close up photo of yearly planner beside a pen

Freelance Availability Widget WordPress Plugin

A plugin for freelancers to help manage their time more effectively.

Download Freelance Availability Widget

The Freelance Availability Widget is a plugin that is for freelancers on helping control leads on your site. It’s a bit of a boundary, and will let any potential leads know lead times before you can start work. This will help make sure that you’re starting off a new client relationship on the right foot.

It is a widget with three states:-

  • Available: This implies that you’re ready and able to start work immediately!
  • Soon: This implies that you’re soon going to be available for work, so you may want to look for your next project.
  • Unavailable: This implies that you’re not ready to look for work.

You can choose to style or what to show for each widget, so even if you’re unavailable, you can still look for work, but it’s a way to control your message on your site quickly and easily.

You can also set two dates per project, one of which is when the date changes from “Unavailable” to “Soon”, and one when it changes from “Soon” to “Available”. This happens automatically and you don’t need to do anything for this.

You can also use a shortcode for the URL box, so if you want to use a contact form such as Contact Form 7 or Gravity Forms, you can.

Installation

  1. Upload the plugin to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory or use the Add New feature
  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
  3. Add your widget in the Appearance > Widgets setting.

Setting Up Your Widget

When you go to Appearance > Widgets, you can add the “Freelance Availability Widget” to any area you choose. You will have a number of headings:-

  • Available Settings apply when the “Available Date” has passed.
    • Title – Introductory text (no HTML please)
    • URL – The URL or shortcode to show your form.
    • Available Date From – The date from which to show this box.
  • Soon Settings apply when the “Available Date” hasn’t occurred, but the “Soon Date” has passed.
    • Title – The Widget title to show.
    • Text – Introductory text (no HTML please)
    • URL – The URL or shortcode to show your form.
    • Soon Date From – The date from which to show this box.
  • Unavailable Settings apply when the “Soon Date” hasn’t passed.
    • Title – The Widget title to show.
    • Text – Introductory text (no HTML please).
    • URL – The URL or shortcode to show your form.

Styling the Widget

To style the widget, an extra class is added to the widget class (please note, you will need to make sure your widget area has individual widget classes to work. These are the following:-

  • .widget_faw_freelance_availability_widget_available is the class shown when the “Available” widget is displayed.
  • .widget_faw_freelance_availability_widget_soon is the class shown when the “Soon” widget is displayed.
  • .widget_faw_freelance_availability_widget_unavailable is the class shown when the “Unavailable” widget is displayed.

Screenshots

Screenshot of the widget on Rhys Wynne, my personal blog, showing the “Availability” state.

Support

On Github!

This project is on github! You can see the repository here.