Noodled for WordPress

A full web version of the noodled desktop note-taking app, built as a self-contained WordPress plugin. Replaces Evernote with a local-first, markdown-powered workflow accessible from any browser.

What It Does

Noodled turns any WordPress site into a private note-taking app at /noodled/. It runs as a full-screen single-page app with no WordPress chrome — just the editor. Notes are stored in custom database tables (not wp_posts) and optionally sync bidirectionally with a GitHub repository, keeping the desktop app and web app in lockstep.

Core Features

Notes & Notebooks

• Markdown notes with YAML frontmatter (title, created, modified, source)
• Notebooks as organizational containers with per-user ownership
• Rich editor — contenteditable with live markdown rendering (headings, bold, italic, code, lists, checklists, blockquotes, tables, images, wiki-links)
• Wiki-links — [[Note Title]] syntax links notes together, with broken-link detection
• Full-text search with result highlighting across all accessible notes
• Pinning — pin notes to the top of any notebook
• Starring — star notes across notebooks for quick access via the Starred view
• Trash — soft-delete with restore, separate trash view, permanent delete
• Note colors — assign color labels to notes (shown as left border)
• Tags — inline #tags rendered as clickable chips, tag cloud browser, filter by tag
• Sorting — cycle between Modified, Created, and Alphabetical sort orders

Editor Tools

• Formatting — bullet lists, checklists (with toggle), headings (cycle H1/H2/H3/P)
• Photo upload — "+ Photos" grabs many images at once and creates an auto-titled Image Upload {date/time} note; photos render in a gallery below the text and open in a lightbox (arrow keys / Esc), captioned with stored EXIF (date taken, camera, exposure, ISO, and a 📍 map link if geotagged)
• Attachment gallery — images and file-type icon tiles (🌐 HTML, 📕 PDF, 📄 docs, 📎 other) render in a bar below the note rather than lumped into the text; HTML/files open in the same window (swipe back to return)
• File upload & drag-and-drop — attach any file type from the toolbar or by dropping onto the editor
• Image paste — Ctrl+V screenshots from clipboard, auto-uploads as attachment
• Dictation — tap 🎤 and speak; your words are transcribed straight into the note at the cursor (Web Speech API)
• Source mode — toggle between rendered view and raw markdown editing
• Find & replace — Ctrl+H, highlights matches in the rendered content
• Table of contents — jump-to-heading navigation for long notes
• Reading mode — distraction-free full-screen view, no toolbars
• Typewriter mode — keeps cursor line vertically centered while typing
• Zen mode — fades all paragraphs except the one you're editing
• Version history — stores last 5 saves per note (in-memory), click to restore
• Word count — live word/character/read-time counter with optional word count goal
• Backlinks — shows which other notes link to the current note via wiki-links
• Export — download any note as a standalone HTML file
• Auto-link — pasted URLs auto-convert to clickable markdown links
• Media embeds — YouTube and Vimeo URLs on their own line render as inline video players

Sync & Import

• GitHub bidirectional sync — push notes to a GitHub repo, pull changes from desktop app
• Webhook support — GitHub push webhooks trigger automatic imports
• Auto-sync — silently pulls from GitHub every 5 minutes
• Evernote import (per user) — each member imports their own .enex export from inside the app (⋮ menu → Import from Evernote); admins can also bulk-import from the Dashboard
• Plaud sync — imports voice recordings from Plaud as transcribed notes (reads token from .env file)
• Conflict resolution — last-write-wins by modified timestamp
• Frontmatter compatibility — reads/writes the same YAML frontmatter format as the desktop app

Authentication

• PIN login — enter email, receive a 6-digit PIN via email, type it to log in (no passwords)
• One-click magic link — the login email's button signs you in directly (the PIN is embedded in the link)
• PIN-only entry — "Already have a PIN?" asks for just the 6-digit code (no email), so phone OTP autofill lands in the right field; the endpoint is IP rate-limited
• Branded emails — login PINs and share notifications are HTML emails styled to match your brand (name, tagline, accent color, CTA button)
• 1-year sessions — cookie lasts 365 days so you rarely need to re-authenticate
• WP admin auto-auth — WordPress administrators are automatically authenticated

Admin & Family Sharing

• Tabbed Dashboard — Overview, Users, Branding, Import, Sync, and Settings are tabs on a single Noodled admin page
• At-a-glance stats — notes, notebooks, users, pending requests, attachments, storage used, trash, drop folders, last sync, version
• User management — invite, approve, remove members and assign roles, all from the dashboard
• Send PIN — issue a member a login PIN from the backend; it's emailed and shown to you so you can relay it directly
• Drop folders — tick a member (or enable at invite time) and they get one folder whose contents are shared read/write with you, appearing in your account under their name; the member sees it as "{Your name}'s noodle"
• Per-notebook & per-note sharing — members share their own notebooks and notes (read or read/write); notes are private by default with no admin god-view
• Landing page preview — preview the public landing page from the dashboard even while signed in
• Branding — custom app name, tagline, accent color, and an uploadable landing page

Privacy & Security

• Private attachments — files are served only through an access-checked proxy (/noodled/v1/file/{id}) that returns a file solely to a logged-in user who can read its note (otherwise 403). The uploads directory denies all direct web access and files are stored under random, unguessable subfolders — nothing is reachable at a public URL.
• Sandboxed HTML/SVG — uploaded HTML/SVG is served with a CSP sandbox so a malicious file can't run scripts in your site's origin
• Fail-safe loading — if the plugin ever throws on load or init, it logs the cause and stays out of the way instead of white-screening the whole site (including wp-admin)
• Everything private by default — notes, notebooks, and attachments are private to their owner unless explicitly shared

Mobile Experience

• Bottom tab bar — Notes, Search, +New, Sync, Menu (replaces desktop toolbar)
• Slide transitions — note content slides in from right, swipe right from left edge to go back
• Swipe between notes — swipe left/right within a note to navigate prev/next
• Pull to refresh — pull down on note list to sync
• Touch feedback — scale-down animations on all tappable elements
• Collapsible editor toolbar — primary buttons visible, overflow in dropdown menu
• PWA support — installable as a home screen app with manifest, icons, and service worker

Organization & Power Tools

• Notebook colors — auto-assigned color dots for visual scanning in sidebar
• Notebook drag reorder — drag notebooks to customize sidebar order
• Notebook cover images — set a header image for any notebook
• Note templates — Meeting Notes, Journal Entry, Project Plan, Quick List presets
• Daily journal — one-click creates/opens today's dated entry in a Journal notebook
• Duplicate note — clone any note from context menu
• Bulk select — checkbox mode to select multiple notes for move or delete
• Quick capture — Ctrl+. floating input bar to jot a thought without leaving current note
• Quick open — Ctrl+P fuzzy search to jump to any note by title
• Focus timer — Pomodoro timer (15/25/45/60 min) with vibration alert on completion
• Note link graph — shows all wiki-link connections between notes
• Statistics dashboard — total notes, words, per-notebook counts, 14-day activity heatmap
• Public sharing — generate a read-only public URL for any note

Data & Reliability

• Auto-save — saves 2 seconds after you stop typing
• Save queue — failed saves are queued and retried every 15 seconds
• Unsaved warning — browser warns before closing with unsaved changes
• Offline support — service worker caches static assets and API responses for offline access
• Remember last note — reopens where you left off
• Dynamic page title — browser tab shows current note title

Architecture

Plugin Structure

noodled-wp/
  noodled.php                          # Main plugin file, constants, hooks
  includes/
    class-noodled-db.php               # 6 tables via dbDelta: notebooks (drop_to), notes, users, permissions, note_permissions, attachments (exif)
    class-noodled-app.php              # Serves full-screen app at /noodled/, auth routing, login modal, landing preview
    class-noodled-rest.php             # 30+ REST API endpoints under noodled/v1, incl. private file proxy
    class-noodled-notes.php            # Note CRUD (DB operations)
    class-noodled-notebooks.php        # Notebook CRUD + drop folders ("{Name}'s noodle" labelling)
    class-noodled-attachments.php      # Private uploads + EXIF extraction; served only via the proxy
    class-noodled-github.php           # GitHub API client (read + write)
    class-noodled-sync.php             # Bidirectional sync, webhook handler, full import
    class-noodled-frontmatter.php      # Markdown frontmatter serialize/parse
    class-noodled-evernote.php         # .enex import (per-user and admin)
    class-noodled-auth.php             # PIN login, magic link, branded emails, session management
    class-noodled-permissions.php      # Per-notebook & per-note read/write access control
    class-noodled-settings.php         # Tabbed admin dashboard (stats, users, branding, import, sync, settings)
    class-noodled-plaud.php            # Plaud API client for voice recording import
  assets/
    js/noodled.js                      # Complete frontend (~2300 lines)
    css/noodled.css                    # Full stylesheet (~1100 lines, dark/light themes)
    sw.js                              # Service worker for offline/caching
    manifest.json                      # PWA manifest
    icon-192.png, icon-512.png         # App icons
  templates/
    app.php                            # Full-screen app shell
    login.php                          # PIN login page
  plugin-update-checker/               # Auto-update from GitHub releases
  package.ps1                          # Build, version, and FTP deploy script

Data Flow

Desktop app (Python/pywebview)
  └─ writes .md files to ~/Documents/noodled-notes/
  └─ git push to GitHub
       └─ webhook or manual sync
            └─ WordPress pulls from GitHub → stores in custom DB tables
                 └─ Web edits save to DB → auto-push to GitHub via Contents API
                      └─ Desktop git pull picks up web changes

REST API (noodled/v1)

• Notebooks — GET/POST /notebooks, POST /notebooks/rename, /notebooks/delete
• Notes — GET/POST /notes, GET/PUT/DELETE /notes/{id}, POST /notes/{id}/move, /notes/{id}/pin, /notes/{id}/share
• Trash — GET/DELETE /trash, GET /trash/count, POST /trash/{id}/restore, DELETE /trash/{id}
• Search — GET /search?q=
• Attachments — POST /attachments, DELETE /attachments/{id}
• File proxy — GET /file/{id} (access-checked private file streaming; returns 403 unless the session can read the note)
• Import — POST /import/evernote (per-user .enex upload)
• Sync — GET /sync/status, POST /sync/push, /sync/pull, /sync/import
• Plaud — GET /plaud/status, POST /plaud/sync
• Auth — POST /auth/login, /auth/pin, /auth/logout, GET /auth/verify (PIN-only, rate-limited), /auth/me
• Sharing — POST /share, /notebooks/{id}/shares, /notes/{id}/shares, GET /shared/{token}
• Config — GET/PUT /config
• Admin — POST /admin/users, DELETE /admin/users/{id}, POST /admin/users/{id}/approve, /admin/users/{id}/drop (drop folder), /admin/users/{id}/pin (send PIN), /admin/permissions

Keyboard Shortcuts

Deployment

Package & Deploy

# Package only (creates zip, copies to Versions and Production)
.\package.ps1

# Package + deploy via FTP
.\package.ps1 -Deploy

The script auto-increments the patch version on each run and updates both noodled.php header and NOODLED_VERSION constant.

Configuration

1. GitHub sync — Settings > Noodled: enter repo owner, name, token, branch
2. Plaud sync — place .env file with PLAUD_TOKEN= in the plugin directory
3. FTP deploy — place .env file with FTP_HOST, FTP_USER, FTP_PASS, FTP_PATH

Requirements

• WordPress 5.9+
• PHP 8.0+
• MySQL with InnoDB (for FULLTEXT search)