FetchWire — Remote News Feed for Elementor & Gutenberg

Changelog

1.3.0

Gutenberg block — major new feature.

Added

  • Native Gutenberg block (fetchwire/news-feed) — FetchWire News now works in the WordPress block editor without Elementor. Search for “FetchWire News” in the block inserter.
  • All 5 layouts available in the block: Cards Grid, Magazine, List, Overlay, and Ticker — identical output to the Elementor widget.
  • Visual icon-based layout picker in the block sidebar with tooltips — no text labels to scroll past.
  • Full sidebar controls: source URL, post count, excerpt length, cache duration, category ID, tag ID, section heading, subheading, “View All” URL, column count (Cards and Overlay), show/hide excerpt, category badge, and date toggles, and accent colour picker.
  • Supports wide and full alignment via the block toolbar.
  • Server-side rendered — no JavaScript on the frontend, consistent with the Elementor widget.
  • Block stylesheet reuses the existing fetchwire-style handle — no extra CSS loaded.

1.2.0

Responsive & CSS architecture overhaul — no breaking changes.

Added

  • Six responsive breakpoints at 1200 px, 1024 px, 900 px, 768 px, 520 px, and 380 px, covering every major device class from small Android phones to 4K desktops.
  • CSS custom properties on .fw-wrap: –fw-accent, –fw-radius, –fw-gap, and –fw-shadow, making per-widget and per-theme overrides cleaner and more predictable.
  • box-sizing: border-box scoped to the widget wrapper so padding cannot break card dimensions inside themes that still use content-box globally.
  • overflow-x: hidden and max-width: 100% on .fw-wrap to prevent any internal layout from causing page-level horizontal scroll.
  • min-width constraints on thumbnail images to prevent flex containers from collapsing them.
  • min-width: 0 on grid items (.fw-card, .fw-overlay-card) to prevent min-content blowout in CSS Grid.
  • minmax(0, 1fr) column tracks replacing plain 1fr, permanently fixing the overflow scrollbar that appeared when 4 cards exceeded their container width.
  • Fluid typography via clamp() on post titles across all layouts, scaling smoothly between breakpoints without hard pixel jumps.
  • Minimum touch-target heights: 60 px on Ticker rows, 88 px on List rows, meeting WCAG 2.5.5 guidelines.

Improved

  • Magazine layout — secondary sidebar switches to a 2-column strip below the featured post at 900 px; collapses to single column at 600 px. Sidebar column width narrows to 260 px at 1024 px.
  • Overlay layout — aspect ratio transitions from portrait 2/3 → 3/4 at 768 px → 4/3 at 520 px so cards remain a comfortable height on small screens.
  • List layout — excerpt hidden at 520 px; both row number and excerpt hidden at 380 px to keep rows uncluttered.
  • Ticker layout — row number hidden at 520 px; thumbnail shrinks to 38 px at 380 px so the row stays on one line.
  • Cards layout — featured image now uses position: absolute; inset: 0 with object-fit: cover rather than the percentage padding-top trick, giving sharper rendering and simpler theming.
  • Plugin stylesheet now registered on both wp_enqueue_scripts and elementor/frontend/after_register_styles so Elementor’s asset manager can always resolve it regardless of page-load hook order.
  • readme.txt fully restructured for WordPress.org reviewer requirements: complete widget reference, Privacy Policy section, Screenshots list, and Upgrade Notice entries.
  • Plugin file header updated with all required fields: Requires at least, Requires PHP, Domain Path.

Fixed

  • Category badge (.fw-cat) was stretching full-width inside flex column containers. Fixed with align-self: flex-start and width: fit-content.
  • Magazine secondary grid: border-bottom was incorrectly stripped from all penultimate items in 2-column state. Now only the true last row loses its separator.
  • Overlay no-image placeholder did not fill the card height without a background-image. Fixed with position: absolute; inset: 0 on the inner element.
  • Horizontal overflow scrollbar on 4-column Overlay and Cards grids caused by 1fr inheriting min-width: auto from grid children. Fixed with minmax(0, 1fr) tracks and min-width: 0 on all grid items.

1.1.0

Five new layouts — major feature release.

Added

  • Five display layouts selectable from the Elementor widget panel via a visual icon chooser: Cards Grid, Magazine, List, Overlay, Ticker.
  • Automatic category name resolution from _embedded[‘wp:term’] in the REST API response — no manual ID lookup needed for display.
  • Section heading, subheading, and “View All” URL controls.
  • Per-widget accent colour override, falling back to the active theme’s –color-accent CSS custom property, then #c8102e.
  • No-image fallback placeholder for all five layouts, showing the post title’s first two initials on a dark gradient.
  • Show Excerpt, Show Category Badge, and Show Date toggle controls.
  • Card border radius slider with Elementor selectors binding.
  • get_style_depends() on the Elementor widget class — the plugin stylesheet is loaded only on pages that contain the widget.
  • uninstall.php — deletes all _transient_fetchwire_* and _transient_timeout_fetchwire_* rows from wp_options when the plugin is removed.
  • Author name extracted from _embedded[‘author’][0][‘name’] and stored in the post array for future layout use.

Improved

  • class-fetchwire-logic.php refactored: excerpt cleaner now strips … HTML entities and trims whitespace before splitting by word count.
  • Transient key now factors in excerpt_length so changing the word count correctly busts the cache.
  • wp_strip_all_tags() applied to post titles before storage to prevent HTML entities from leaking into layout markup.

1.0.0

  • Initial public release.
  • Single grid layout with 1–4 column options.
  • WordPress Transients API caching with a configurable duration.
  • Category and tag filtering by numeric ID.
  • Elementor widget with source URL, post count, excerpt length, and image aspect ratio controls.

Plugin Website
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Version:
1.3.0
Last Updated
May 14, 2026
Active Installs
10
Requires
WordPress 5.8
Tested Up To
WordPress 6.8.5
Requires PHP
7.4

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