BeeDashboard — Dashboard in Motion

BeeDashboard is a WordPress plugin that turns your website into a rotating information dashboard for TVs and wall displays. Cards are arranged in a grid, can rotate automatically, and can also remain permanently visible when needed.

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Introduction

Instead of building a custom kiosk application, BeeDashboard lets you assemble a dashboard using normal WordPress content. Cards are displayed in a grid, update automatically, and can combine permanent information with rotating content.

Typical uses include:

• family dashboards in the kitchen or living room
• office wall displays
• news and radio screens
• information kiosks
• smart-home dashboards

Because it runs directly inside WordPress, updating your dashboard is as simple as editing a page or creating a new card.

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Demo

This is a live BeeDashboard running on my server.

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Key Features

BeeDashboard focuses on simplicity, stability, and readability on large screens.

Features include:

• rotating dashboard cards
• fixed cards that remain always visible
• configurable grid layouts
• RSS news feed cards
• internet radio player cards
• weather and calendar cards
• fuel price cards
• traffic travel-time cards
• provider profiles for API keys and external services
• REST-powered live updates (no page reload)
• optimized for TVs and wall displays

The plugin works in any modern browser, including smart TVs and kiosk browsers.

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How BeeDashboard Works

BeeDashboard is built around three simple concepts.

Boards

Boards represent a dashboard screen.

Examples:

family-tv
kitchen-display
office-wall

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Cards

Cards are individual pieces of content displayed on the board.

Examples:

• family message
• RSS news feed
• radio player
• weather information
• calendar events
• clock
• fuel prices
• travel time

Cards can belong to multiple boards.

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Board Block

The BeeDashboard block displays a board inside a WordPress page.

Once placed on a page, the dashboard automatically loads and updates.

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Fixed and Rotating Cards

BeeDashboard boards can contain two types of cards.

Fixed cards remain permanently visible on the dashboard.

Typical examples:

Clock
Radio
Weather

Rotating cards appear during the automatic rotation cycle.

Typical examples:

News
Calendar
Fuel prices
Traffic travel time

This allows a dashboard to show essential information continuously while rotating additional cards.

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Visual Architecture

BeeDashboard uses a simple architecture: WordPress stores boards and cards, the frontend loads a board scene, and provider-backed cards fetch data on the backend.

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Example Dashboard Setup

Typical workflow:

1. Create a board

BeeDashboard Cards → Boards → Add New

Example:

family-tv

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2. Create cards

BeeDashboard Cards → Add New Dashboard Card

Examples:

• News
• Radio
• Weather
• Family message
• Fuel
• Traffic

Assign each card to the board.

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3. Create the dashboard page

Create a WordPress page and insert the block:

BeeDashboard Board

Configure the block settings:

• board
• grid size
• rotation speed
• scene refresh interval

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4. Configure provider profiles if needed

Settings → Bee Dashboard

Use this for external services such as fuel price or routing cards.

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5. Open the page on a TV

Open the page in a browser and enable fullscreen.

The dashboard will update automatically.

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Card Types

BeeDashboard supports multiple card types.

Manual cards display content directly from the WordPress editor.

Other card types display dynamic content from feeds or APIs.

Available types:

Manual
News (RSS feeds)
Radio (internet radio streams)
Weather
Calendar
Calendar List (upcoming events)
Clock
Fuel prices
Traffic travel time

Additional card templates and visual configuration tools will be added in future versions.

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Provider Profiles

Some cards use external services such as fuel price APIs or routing services.

BeeDashboard stores these credentials in provider profiles.

Provider profiles store:

• API keys
• refresh policies
• authentication settings

Profiles are configured in:

Settings → Bee Dashboard

This allows cards to reference a profile without storing credentials directly.

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Example: News Feed Card

A news card displays headlines from an RSS feed.

Example source:

Deutschlandfunk Nachrichten

Create a dashboard card and add the custom field:

dim_card_type = news

Optional feed source:

dim_source_url = https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/nachrichten-100.rss

The card will automatically fetch and display the latest headlines.

More configuration examples are available in the plugin documentation.

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Download

The plugin is available on WordPress.org.

Development versions can also be downloaded from GitHub.

Open source repository: https://github.com/nathabee/bee-dashboard

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Screenshots

Screenshots will be added before publishing.

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Using BeeDashboard on a TV

BeeDashboard is designed for large displays.

Typical setup:

1. Open the dashboard page on a TV browser
2. Enable fullscreen
3. Leave the page open

The dashboard updates automatically and is suitable for browser-based kiosk environments.

It works well with:

Android TV browsers
Samsung Frame TV
kiosk browsers
wall-mounted tablets

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Project Philosophy

BeeDashboard follows a few core design principles:

• dashboards should stay readable on large screens
• configuration should remain simple
• WordPress should stay in control of styling
• dynamic content should load without refreshing the page
• external services should remain backend-driven

The goal is to make WordPress capable of acting as a lightweight dashboard system without introducing heavy external software.

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Author

BeeDashboard is developed by Nathabee.

More projects:

Home

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