Periscope – Custom Dashboard News Widget

Periscope lets you replace the default “WordPress Events and News” dashboard widget with a fully customizable version that displays news from RSS feeds and events from the WordPress.org API.

Perfect for agencies, developers, and site owners who want to display relevant news sources on the WordPress dashboard instead of the default WordPress.org news.

Features

• Replace or complement the default WordPress news widget
• Customizable widget title
• Events section with WordPress community events and editable location
• News section with aggregated RSS feeds sorted by date
• Add unlimited RSS feeds with URL validation before adding
• Configure items per feed and maximum total items displayed
• Configurable footer links for both events and news sections
• Automatic feed caching with configurable duration
• Fully translatable (all URLs are translatable for locale support)
• Clean, native WordPress admin styling
• Two-column settings page with meta box layout
• Cache management tools

Default Feeds

The plugin comes pre-configured with these feeds (you can change them):

• WordPress News (wordpress.org)
• Matt Mullenweg’s blog (ma.tt)
• Make WordPress Project
• WordPress España News
• AyudaWP

External services

This plugin connects to the following external services:

WordPress.org Events API

This plugin uses the WordPress.org Events API to retrieve WordPress community events (meetups, WordCamps) near the user’s location. The user’s configured location and locale are sent to the API when the dashboard widget is loaded or when the location is updated in the settings page.

• Service: WordPress.org Events API
• Data sent: city/location name, user locale, and timezone
• WordPress.org Privacy Policy

RSS feeds

This plugin fetches RSS feeds from URLs configured by the site administrator. By default it includes feeds from wordpress.org, ma.tt, make.wordpress.org, and ayudawp.com, but administrators can add, remove, or change feeds in the settings page. Feed content is cached locally for the configured cache duration.

• Data sent: standard HTTP requests to the configured feed URLs
• No personal user data is transmitted to the feed providers

Support

Need private support or custom development?

Do you need one-on-one help, priority troubleshooting, or a custom feature, integration, or tweak built specifically for your site? I offer private support and custom development. Just contact me and tell me what you need.

Need help or have suggestions?

• Official website
• WordPress support forum
• YouTube channel
• Documentation and tutorials

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About AyudaWP

We are specialists in WordPress security, SEO, and performance optimization plugins. We create tools that solve real problems for WordPress site owners while maintaining the highest coding standards and accessibility requirements.

1. Upload the periscopio folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Go to Settings > Periscope to configure your feeds
4. Visit your Dashboard to see the new widget