Description
ITBoffins Live Opening Hours Banner & Table helps small businesses show dynamic opening hours on a page, plus a friendly We’re open / Sorry, we’re closed notice bar.
The opening-hours table and live banner both work from the same schedule you save in WordPress. They update in the visitor’s browser, so customers see the right opening status even when your site is cached for speed.
Why you’ll like it
- One schedule, two customer views. Power a dynamic opening-hours table and live banner from the same WordPress settings.
- Dynamic opening-hours table. Show your regular week and upcoming changes on any page with a block or shortcode.
- Live open/closed banner. Tell customers if you are open, closed, opening soon, or closing soon.
- Flexible banner layout. Keep the notice sticky or let it scroll away, and choose whether a top notice makes room or sits over the page.
- Easy weekly hours. Mark each day Open or Closed, set times with simple pickers, add lunch breaks, and copy Monday’s hours across the week in one click.
- Your own timezone. Follow the WordPress site timezone or pick a city for the schedule itself (for example America/Anchorage), with a live clock on the settings screen so you can see the time the plugin is using.
- Public special dates & one-off changes. Add bank holidays, Christmas closures, early finishes, special Saturdays, or appointment-only dates.
- UK bank-holiday helper. Add the standard England & Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland bank holidays as closed dates for the year.
- Upcoming changes. Tell customers about future closures or special hours before the day arrives.
- Separate bank-holiday notices. Show bank holidays only within 7 days, show all future bank holidays, or keep them out of upcoming notices while manual special dates stay visible.
- Cleaner notice layout. Multiple upcoming dates wrap as separate date/time items, with the date in bold and the hours in normal weight.
- Automatic cleanup. Expired special dates drop out after any overnight opening has finished.
- Special-dates-only mode. Turn your regular week off entirely for pop-ups, events, or by-appointment businesses.
- Works with fast/cached sites. The page hours and live banner stay fresh even when WordPress or your host caches the page.
- Daylight saving handled. Choose a city timezone (not a fixed UTC offset) and the clocks change automatically.
- Overnight hours. Late-night venues are handled, such as 22:00-02:00.
- Genuinely free & self-hosted. No external API, no account, no tracking, and nothing sent off-site.
Privacy
ITBoffins Live Opening Hours Banner & Table stores the schedule and notice-bar settings in your WordPress database. It includes the saved hours, dates, labels, and public notes in public page data so each visitor’s browser can keep cached pages current. It does not connect to external services, set tracking cookies, or send visitor data off-site. Do not enter confidential information in a schedule note. If a customer closes the notice bar, that preference is remembered only in their browser.
License
This plugin and its bundled assets, including logo.png, are distributed under the GPLv2 or later.
Screenshots
Blocks
This plugin provides 1 block.
- Live Opening Hours
Installation
- Upload the
itboffins-live-opening-hoursfolder to/wp-content/plugins/, or install through the Plugins screen. - Activate the plugin.
- Go to Live Opening Hours in the admin menu, set your weekly hours, and save.
- Optionally add the Live Opening Hours block or the
[iboh_opening_hours]shortcode to a page.
FAQ
-
What makes it live?
-
The page table and notice bar use your saved schedule in the visitor’s browser. That lets the open/closed message and today’s row stay current without you editing the page.
-
Does it still work if my site is cached or uses WP Rocket?
-
Yes. The open/closed banner, today’s row, and upcoming-date notices are worked out in the visitor’s browser, so they stay correct on a cached page. When you edit the hours, the plugin asks common caching plugins to refresh so the new schedule reaches visitors.
-
Which timezone is used?
-
By default, your site’s WordPress timezone (Settings -> General). The Timezone card on the Live Opening Hours screen can instead pin the schedule to a city of its own. The „Right now it is…“ line under the customer preview shows the time the plugin is working from, so you can check it at a glance. Always choose a city (such as Europe/London or America/Anchorage) rather than a „UTC-9“-style offset: a fixed offset never changes for daylight saving, so the plugin would run an hour out for part of the year.
-
The open/closed clock is an hour out. How do I fix it?
-
Your timezone is almost certainly set to a fixed UTC offset. For example, Alaska is UTC-9 in winter but UTC-8 in summer, so a site set to „UTC-9“ runs an hour behind from March to November. Open Live Opening Hours, look at the „Right now it is…“ line under the preview, and in the Timezone card choose the nearest city (America/Anchorage for Alaska). The plugin warns you whenever a fixed offset is in use.
-
Why did my change not appear on the site straight away?
-
The live open/closed status always updates in the visitor’s browser. The schedule itself, though, is part of the page, so if you use a page-caching plugin the new hours appear once that cache is refreshed. Saving asks WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache, LiteSpeed Cache, SiteGround Optimizer, Autoptimize, Cache Enabler, Breeze, Hummingbird, and Nginx Helper to clear automatically; other caches, including host-level caches, may need clearing by hand.
-
Does it use my WordPress time format?
-
Yes. Displayed hours support the wall-clock tokens
G,H,g,h,i,s,a, andA, plus backslash-escaped literals. Other PHP date-format characters remain literal because a saved opening time is not a complete timestamp from which timezone- or instant-dependent tokens can be calculated reliably. -
Can I quickly add bank holidays?
-
Yes. In Live Opening Hours, use the bank-holiday helper inside Holidays & one-off dates. Choose England & Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland, pick the year, and add the standard dates as closed dates. One-off public holidays can still be added manually.
-
How do I set different hours for one day, or mark a day closed?
-
In Your regular week, every day has an Open / Closed switch. Choose Open and the day gets a time you can edit (add another for a lunch break); choose Closed and the day shows „Closed all day“. For a single date, add it under Holidays & one-off dates and pick „Closed all day“ or „Open with different hours“.
-
Can I set a lunch break or split hours?
-
Yes. Add more than one time range to a day, for example 09:00-12:00 and 13:00-17:00.
-
Can I open past midnight?
-
Yes. Set a closing time earlier than the opening time, for example 22:00-02:00.
-
How do I show hours on a page?
-
Use the Live Opening Hours block in the editor, or paste one of these shortcodes into a page:
[iboh_opening_hours show="table"],[iboh_opening_hours show="status"], or[iboh_opening_hours show="both"]. -
Does it send any data anywhere?
-
No. There is no external API and no tracking. Everything runs on your own site. To keep cached pages current, the saved hours, dates, labels, and public notes are included in the page data and evaluated in each visitor’s browser. Do not put confidential information in a schedule note.
Reviews
Contributors & Developers
“ITBoffins Live Opening Hours Banner & Table” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “ITBoffins Live Opening Hours Banner & Table” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.2.0
- New: a Timezone card lets the schedule follow the WordPress site timezone or a city of its own, with a live „Right now it is…“ clock and a warning whenever a fixed UTC offset (which never follows daylight saving) is in use.
- New: redesigned settings screen. Every weekday and special date has a clear Open / Closed switch; choosing Open fills in hours straight away, hours are kept when a day is closed, dates show their weekday and move into date order once edited, bank holidays are badged, overnight times say so, the preview honours „Show notice bar“, unsaved changes are flagged, and there is a Save button next to the preview.
- New: „Copy Monday’s hours“ can fill Tuesday-Friday, Tuesday-Saturday, or every day, asks before overwriting, and confirms what it did.
- Fix: an open day or date saved without complete hours, a half-filled time, or a duplicated date now produces a clear warning instead of being changed silently.
- Fix: a very large form that PHP truncates (max_input_vars) is refused with an explanation instead of deleting special dates and resetting the notice bar.
- Fix: yesterday’s special date stays in the editor until midnight, so it can be corrected or removed while it can still affect the early hours of today; saving after switching to a timezone that is behind keeps the dates that are still current there.
- Fix: a close at midnight is shown as „Closes at 00:00“ in the afternoon and evening rather than with tomorrow’s date, and a stored 24:00 closing time now opens in the editor as a midnight close instead of an empty field that was dropped on save.
- Fix: browsers without working time-zone support follow daylight saving on cached pages via a shipped transition table.
- Fix: saving asks common page caches to refresh so edited hours reach visitors.
- Fix: labels and notes containing „<“ or HTML entities such as
–show the same characters in the PHP fallback and in the live browser text. - i18n: time-range, date/time, date/note, and notice separators are translatable.
1.1.16
- Compatibility: tested with WordPress 7.1 RC3 and migrated the dynamic block to Block API version 3 for the always-iframed post editor.
- Hardening: malformed special-date values are rejected before date parsing on modern PHP versions.
1.1.15
- Accessibility: dynamically added time ranges keep specific weekday/date and range-number labels, and the notice-bar dismiss control now has a 44-by-44-pixel touch target.
- Admin: saving settings now shows WordPress’s standard success confirmation.
1.1.14
- Fix: continuous, overlapping, overnight, and 24-hour ranges now use the true end of the uninterrupted opening period.
- Fix: special-date overrides and overnight tails remain correct across midnight, including daylight-saving transitions.
- Fix: next openings and special-only schedules work beyond seven days and respect upcoming-notice settings.
- Fix: custom upcoming wording, common WordPress time-format tokens (G, H, g, h, i, s, a, and A), escaped literals, localized lists, and live banner dismissal transitions are honoured in the browser.
- Accessibility: improved live-status announcements, schedule-editor labels, and keyboard focus handling.
- Hardening: validates UI limits, normalizes malformed stored ranges, avoids freezing translated defaults, cleans multisite data on uninstall, and adds regression tests.
1.1.13
- New: past special dates are now automatically removed from saved/admin opening-hours data while today’s date remains active.
1.1.12
- Review: the no-JavaScript banner fallback styling moved from an inline
<style>tag into the enqueued stylesheet, gated by a small enqueued head script. - Review: the shortcode is now
[iboh_opening_hours]and the bootstrap class isIBOH_Plugin, so every public name carries the plugin prefix. - Removed an unused legacy placeholder file.
- Fix: front-end bootstrap now runs at
init, so translated defaults no longer trigger the WordPress 6.7+ early-textdomain notice.
1.1.11
- Branding: submission title and short description now emphasise the linked live banner and opening-hours table USP.
- New: bank-holiday notices can now be controlled separately from manual special dates: within seven days, all future, or hidden from upcoming notices.
- UX: upcoming notice entries now wrap as separate date/time items, with bold dates and normal-weight hours.
1.1.10
- Fix: the notice bar now shows a subtle loading skeleton until the live browser status is ready, avoiding stale text flicker on page load.
1.1.9
- Fix: bank holidays now replace same-date manual special dates, and only appear in banner/table upcoming notices when they are within seven days.
1.1.8
- Fix: front-end banner, status, and opening-hours table now inherit the site’s body/content typography instead of using fixed plugin text sizes.
1.1.7
- New: added a UK bank-holiday helper to insert standard closed dates for England & Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland.
1.1.6
- New: added notice-bar layout controls for sticky/non-sticky display and top-banner spacing/overlay behaviour.
1.1.5
- Branding: renamed for WordPress.org submission as ITBoffins Live Opening Hours, with the
itboffins-live-opening-hourstext domain and package slug. - UX: friendlier admin wording and softer IT Boffins styling for small business owners.
- Security: hardened custom wording placeholders so invalid admin-entered formats cannot break public rendering.
- Readiness: refreshed WordPress.org metadata for the current tested release and clarified bundled asset licensing/privacy.
1.1.4
- Fix: admin header now uses the packaged logo.png asset instead of the inline SVG mark.
1.1.3
- Fix: upcoming banner text now preserves chronological order when closed dates and special-hours dates are mixed.
1.1.2
- Fix: upcoming banner text now includes closed special dates without labels and groups multiple closed dates into one ordered phrase.
1.1.1
- Fix: special-date rows now default to closed, require a date before saving, and date-only rows are preserved instead of disappearing.
- Fix: invalid special-date rows now show an admin error instead of being silently discarded.
1.1.0
- New: optionally show all upcoming special dates in advance – in the banner and the hours table – instead of only on the day itself. Past dates are hidden automatically.
- New: make the weekly schedule optional („special dates only“ mode) for events, pop-ups and by-appointment venues. When weekly hours are off and there is nothing to show on a given day, the banner hides itself.
- New: editable wording for the upcoming-dates list, plus an „Open 24 hours“ label.
- The new behaviour keeps the public message fresh on fast or cached sites.
1.0.0
- Initial release: weekly schedule editor, split hours, holidays/special dates, customer notice bar, hours table block, and shortcode.