FetchWire — Remote News Feed for Elementor & Gutenberg

FetchWire pulls live posts from any external WordPress site — titles, featured images, excerpts, categories, dates, and author names — and displays them beautifully on your own site. Results are cached locally so your site stays fast. No RSS, no iframes, no plugin needed on the source site. Just a source URL and a layout choice. Now works in Elementor AND Gutenberg. As of version 1.3.0, FetchWire ships a native WordPress block — search for "FetchWire News" in the block inserter and drop it anywhere on your page. No Elementor required. FetchWire is the go-to solution for university portals, corporate news hubs, church networks, and niche blog aggregators that need to pull content from other WordPress-powered sites and present it seamlessly on their own. The 5 Layouts Cards Grid The classic editorial grid. Each post renders as a white card with a featured image on top, a category badge overlaid at the image bottom, a bold title, an excerpt, the publication date, and a "Read more" arrow. Choose 2, 3, or 4 columns. Cards lift slightly on hover. Magazine One large hero post fills the left column with its featured image as a full-bleed background and the title, excerpt, and date overlaid on a dark gradient. The remaining posts stack in a compact sidebar list on the right, each with a small thumbnail and two-line title. On tablets the sidebar drops below the hero as a two-column strip; on phones it becomes a single-column list. List A numbered, editorial-style list. Each row shows an index number, a landscape thumbnail, the category badge, a bold two-line title, a one-line excerpt, and the date. An animated arrow on the right nudges right on hover. Best for dense, scannable feeds. Overlay Dramatic full-bleed image cards where the category badge, title, and date are laid over a dark gradient at the bottom of the image. Portrait aspect ratio on desktop relaxes to landscape on phones. Cards scale up slightly on hover. Choose 2, 3, or 4 columns. Ticker The most compact layout. Numbered rows with a small square thumbnail, the category badge (optional), the post title on one line (truncated with ellipsis), the date, and a right-pointing chevron. Ideal for sidebar widgets or footer news strips. Alternating rows have a subtle background tint. All Layouts Share

• Category name resolved automatically from the source REST API — no manual ID lookup needed for display
• Optional category badge, date, section heading, subheading, and "View All" link
• Per-widget accent colour override, falling back to the active theme's --color-accent CSS variable
• No-image fallback placeholder showing the post title's first two initials on a dark gradient background
• Outgoing links open in a new tab with rel="noopener"
• Fully keyboard-navigable anchor elements

Performance & Developer Notes

• Responses are cached using the WordPress Transients API (configurable from 15 minutes to 24 hours per widget)
• The plugin stylesheet is registered but only enqueued on pages that actually contain the widget, via Elementor's get_style_depends() API
• No JavaScript — all interactivity is pure CSS transitions
• CSS custom properties (--fw-accent, --fw-radius, --fw-gap, --fw-shadow) on the widget wrapper make theme integration straightforward
• Follows WordPress coding standards throughout: esc_html(), esc_url(), esc_attr(), wp_kses_post(), absint(), and sanitize_text_field() on all inputs and outputs
• uninstall.php cleans all plugin transients from wp_options on deletion

From the WordPress Plugin Directory

1. Go to Plugins → Add New in your WordPress dashboard.
2. Search for FetchWire.
3. Click Install Now, then Activate.
4. Open any page in Elementor, search for FetchWire News in the widget panel, and drag it onto the canvas.

Manual Installation

1. Download the plugin ZIP from WordPress.org.
2. Go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
3. Upload the ZIP and click Install Now, then Activate.

Via FTP

1. Extract the ZIP and upload the fetchwire folder to /wp-content/plugins/.
2. Activate via Plugins → Installed Plugins.

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.