How do I use the Conservative States WordPress plugin?

With the Conservative States plugin, your WordPress site shows your bills and action pages as its own pages, in its own design. Supporters read your positions and send letters without leaving your site. The current version is 0.4.0. It needs WordPress 6.4 or later and PHP 8.1 or later.

Install it

1. Download the plugin from the Developers page on Conservative States (the section for WordPress sites).
2. In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, upload the file and activate it.

Updates then show up in WordPress like any other plugin update.

Connect your site

1. In WordPress, open Settings → Conservative States.
2. Under Connection, enter your organization's Conservative States address, for example exampletaxpayers.conservativestates.app, and click Connect.
3. You are taken to Conservative States. Sign in if asked. A page titled Connect a WordPress site says your site is asking to connect and lists what it will be able to do.
4. An Owner clicks Connect. You go back to WordPress, which says "Connected."

Only an Owner can approve the connection. Anyone else who reaches that page sees Back to WordPress and can ask an Owner to try.

What the site can and cannot see: once connected, it can show the bills you mark Show on website, with your positions and statements, and your published action pages. It cannot see your supporters, their letters, your notes, or anything you have not published.

Connecting also adds the site to your Allowed websites (in Settings, Website embeds) if it is not there already. If that list is full (10 addresses), remove one first.

On Conservative States, anyone on your team can see each connected site under Settings → Website embeds → WordPress sites: its plugin version, when it was last in touch, who connected it and who works from it. Owners also see a Disconnect button.

What it shows

Add the plugin's blocks in the block editor, its widgets in Elementor (in their own "Conservative States" section), or its shortcodes anywhere else:

• Bill list: the bills you mark Show on website, with your position, your public statement, where each bill stands and its next hearing.
• Bill pages: under Settings → Conservative States → Display, turn on Bill pages to give each website bill its own page on your site, such as /bills/hb1234/, in your theme. Each shows your position, the bill's progress, sponsors and documents, and a Take action button. Search engines credit your site for these pages.
• Action page and Action pages: one action page, or a list of your published ones. The list includes issue pages as well as bill pages, but only pages in live campaigns.

On each bill page in the plugin's settings chooses which parts every bill page shows, and how its progress is drawn (chevrons, a timeline, or a simple row). You can also design one Bill page layout in Elementor or the block editor and have every bill page use it.

Look sets position, button and card colors for the whole site. Each block and Elementor widget can override them.

Take action buttons

Bill pages, bill lists and action page listings carry a Take action button (it uses your action page's button text, or a name you set). Clicking it opens the letter steps in a window on your page. Supporters sign up or sign in, pick their legislators and send without leaving your site. The Take action window settings set its accent color, backdrop, width, height and corners. On phones it fills the screen.

The button links to the bill's newest published action page, so publish one for each bill you want people to act on.

Document windows

On a bill page, a document that Conservative States has laid out as formatted text has a View text button. It opens the bill text or amendment in a window on your page, with Changes, As printed and Clean views, contents and notes. Other documents open as the original file.

Keeping it up to date

When you change a position or publish an action page, your site refreshes within a minute. If your site cannot receive instant updates, changes arrive within five minutes. Keep Clear my caching plugin's pages when my bills change on if you use a page cache plugin. Clear cache in the plugin's settings forces a refresh.

Working from WordPress

Your team can also track bills, set positions and statements, and draft and publish action pages from a Conservative States menu in WordPress. See the article on linking your staff account to WordPress.

Disconnecting

Click Disconnect in the plugin's settings, or an Owner clicks Disconnect under WordPress sites in Conservative States. Disconnecting also removes the site's linked staff accounts. If WordPress shows "Conservative States no longer accepts this site's connection", disconnect and connect again.

If this does not solve it, email support@conservativestates.app and tell us your organization's name.