugins to read in form all of the main portals. You can even use it to run Broadband availability checks based on address or create the live screen adverts to put in the estate agents front windows that are quite popular in the UK. All handled from the plugin.

[Pixelart]

How does this differ from the YabDab Wordpress stack which now seems to have disappeared from their site?

[Webdeersign]

@Pixelart

How does this differ from the YabDab Wordpress stack which now seems to have disappeared from their site?

I wasn’t aware that there was one, but if it’s not there now it would be reasonable to assume it’s no longer available.

@Ricardo

Since this is an embed of WP, the stack only displays the content that you point to. However, you can set up a page with the short codes and point the WP Embed Stack to that page (using its slug).

@Ricardo So does this stack pull in content from a WP page, such as text or images, and display that content inside the stack?

[Ricardo]

Hi @Pixelart and @Webdeersign,

The Wordpress Stack from Yabdab pulled content from the Wordpress site using the WP Rest API. My stack embeds the actual content in a frame that seamlessly and responsively adjusts itself to the content.

That’s why, on the product page, I wrote the recommendations on how to use a WP theme, turn off headers and footers and menus, as that should be handled by RW. As result, the WP Embed stack will display the contents of the WP site exactly as if you navigated directly to. You can try that on the demo site.

I decided on this new approach instead of writing php loops, style sheets etc… for getting content from the wordpress site into RW, as there are already great themes for WP out there that are highly customizable and can easily reflect the look and feel of the content developed under RW. With this approach, I also felt that there would be little risk of obsolescence, since, if you can display in Wordpress you can display with the Wordpress Embed Stack.

Another aspect of my approach to display WP content like this, was to keep WP mostly as a CMS/Blog site and keep it simple, with a minimal number of plug-ins and minimal complexity, and use RW as the actual website/page development platform, including the great tools that the RW community has as it’s disposal.

There is one aspect in my approach that requires some attention on the part of the web-developers, which are links. All links (in the WP site only, not RW) referring to resources outside of the Wordpress site must include `target="_parent", otherwise those links will also open inside the WP stack. However, all links referring to things in the WP site, don’t need any changes.

Here is an example: <a href="https://www.axyn.com/site/products" target="_parent">Visit Axyn's Product Page</a>

I hope that this helps clarify how the stack works.

Cheers,

Ricardo

[Webdeersign]

@Ricardo

the WP Embed stack will display the contents of the WP site exactly as if you navigated directly to. You can try that on the demo site.

Got it now.

So it has the full power of WP. Amazing really. So this could provide existing WP site content such as blogs to be added into RW sites and avoids the need to find a way to rebuild the blog and content in RW. I could certainly have used this a few times in the past.

[Ricardo]

@Webdeersign, @Pixelart, @wolf,

Although I’m not sure In exactly all the scenarios in which this would be useful…

In fact, you could install more than one Wordpress in the site and display them simultaneously.

I guess testing a new theme and or plug-ins, could be one. You could duplicate the WP installation in another sub folder (database also), apply the new theme, configure it, and do all tests without affecting the live site. Once satisfied, all you’d have to do, is to change the WP folder in the WP Embed Stack and republish it and voilà !!