Assist Roadmap

Description

Assist Roadmap gives WordPress site owners, SaaS companies, plugin and theme developers, agencies, and product teams an easy way to:

• Create one or more independent product or project roadmaps
• Display roadmap items on the frontend, organized by status
• Collect feature requests and feedback from visitors, with no account required
• Let visitors vote on feedback, with duplicate-vote protection
• Manage feedback and roadmap items from the WordPress dashboard
• Turn popular feedback into roadmap items with one click

The core workflow: Feedback → Review → Prioritize → Roadmap → Development → Completed.

Features

Roadmap

• Multiple independent boards, each with its own statuses
• Customizable statuses per board: add, rename, recolor, reorder, and choose a default
• Roadmap items with description, image, external link, start/target dates, and manual ordering
• Responsive, accessible frontend display grouped by status

Feedback

• Public feedback board with search, sort (most voted / newest / oldest), status filter, and category filter
• Voting without a page reload and without an account
• A similar-ideas check while typing, so visitors can vote on an existing idea instead of posting a duplicate
• Optional categories
• One-click conversion from feedback into a linked roadmap item
• Optional email notifications (both off by default): new feedback to the site admin, and status changes to the submitter when they left an email address

Display

• [assist_roadmap] shortcode and a native block, each with roadmap-only, feedback-only, or combined tabbed views
• Works without JavaScript: submitting feedback, voting, and paging through feedback all fall back to normal forms and links

Built the WordPress way

• Custom post types and taxonomies; the only custom table stores vote records
• No external services, no tracking, no bundled frameworks, no build step
• Input validated and sanitized, output escaped, forms and AJAX nonce-checked, and all management restricted to administrators
• Assets load only on pages that display a board
• Board import/export (JSON) and integration with WordPress’s personal data export/erase tools

Known limitations

• Vote protection is abuse reduction, not fraud prevention. Someone rotating many real IP addresses can still inflate counts. See the FAQ for exactly what is limited.
• Visitors without JavaScript can submit, vote, and page through feedback, but can’t search, sort, or filter, and don’t see the similar-ideas prompt.
• On sites with full-page caching, pages cached for more than a day carry expired security tokens and submissions from them are rejected. Exclude pages that show a board from the page cache, or keep cache lifetimes under 12 hours.
• A visitor’s earlier vote is recognized when they vote again, but isn’t highlighted when the page first loads.
• There is no drag-and-drop admin board; statuses are changed on each item’s edit screen.
• Multisite: each site keeps its own boards, feedback, votes and settings. The plugin sets itself up on every site, but has had limited multisite testing.

Usage

Creating a board

Assist Roadmap → Add New Board. Give it a title, an optional description (shown on the frontend), and choose its default view (Roadmap only, Feedback only, or both with tabs).

Managing statuses

Each board has its own roadmap statuses and feedback statuses, managed from the Statuses box on the board’s edit screen. Add, rename, recolor, reorder (with the ↑/↓ buttons), remove, or mark one as the default — no page reload needed, changes save with the rest of the board.

Adding a roadmap item

Assist Roadmap → Add New Roadmap Item (or Roadmap Items to manage existing ones). Pick the board and status, and optionally a start/target date, external URL, featured image, and a linked feedback item.

Displaying a board

[assist_roadmap]
[assist_roadmap board_id="12"]
[assist_roadmap board_id="12" view="roadmap"]
[assist_roadmap board_id="12" view="feedback"]
[assist_roadmap board_id="12" view="combined"]

Omitting board_id uses the first published board. Omitting view uses the board’s own configured default view. The same options are available from the Assist Roadmap block’s sidebar.

Reviewing and converting feedback

Assist Roadmap → Feedback lists every submission with its board, status, and vote count. Open one to change its board/status, or use Convert to Roadmap Item from the list to create a linked draft roadmap item pre-filled from it.

Technical details