Bonsai Digital Core Customisations

A lightweight WordPress plugin that applies branded admin customisations and adds quick support access for clients.

Description

This plugin ensures a consistent Bonsai Digital Collective experience across WordPress by providing:

• Custom Admin Colour Scheme

  • Applies Bonsai’s brand colours (#000000, #ffffff, #ee4367) to the WordPress dashboard
  • Forces all users to use the branded scheme

• Admin Bar Support Menu

  • Adds a persistent link to the support desk in the WordPress admin bar
  • Opens in a new tab for quick access to support

• Dashboard Support Widget

  • Displays a branded support banner
  • Links to the Help Centre
  • Provides direct access to submit support requests
  • Includes friendly messaging for clients and site managers

Installation

1. Download the plugin .zip or clone the repo.
2. Upload to /wp-content/plugins/ directory or install via the WordPress admin Plugins → Add New → Upload.
3. Activate Bonsai Digital Core Customisations from the WordPress Plugins screen.
4. The custom colour scheme, admin bar link, and dashboard widget will load automatically.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can users switch back to another colour scheme?
A: No — the plugin forces all users to use the Bonsai branded scheme.

Q: Who can see the support widget and menu?
A: By default, all users with Dashboard/Admin access. To restrict, add a capability check (e.g. current_user_can('manage_options')).

Q: Can I customise the banner or support links?
A: Yes — edit the $banner, $hc, and $req variables inside the plugin, or override them with filters.

Updates

Ships with YahnisElsts/plugin-update-checker (installed via Composer, vendor/ committed), loaded via vendor/autoload.php and pointed at github.com/Bonsai-Systems/bonsai-core — the same pattern used by bonsai-code-injector and bonsai-maintenance. Sites with the plugin installed see updates on the Plugins screen in wp-admin.

This is a private repo, so the update checker needs a GitHub token to read releases:

1. Create a fine-grained personal access token scoped to Bonsai-Systems/bonsai-core with Contents: read-only.
2. Define it in wp-config.php on each site: define( 'BONSAI_PUC_GITHUB_TOKEN', 'github_pat_...' );
3. Never commit the token itself.

To ship a new version:

1. Bump the Version: header in bonsai-core.php and add a CHANGELOG.md entry.
2. Commit and push to main.
3. Publish a GitHub Release tagged with the new version (release-assets mode is enabled, so attach a zip of the plugin folder — plain source-archive tags won't be picked up).

Sites check for updates every 6 hours ($checkPeriod argument to buildUpdateChecker()), or immediately if an admin clicks "Check again" on the Plugins screen.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for the full release history.

Development Notes

• Built to be lightweight and DRY
• Follows WordPress coding standards and escaping best practices
• Inline styles are minimal; enqueue a custom admin stylesheet if needed

Author

Developed by Ben Ervine / The Bonsai Digital Collective