RMD Opening Hours self-updates

WordPress plugin to manage regular and seasonal opening hours, show them as a block or shortcode, and announce upcoming changes automatically. Built by reichelt media.design for small business websites (practices, shops, restaurants, service providers).

Features

• Several sets per site, e.g. "Shop" and "Phone hours" or two locations.
• Weekly hours with any number of time slots per day (08:00–12:00 and 14:00–18:00), free-text days ("by appointment"), per-day notes and overnight hours (18:00–02:00).
• Planned periods: closed, the same hours every day, or a different weekly schedule for a date range. Optionally repeating every year (e.g. 24 Dec – 2 Jan).
• German public holidays calculated per federal state, including regional opt-ins (e.g. Corpus Christi in parts of Saxony). One default rule for all holidays (closed by default, shown as a “Public holidays” row after Sunday) and per-holiday overrides: closed, regular hours or special hours.
• Import from text: paste the hours from your old website (table, list or “Dienstag, Donnerstag: 7 - 16 Uhr”) and let the editor fill in the week.
• Blocks and shortcodes for the opening hours (table, list or one line), an automatic notice that appears a configurable number of days before a period and disappears when it is over, and a live "open now" status.
• Works with page caching: the page embeds exact time windows and a small script reveals notices and updates the status at the right moment; known caches are also purged on save.
• Structured data (schema.org openingHoursSpecification and specialOpeningHoursSpecification), optional per set.
• Export/import all sets and settings as JSON.
• Custom capability manage_opening_hours; choose per site which roles get access (administrators always do).
• Built-in help page describing all fields, options and shortcodes.
• Automatic updates from GitHub releases.

Requirements

WordPress 6.8 or newer, PHP 8.1 or newer.

Installation

1. Download rmd-opening-hours.zip from the latest release. Do not use the “Source code” downloads – they lack the built block files, translations and the update library.
2. In WordPress go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the zip and activate it.
3. Open Opening Hours → Add set, enter a name (e.g. "Shop") and your weekly hours.
4. Add the blocks to a page, or paste the shortcode shown next to the set.

Later releases are offered under Dashboard → Updates like any other plugin. The check reads a small update.json attached to the latest release (no GitHub API calls, so no rate limits on shared hosting).

Usage

Sets

A set holds everything for one business or department:

Which hours apply on a given day: a closed period always wins, then a public holiday (unless its rule says "regular hours" or the period is marked "also open on public holidays"), then a period with alternative hours, then the regular week.

Blocks

Shortcodes

[rmd_opening_hours set="shop"]
[rmd_opening_hours set="shop" layout="compact" week="regular" time_style="24h-short"]
[rmd_opening_hours_notice set="shop" lead_days="14"]
[rmd_opening_hours_status set="shop" next="no"]

Settings

Under Opening Hours → Settings: default set, federal state for new sets, time format of the status, lead time and text template of notices, whether visitors may dismiss notices, how far ahead notices and status intervals are embedded for cached pages, structured data on every page, which roles may manage opening hours (administrators always can; e.g. add Editor or Shop Manager), and whether all data is removed when the plugin is deleted.

Opening Hours → Help explains every field, the holiday rules, blocks, shortcode attributes and placeholders directly in the admin area.

Opening Hours → Import/Export downloads a JSON file with all sets and settings, and imports such a file after showing a preview. Sets are matched by slug.

Styling with CSS

All markup uses the rmd-oh prefix and a handful of CSS custom properties. Override them in your theme, for example:

.rmd-oh {
    --rmd-oh-today-bg: #fff3cd;
    --rmd-oh-border: 1px solid #ddd;
}
.rmd-oh-notice {
    --rmd-oh-notice-bg: #e8f4fd;
    --rmd-oh-notice-border: 1px solid #9ec9ee;
}
.rmd-oh-status {
    --rmd-oh-open-color: #1e7e34;
    --rmd-oh-closed-color: #b02a37;
}

Useful classes: .rmd-oh--table / --list / --compact, .rmd-oh__row.is-today, .is-closed, .is-exception (holiday or period), .rmd-oh__note, .rmd-oh-status.is-open / .is-closed, .rmd-oh-notice.is-running. The full list is documented at the top of assets/css/front.css.

Notices are unstyled by default so they inherit your theme. Choose the block style Box (or add class="is-style-box" to the shortcode) for a highlighted box, or target the parts of the text: .rmd-oh-notice__name, __start, __end, __hours, __note, __set.

Developer hooks

• Filter rmd_oh_jsonld( array $graph, SetData $set ) – change or suppress the structured data of a set.
• Action rmd_oh_cache_purged – runs after the plugin asked known page caches to purge; hook custom caches here.
• REST (read-only, public): GET /wp-json/rmd-opening-hours/v1/sets, /status/{slug}, /notices/{slug|all}.
• Constant RMD_OH_FAKE_NOW (only with WP_DEBUG) sets a fake current time, e.g. define( 'RMD_OH_FAKE_NOW', '2026-12-24 09:30' );, to preview holidays and notices.

Privacy

The plugin stores no personal data and makes no external requests, except for checking GitHub for plugin updates from the WordPress admin. Dismissed notices are remembered in the visitor's browser (localStorage) only.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. Uses plugin-update-checker (MIT).