Leadovation Aerodrome METAR TAF

A student opens the club's website on Saturday morning to see whether the lesson holds. The instructor opens the same page to see what the TAF says for the afternoon slot. The webmaster who built that page has never read a METAR in his life, and should not have to. Aerodrome METAR TAF puts the field's weather on the club's own site, readable by all three. The METAR and the TAF come from the NOAA Aviation Weather Center, are decoded into plain words, and are shown with the flight category first, in cards that follow the site's theme. The raw message stays one click away for the pilots who read the code. It is written for a flying club or a flight school. One main aerodrome served by default, the club's own runways for the crosswind, a legal notice that points to the official sources, and a settings screen a volunteer webmaster gets through in five minutes. Free, and genuinely usable The free version runs a whole club on its own. There is no cap on the number of aerodromes, no cap on the number of displays, and no screen that switches off.

• The raw message. The METAR or the TAF exactly as received, in a monospaced block, for the pilots who read the code.
• A compact bar. One line, ICAO, category, wind, visibility, ceiling, QNH, at the top or the bottom of a page without crowding it.
• A badge. The category alone, colour and shape, with the observation time. Fits in a title, a menu, a sidebar.
• A decoded card, METAR and TAF. Wind, visibility, clouds, temperature, QNH, in words. A TAF is read as a TAF: the base forecast with its validity, then one line per change period (BECMG, TEMPO, FM, PROB) with its own time window. The badge is the category of the period in progress and says so ("now", "from 18:00 UTC"); the worst case over the whole validity, TEMPO and PROB included, is written underneath instead of colouring the head. An expired TAF is greyed and says it.
• A compact card. The same decoded card made dense for a column or a footer: one header line, then a grid of pairs. The flat skin removes its background and border so it melts into a column the theme already styles.
• A tabbed panel. METAR and TAF in one frame, two tabs, one footer each, so the category under the TAF tab is the TAF's.
• Station details. Elevation, runways, frequencies. The figures come from OurAirports, with the date of the extract shown; the club can correct any field from the back office, and a corrected field reads "verified against the VAC chart".
• A visitor selector. An ICAO field, a button, the result below. The visitor picks the aerodrome.
• A multi-aerodrome table. One line per aerodrome, category, wind, visibility, ceiling, observation time. No limit on the number of aerodromes.
• Wind on the club's runway. Total wind, gust and crosswind component on the runway the club actually uses, on every card that shows wind.
• A single field. One value to drop into a sentence: "QNH 1016 hPa" right where your page needs it.
• A disclaimer with the official links. The legal text, with Aéroweb, OLIVIA and SIA, under each card, once per page, or never, as the setting says. One display can opt out on its own.
• A webcam. The image of the club's own webcam, refreshed, time-stamped.
• Settings that fit on one screen. Your main aerodrome, wind unit (knots, km/h, m/s), the category profile with a plain explanation of what NOAA and metric mean and why neither is a regulation, UTC and local time or one of the two, and the disclaimer text and position.
• An Integration tab that shows before you copy. Pick a display, set its options (METAR or TAF, size, theme, skin, disclaimer, field), watch the real preview change, then copy the shortcode or the block. Same options, same names, whichever way you integrate.
• Gutenberg blocks, complete. One "Aerodrome METAR TAF" block in the Aero category carries every display and every option the shortcodes accept. Pages built with the six blocks of the 1.x still render.
• Categories in colour and in shape. VFR, MVFR, IFR and LIFR each have a colour and a distinct dot shape, and the text is always next to the dot: colour alone never carries the information.
• Two ages, never confused. "Observed at 17:30 UTC (19:30 local time)" on every card, next to "fetched 2 min ago". Freshness is judged on the time of the observation, and a message more than two hours old is greyed and says so.
• A source that says when it falls. The dashboard shows the health of the NOAA source in green only when the last request succeeded, and "unreachable since 17:52" in red otherwise, with the last known message kept and marked as such.
• METAR AUTO read to the end. BKN008///, VV///, 12///, Q////, runway visual range and directional visibility no longer stop the decoder halfway. SPECI, AMD and COR are decoded and tagged.

Aerodrome METAR TAF Pro, a separate plugin Aerodrome METAR TAF Pro is a separate download from the publisher, which replaces this plugin and keeps its settings, for the club that wants its own rules on the page. The free plugin is complete on its own: nothing described below is part of it, and nothing in it waits for anything. Pro adds.

• Conditions of the day, against the Club thresholds. A green, orange or red light per profile, period by period, on the TAF of the day. Three profiles (student, pilot, instructor), two thresholds per criterion (a warning figure, then a stop figure) for wind, gust, crosswind, ceiling and visibility, plus the phenomena each profile rules out (fog, thunderstorm, freezing...). The club writes what it allows; the plugin compares and never says whether the day is good to fly. A compact light for a single profile fits in a sidebar.
• A TAF timeline. The forecast hour by hour, so the best slot can be chosen on the page.
• A wind rose on the runways. The wind drawn against the runway headings, the active runway at a glance.
• A club-house screen. Fills the whole screen and rotates on its own, for the television by the coffee machine.
• A scrolling banner. The conditions scroll like a news feed and take no vertical space.
• Student mode. Every part of the METAR and the TAF explained token by token, to learn to read the weather during training.
• Avada elements. The displays as native Fusion Builder elements, under "WPTechnology", with the same options as the shortcodes.
• In the colours of the club. An Appearance card in the settings: the club's accent colour and logo in the card headers, the NWS palette for the categories (blue MVFR, magenta LIFR) as an alternative to the Aero one, the fonts of the theme instead of the range's, square or rounded corners, a dark default or the visitor's own setting, and a box of additional CSS scoped to the displays. A live preview shows the real cards while you choose. The 3 px stripe and the dot shapes never change: they carry the information.

See what Pro adds and what it costs. Part of the Aero range Aerodrome METAR TAF is one of the WPTechnology plugins written for flight schools and flying clubs. They share the same look and the same idea: one job each, done properly, and they talk to each other when installed side by side.

• Aero Courses: theory course scheduling and booking, the semester built once and published on the school's site.
• Aero Users: the school's roster (students, pilots, instructors, examiners) shared by the whole range.

Translations The plugin is written in English. What this plugin does not claim The data is provided for information only. It is not an approved source for flight preparation: for that, the pilot goes to the national weather service and the aeronautical information service (in France, Aéroweb, OLIVIA and the SIA), and the plugin's own disclaimer says so with the links. The decision to fly, and how, remains the pilot in command's. The VFR, MVFR, IFR and LIFR categories are a display convention, NOAA's or an indicative metric transposition of it, and have no regulatory value: they are not EASA or SERA minima. The Club thresholds of the Pro version are the club's own figures, entered by the club, and the plugin claims nothing about them beyond comparing a forecast to them. Third-party services The plugin fetches the METAR, the TAF and, as a fallback for station details, aerodrome metadata from the public API of the NOAA Aviation Weather Center. What is sent is the ICAO code of the aerodrome asked for (LFPN, say), when a display is rendered, when the dashboard is opened, or when the cache is refreshed. No personal data is sent, and no API key is needed. Terms and notices: weather.gov/disclaimer. Station details (elevation, runways) come first from OurAirports, whose airports.csv and runways.csv are published as public domain data (CC0, no attribution required). A filtered extract of those two files is bundled with the plugin, in data/aerodromes.json, and read from disk: no network call is ever made to OurAirports, nothing about your site leaves it, and the date of the extract is shown on every station card. OurAirports terms. The plugin bundles the Freemius SDK, the shop through which Pro is sold, and which also offers anonymous usage statistics if you agree to them on activation. You are asked, you may decline, and declining changes nothing about how the plugin works. Freemius is contacted to read the current price of the Pro plan shown on the dashboard (a public request that carries nothing about your site) and, with your consent, to send those statistics. Service: Freemius · terms · privacy. The dashboard shows the other plugins of the Aero range. That list is read from wptechnology.com, the publisher's own site, at most once a day and only when an administrator opens the dashboard: a plain GET on a public address, with nothing about your site in it. If the site does not answer, the last list received is shown, or the one bundled with the plugin. Whether a plugin is installed here is read locally and never sent. Legal notice · privacy. The webcam image is an address the club enters in the settings; the plugin neither chooses it nor calls it. It is loaded by the visitor's browser, from wherever the club pointed it.

1. In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New and search for Aerodrome METAR TAF, then click "Install Now" and activate. (Or upload the zip from Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.)
2. Open the Aerodrome METAR TAF menu and choose your main aerodrome by its ICAO code. Every display proposed in the Integration tab and every new block starts on it.
3. Put a display on a page: the "Aerodrome METAR TAF" block in the block editor (Aero category), or a shortcode. The Integration tab writes either one for you, with the options you picked.

The shortcode grammar is one tag, a view, an ICAO code, then options: [aero_weather decoded LFPN type="taf" size="compact" theme="dark" skin="flat" disclaimer="no"] gives the decoded TAF card, dense, dark, without background, and without the legal notice under it. [aero_weather table LFPN,LFPO,LFPT] gives one line per aerodrome, as many as you list. [aero_weather data LFPN field="qnh"] gives the single value, to drop into a sentence. The views are metar and taf (raw message), compact, badge, decoded, panel, data, station, selector and table. Four displays have their own tag: [aero_weather_station icao="LFPN"], [aero_weather_selector icao="LFPN"], [aero_weather_webcam icao="LFPN"] and [aero_weather_disclaimer]. Only the options that differ from the defaults need writing.

2.2.6

• Updated Freemius SDK to the latest version.
• Uninstalling the plugin also removes the airfield records it kept from the weather service.
• Other plugins read the airfield weather through a stable developer interface, Aero\Weather\Api.

2.2.5

• In the Aero range card of the dashboard, each plugin name reads the same way: Aerodrome METAR TAF shows “Aero” in black, “drome” in grey and “Metar Taf” in colour.

2.2.4

• The admin menu reads “Aero Metar Taf”, which fits on one line of the WordPress sidebar; the screen keeps its full name.

2.2.3

• Every value placed in a display (wind, temperature, labels, classes) is escaped where it is written, and every display returned to WordPress goes through the list of allowed tags.

2.2.2

• Every display rendered inside another one (the visitor selector, the blocks, the template tags, the live previews) goes through the same list of allowed tags before it is returned.

2.2.1

• Filter output entering a rendered card is escaped like the rest; the cache lock is atomic.

2.2.0

• Renamed Leadovation Aerodrome METAR TAF; the on-screen name is Aerodrome METAR TAF.
• Settings are sanitized field by field: every name, every address and every ICAO code entered in the webcams and the groups is checked before it is stored, and an address that is neither http nor https is refused.
• The Integration tab hands you, for every display it lists, a shortcode that works.

2.1.3

• The Aero Core base moves to 1.5.0 and knows Aero Fleet's place in the menu.

2.1.2

• The Aero range card on the dashboard now reads the list of the range from wptechnology.com, once a day at most, so that a plugin published later appears without an update; the last list received, or the bundled one, serves when the site does not answer.

2.1.1

• Translations now come through translate.wordpress.org and install themselves.

2.1.0

• theme="auto" on every display: the card follows the visitor's light or dark setting.
• The club, ecole and fbo skins are gone; flat stays.

2.0.4

• The dashboard says plainly which aerodromes are followed and how fresh the source is.

2.0.3

• The unified [aero_weather] shortcode falls back to the raw message for an unknown view, instead of leaving the page blank.

2.0.2

• The link to the plans goes straight to the pricing page instead of an empty screen.

2.0.1

• Freemius SDK updated to 2.13.4.
• The price line on the dashboard shows the monthly price as the shop states it.

2.0.0

• The front joins the Aero range. Every display now shares one anatomy (station and category in the head, a body, an age and a notice in the foot), the fonts and the palette of the range, a 3 px category stripe on the left edge, and a light and a dark theme that follow the site unless the shortcode says otherwise. Categories are coded in colour and in shape, with LIFR as its own colour; the text is always next to the dot.
• The TAF is read as a TAF. Base forecast, then one line per change period with its window and category. The badge is the category of the period in progress and says so; the worst case is written underneath. An expired TAF is greyed.
• Two ages on every card. "Observed at 17:30 UTC (19:30 local time)" next to "fetched 2 min ago". Freshness is judged on the observation; a message more than two hours old is marked as expired.
• The source says when it falls. Green only when the last request succeeded, "unreachable since HH:MM" in red otherwise, with the last known message kept and marked.
• Station details from OurAirports. Elevation and runways come from a bundled public-domain extract (CC0), dated on the card; the NOAA airport data remains as a fallback and for frequencies. The club can correct every field, and a corrected field reads "verified against the VAC chart".
• Multi-aerodrome table and crosswind. One line per aerodrome with no cap; total wind, gust and crosswind component on the club's runway on every card that shows wind.
• One Gutenberg block for everything. The "Aerodrome METAR TAF" block, in the Aero category, carries every display and every option; the six blocks of the 1.x remain as hidden aliases so existing pages still render.
• The Integration tab replaces the test bench. Two levels: the decoded card and the panel in large, then the utilities; every option per display, a real preview that never goes blank, and the output as shortcode or block. Options are declared once and offered identically in the tab, the blocks and the Avada elements.
• Settings rewritten. Main aerodrome, asked for when the plugin is first opened and proposed everywhere; wind unit (knots, km/h, m/s); the category profile explained in plain words with its lack of regulatory value stated; UTC and local time, or one of the two; the disclaimer shown under each card, once per page, or never, in the words the club chooses.
• One option registry for the three ways of integrating. The shortcodes, the blocks and the Integration tab read the same declarations, so an option is named and behaves the same way whichever route you take.
• Uninstall runs through Freemius. Cleanup hangs from the after_uninstall hook instead of uninstall.php, so Freemius no longer believes the plugin is still installed.

1.12.0

• The badge on a TAF card is the category of the period in progress, and says so ("now", "from 18:00 UTC"); the worst case over the validity, TEMPO and PROB included, is written underneath instead of colouring the head. An expired TAF is greyed and says it. Validity is shown against the present time.
• Two ages, never confused again: "observed at 17:30 UTC (19:30 local time)" on every card and in the dashboard, next to "fetched 2 min ago". Freshness is judged on the observation, not on the download.
• The source status is green only when the last request succeeded; otherwise "Source unreachable since HH:MM" in red, and the test bench shows the last known message marked stale.
• Absence messages tell apart a field with no weather station, a field that never publishes a TAF, and a TAF not issued yet today (ATS hours).
• The tabbed panel follows the site theme (light or dark) unless the shortcode says otherwise, shows the ICAO once, and its footer badge matches the open tab.
• One wind notation everywhere: "320° 17 kt, gusting 25 kt". Two raw shortcodes in a row no longer run into each other. The weather icon shows on a METAR only.
• Station card: the NOAA elevation is in metres and is now converted, "499 ft (152 m)"; QFE and density altitude use feet; runway surface reads "paved" or "unpaved" instead of a code. The crosswind shows the gust component too.
• SPECI, AMD and COR appear as tags on the cards.
• Removed the dead setting "How do your visitors see the weather?" and the leftover MAX pill. TAF refreshed every 3 hours (short French TAFs). Every bench description is translated.

1.11.0

• METAR AUTO read to the end: BKN008///, ///015, VV///, VV002, 12///, Q////, runway visual range (R25/0400N, R27L/P2000) and directional visibility (1200SW, 9999NDV) no longer stop the decoder halfway, which used to lose the ceiling, the temperature and the QNH and show a 800 ft ceiling as VFR. An unknown token is kept aside and the message goes on.
• SPECI reports are decoded like a METAR and flagged. The raw display keeps AMD and COR on an amended or corrected TAF.
• METAR trend (NOSIG, BECMG, TEMPO) decoded.
• Flight categories: the MVFR boundary is inclusive as the NWS defines it (a 3,000 ft ceiling or 5 SM is MVFR), in both profiles.
• TAF change groups inherit the base forecast: a TEMPO 4000 RA under BKN008 is IFR; a wind-only BECMG keeps the CAVOK it was given. An unknown category stays unknown instead of being called VFR, and the worst case ignores it.
• One category profile for the whole plugin: the METAR and TAF decoders now receive the site's setting; two badges on the same page cannot disagree any more.

1.10.0

• Compact decoded card: size="compact" on the decoded card gives a dense version for a column or a footer, in a 280 px column about 110 px tall for a METAR. The test bench offers Full card / Compact card under the decoded card.
• skin="flat" on the decoded card and the panel: no background, no border, colours inherited from the column around it.
• The TAF periods now read short: "Day 15 · 11h → 13h UTC" instead of a full sentence, in the large card too.
• The Aerodrome METAR TAF widget lists its displays by name (compact bar, raw message, badge, decoded card, compact decoded card, tabbed panel) instead of asking for a view keyword.

1.9.0

• The decoded card now decodes a TAF as a TAF: the base forecast with its validity period, then one line per change period (BECMG, TEMPO, FM, PROB) with its own time window and category. It used to read the fields of a METAR and show dashes.
• The tabbed panel shows the base forecast too. A TAF with no change period (a CAVOK day at LFPN, say) left the TAF tab empty.
• PROB30 TEMPO is read as one period, with its probability.
• The raw display drops the leading METAR / TAF keyword the source writes: the page already knows what it shows.
• disclaimer="no" on the decoded card or the panel leaves the legal notice out for that widget only. The test bench offers it as a tick box and the Avada decoded element as a setting.
• The panel tabs answer inside content loaded after the page (the test bench preview, AJAX-loaded blocks).

1.8.2

• Test bench: the METAR/TAF switch now drives the preview too. The copied shortcode said taf while the preview, rebuilt server-side from the card's template, still showed the METAR. The two cards concerned are named "Raw METAR / TAF" and "Decoded card".

1.8.1

• The admin menu icon now carries the Aero range signature: the cloud, with the small aircraft profile in its notch, like Aero Courses and Aero Users.

1.8.0

• The Integration screen lists every display, with its options and the shortcode to copy.
• The admin menu icon takes the Aero range signature: the cloud, with the small aircraft profile in its notch.

1.7.0

• The plugin is written in English.

1.4.0

• Every display this package carries works for any number of aerodromes: raw message, compact bar, badge, decoded card, tabbed panel, station details, visitor selector, multi-aerodrome table, aerodrome groups.

1.3.0

• The admin screen adopts the aero product line design.

1.2.0

• Public names (shortcodes, options, hooks, CSS classes) join the aero product line.

1.1.0

• The plugin joins the aero product line: shared core, registry, roles.

1.0.0

• First release under the WPTechnology brand (derived from WPTafMetar2).
• Unified flight category engine (NOAA and European metric profiles).
• Optional, editable "for information only" disclaimer.