About this plugin
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. 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
Widget Settings Reference
Source (Content Tab)
- Section Heading — Optional heading rendered above the feed (e.g. “Latest News”). Leave blank to hide.
- Subheading — Optional subtitle rendered below the heading.
- Source Website URL — The full URL of any WordPress site with its REST API enabled (e.g. https://example.com ). Required.
- Number of Posts — How many posts to fetch. Range: 1–50. Default: 6.
- Excerpt Length (words) — Word count for the auto-generated excerpt. Range: 5–100. Default: 18.
- Cache Duration — How long fetched data is cached before a fresh request is made. Options: 15 min, 30 min, 1 hr (default), 3 hr, 24 hr.
- Category ID (optional) — Numeric ID of a category on the source site to filter posts by.
- Tag ID (optional) — Numeric ID of a tag on the source site to filter posts by.
- “View All” URL — If set, renders a “View All → ” link aligned to the right of the section heading.
Layout (Content Tab)
- View — Visual selector for the 5 layouts: Cards, Magazine, List, Overlay, Ticker.
- Columns — Number of columns for the Cards and Overlay layouts (2, 3, or 4). Not applicable to Magazine, List, or Ticker.
- Show Excerpt — Toggle excerpt display on Cards, Magazine, and List layouts.
- Show Category Badge — Toggle the red category pill across all layouts.
- Show Date — Toggle the publication date across all layouts.
Style (Style Tab)
- Accent Color — Overrides the category badge colour, “Read more” link colour, and hover highlights. Defaults to the active theme’s --color-accent CSS variable, then #c8102e.
- Card Border Radius — Slider controlling the corner radius on cards, list items, and overlay cards. Default: 12 px.
- Title Typography — Full Elementor typography group control for post titles.
- Excerpt Typography — Full Elementor typography group control for excerpt text.
Privacy Policy
FetchWire makes server-side HTTP requests from your WordPress installation to the REST API of the source WordPress site you configure ( /wp-json/wp/v2/posts ). These requests are made using wp_remote_get() and fetch only publicly available post data (titles, excerpts, featured images, categories, dates, and author names).
No visitor data is collected, transmitted, or stored by this plugin. All fetched data is cached locally in your WordPress database via the Transients API and is scoped to your server — it is never sent to any third party.
All transients created by FetchWire are automatically removed from your database when the plugin is deleted via Plugins → Delete.
If you have questions about the data practices of the external WordPress site you are fetching from, please refer to that site’s own privacy policy.