WP Manifestindependent plugin directory
manifest / admin / ideas-dashboard-widget

Ideas Inbox

An ideas inbox for your WP dashboard. Drop ideas for your future self to blog about.

by Kelly Hoffman · github.com/kellychoffman/ideas-dashboard-widget

★ 0stars

Install

Download source zip No release zip yet

This is the repository archive. It installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow.

Install straight from GitHub with WP-CLI:

wp plugin install https://github.com/kellychoffman/ideas-dashboard-widget/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
No built-in updater. New versions won't appear under Dashboard → Updates. Install new releases yourself, or let Git Updater track the repository.
Readme github.com/kellychoffman/ideas-dashboard-widget ↗

A dashboard widget for your WordPress site. Drop ideas for your future self to blog about.

Try it in WordPress Playground

Open a live preview — boots a throwaway WordPress site in your browser with the plugin installed and activated. No local setup required.

Every pull request also gets its own preview link posted as a sticky comment, so reviewers can try the proposed change with one click.

What it does

Adds a dashboard widget where you can jot down blog ideas as they hit you, without breaking flow to start a draft. Each idea is saved to your own user account — nobody else sees your list. When an idea is ready to become a post, one click converts it to a draft and opens the editor.

Design notes

This plugin is deliberately small:

  • No custom post type — would add clutter to the admin sidebar for something this lightweight.
  • No custom database table — overkill for a handful of short notes.
  • Stored as a single ideas_inbox user meta entry — one row in wp_usermeta per user, a plain PHP array of { text, time } items.
  • Private by default — per-user storage means the widget is a personal inbox, not a shared team list.
  • Cleans up on uninstall — deleting the plugin removes every user's stored ideas via uninstall.php.

Requirements

  • WordPress 5.0+
  • User needs the edit_posts capability (Contributor and up) to see and use the widget.

Install

  1. Copy the plugin folder to wp-content/plugins/ideas-dashboard-widget/.
  2. Activate it under Plugins in the admin.
  3. Visit your dashboard — the Ideas Inbox widget appears there.

Usage

  • Type an idea into the textarea and click Add idea.
  • The widget shows your 5 most recent ideas in reverse-chronological order. When you have more than 5, a View all ideas link appears at the bottom of the widget.
  • All ideas also live on a dedicated admin screen at Posts → Ideas Inbox, paginated 20 at a time.
  • Each idea has two actions:
    • Turn into draft — creates a draft post with the idea as the content (and a trimmed title), removes it from the inbox, and opens the post editor.
    • Delete — removes the idea from the inbox.

Changelog

0.5.0

  • Click an idea's text in the dashboard widget to load it back into the textarea for editing. The submit button switches to Save, and a Cancel button returns the form to a fresh entry. Editing preserves the idea's original timestamp. Adds PATCH /ideas-inbox/v1/ideas/{id} for the update.

0.4.0

  • Add and delete ideas without a full page reload. Uses a ideas-inbox/v1 REST namespace with wp.apiFetch; the existing admin-post.php handlers stay as the no-JS fallback.
  • Each idea now carries a stable UUID. Existing ideas get IDs assigned lazily on first read.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later