Under The Weather

Description

Under The Weather is a powerful yet simple plugin that displays location-specific weather forecasts on your WordPress site. Featuring a dedicated “Under The Weather Forecast” block to add and customize weather widgets directly in the WordPress editor for a seamless workflow.

With performance in mind, Under The Weather uses a server-side caching system (WordPress Transients) to minimize API calls and ensure your site remains fast. Under The Weather is completely “vanilla” on the front-end, meaning it does not rely on jQuery or any other JavaScript frameworks. Built with modern security practices, including input validation, CSRF protection, and optional rate limiting to protect your site and API quota.

This plugin is ideal for travel blogs, outdoor activity sites, or any website that needs to display weather conditions for specific locations without the bloat of heavy, multi-dependency plugins.

Key Features:

• Easy Integration: Add weather widgets in the WordPress editor by using a dedicated weather block, an [under_the_weather] shortcode, or by placing a simple <div> with data attributes anywhere on your site.

• Beautiful Display Options: Designed to look stunning on any site. Choose from 4 different visual options:

  • The Default OpenWeather images
  • A Crisp Weather Icons font
  • 2 Animated SVG icon sets

• Styled to Match Your Site: Seamlessly fit the widget into any site design using the Light Mode for white and light backgrounds or toggle on the Dark Mode for nicely contrasted text on dark backgrounds. Apply custom hex colors to the “Weather Icons Font” with the Color Picker for a truly bespoke integration.

• Fully Customizable Layouts: Choose whether the widget’s main focal point highlights the live current conditions or today’s high and low temperatures. Build out the widget to meet your goals, from a compact day-of weather widget to a full weather hub, displaying:

  • Extended forecasts (up to 6 days)
  • “Feels like” temperatures
  • Wind speeds and directions
  • Active weather alerts
  • Sunrise & Sunset Times

• Visual Performance Report: Monitor your site’s API usage with a bar chart that displays a 7-day history of cached requests versus new calls to the OpenWeather API – a clear look at how the caching system is working to keep your site fast and your API calls low.

• Smart Caching: All API calls are cached on your server, dramatically reducing calls to the OpenWeather API and speeding up page loads for all users. The plugin includes a configurable cache duration and automatically resets the forecast after midnight in the location’s timezone, ensuring your visitors always see the current day’s weather.

• Fast Weather Location Lookup: An easy-to-use Coordinate Finder tool located in the settings page and the Block Editor retrieves coordinates by location name worldwide. Generates ready-to-use widget <div> code from the settings page. Automatically fill coordinates in the block editor.

• Imperial & Metric Units: Display weather in Fahrenheit/mph or Celsius/kph on a per-widget basis.

Performance First: Built for Core Web Vitals

• Page Speed Optimized: Unlike other popular weather plugins that load hundreds of kilobytes of external libraries, Under The Weather is engineered specifically for speed and SEO, using native script deferral, smart font preloading, conditional asset enqueues, and optional async CSS loading.

• Zero Dependencies: While other weather plugins force your site to load heavy external libraries like jQuery, Vue.js, or Swiper.js just to show a simple forecast, Under The Weather requires exactly 1 script request, written in pure, vanilla JavaScript. This guarantees faster loading and zero risk of library conflicts.

• Ultra-Lightweight Footprint: At roughly 10 KB, the JavaScript payload is up to 25x smaller than many other weather widgets for WordPress, without sacrificing features.

• Zero Layout Shift (CLS): Using an intelligent, dynamic skeleton loading UI and modern CSS containment, the widget claims its vertical space immediately, preventing the page from “jumping” when the weather data arrives, and eliminating Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) issues that can negatively impact your Core Web Vitals.

• Smart Server-Side Caching: API requests to OpenWeather are handled safely by your server, not the visitor’s browser. Data is securely cached using WordPress transients to serve lightning-fast results to your visitors while drastically reducing API calls and protecting your OpenWeather quota.

Usage

The Under The Weather plugin offers three ways to add a weather forecast: using the block editor or manually placing a <div> or shortcode.

Using the Block Editor (Recommended)

1. Open the post or page where you want to display the weather.
2. Click the block inserter icon (+) to add a new block.
3. Search for “Under The Weather Forecast” and add the block.
4. Configure your location using either:
   • Manual entry of coordinates in the block settings sidebar
   • The built-in coordinate finder that searches by location name and fills in the coordinates for you
5. Choose your preferred units (Imperial/Fahrenheit or Metric/Celsius)
6. Publish or update your post – the weather will display automatically!

Manual Placement (Classic Editor & Themes)

To display the weather widget on a post, page, or in a template file, add a simple <div> element with the class weather-widget and the required data attributes.

• data-lat: The latitude for the forecast.
• data-lon: The longitude for the forecast.
• data-location-name: The city or location name you want to display as the title of the widget. (Beyond its display purpose, the ‘data-location-name’ is also used to create the shared cache key).
• data-unit (optional): The unit system for temperature and wind speed. Accepts metric or imperial. The default unit is imperial if not provided.

Examples:

        <div class="weather-widget" 
           data-lat="34.1186" 
           data-lon="-118.3004" 
           data-location-name="Los Angeles, California">
        </div>

To show the weather for a location in Celsius, you would add data-unit="metric":

        <div class="weather-widget" 
           data-lat="48.8566" 
           data-lon="2.3522" 
           data-location-name="Paris, France"
           data-unit="metric">
        </div>

The plugin’s JavaScript will automatically find this element and populate it with the forecast.

Using the Shortcode (Classic Editor & Widgets)

You can also display the weather by using the [under_the_weather] shortcode. This is ideal for the Classic Editor, text widgets, or other page builders.

Available attributes:

• lat: (Required) The latitude for the forecast.
• lon: (Required) The longitude for the forecast.
• location_name: (Required) The name to display for the location.
• unit: (Optional) The unit system. Accepts metric or imperial. Defaults to imperial.

Example: [under_the_weather lat="48.8566" lon="2.3522" location_name="Paris, France" unit="metric"]

Configuration

Before you begin, go to openweathermap.org and sign up for an API key and register for the One Call API 3.0 subscription. Paste your API key into the Under the Weather Settings Page.

API & Cache

Cache Expiration Time:
Use the slider to set the maximum time weather data is stored before fetching a new forecast, from 30 minutes to 8 hours.

The plugin also features a smart caching system that automatically ensures the cache expires after midnight in the location’s local timezone. This prevents showing a stale forecast from the previous day, regardless of your slider setting.

For displaying live conditions (using the Primary Display or Extra Details options), a shorter cache time of 1 or 2 hours is recommended.
For displaying only the daily high/low, a longer cache time of 3 or 8 hours effectively reduces API calls.

Widget Display & Style

Tailor the widget to perfectly match your website’s aesthetic and your users’ needs:

Icon & Style Set:
Pick the style that suits you best. Choose between four weather icon options:
* Recognizable Default images (PNGs) provided by OpenWeather.
* Sharp, modern Weather Icons fonts created by Erik Flowers.
* Two Animated SVG icon sets (Fill and Outline) by Bas Milius.
Note: Selecting the icon font will load an additional small CSS file.

Icon Font Color:
Use the color picker to customize the “Weather Icons Font” set to match your theme. This setting only has a visible effect when the “Weather Icons Font” style is selected (it does not impact PNGs or SVGs). If left at the default, the icons will use the gray color specified in the plugin’s stylesheet.

Widget Mode:
The weather widgets are designed to look good on light or dark backgrounds. Select Light Mode when displaying weather widgets on white and light backgrounds. Switch to Dark Mode to display weather widgets on black or dark backgrounds.

Primary Display:
Select whether the main display of the widget shows the Current live temperature or Today’s Forecast (the high and low for the day).

Number of Forecast Days:
Adjust the number of days shown in the extended forecast row, from 2 to 6 days. When set to 0 days, the widget’s forecast area disappears, leaving a compact widget showing the current day’s weather.

Extra Details:
Selecting this option will display ‘Feels Like’ and wind (direction and speed) information beneath the primary display. This setting adds nuance to the current weather conditions display.

Sunrise & Sunset: This setting displays the local sunrise and sunset times for the location, useful for planning outdoor activities. Choose to show the times in a 12-hour (e.g., 6:30 AM) or 24-hour (e.g., 18:30) format.

Weather Alerts: When enabled, the widget will display any active severe weather alerts (e.g., thunderstorm warnings, flood advisories) issued by official authorities for the specified location. This provides critical, at-a-glance information for your visitors.

Display Timestamp:
Indicates the time elapsed since the weather data was last updated from the source. This option helps readers see how recently the weather widget obtained its information.

Display Unit Symbol:
Adds the unit symbol (F or C) next to the main temperature. This option lets you choose whether the widget should include the temperature unit symbol in the primary temperature display.

Advanced Settings
Enable Cache: You can uncheck this box if you would like to use this plugin without the benefit of caching.

Enable Rate Limiting: Check this box to protect your site against excessive API requests from a single IP address. You can set the maximum number of requests per hour (default is 100). This helps prevent malicious traffic from exhausting your API quota.

Asset Loading: For the plugin to function correctly, the Load Plugin CSS and Load Plugin JavaScript boxes should normally remain checked. However, you can uncheck them if you prefer to include the plugin’s CSS and JS files as part of your theme’s own optimized assets.

If you uncheck Load Plugin JavaScript, you can load the Under The Weather scripts manually on select pages by adding the following template tag to your theme files (e.g., footer.php):

        <?php
           if ( function_exists( 'under_the_weather_load_scripts_manually' ) ) {
              under_the_weather_load_scripts_manually(); 
           } 
        ?>

For most users, simply leaving these boxes checked is the best way to use the weather widget.

Async CSS Loading: Enable this option to reduce render-blocking resources for faster initial page loading.
* It is recommended to leave this unchecked if your weather widget is located “above the fold” (near the top of the page) to prevent layout shifting or a flash of unstyled content.
* If you enable async loading, please consider adding a “min-height” rule for “.weather-widget” to your theme’s custom CSS to reserve the widget’s vertical space while the stylesheet loads. Example: .weather-widget{min-height:300px}

Shimmer While Loading: Enabled by default, this visual placeholder provides layout stability before the weather data arrives. Uncheck this box to instead display a clear, transparent widget area before the weather data arrives.

Coordinate Finder

Don’t know the latitude and longitude for your desired location? No problem. The Under The Weather plugin will find coordinates for you.

In the WordPress Block Editor

1. Add an “Under The Weather Forecast” block to your post or page.
2. Open the Block Settings
3. Click the “Find Coordinates by Name” button.
4. Type in the name of your location.
5. Press “Search.”
6. When search results appear, click on your desired location.
7. The location’s coordinates will be automatically entered into the latitude and longitude settings for the weather forecast.

In the Plugin Settings Page

1. Navigate to Settings > Under The Weather and click on the Coordinate Finder tab.
2. Type a location name into the search box (e.g., “Los Angeles, CA”).
3. Click the “Find Coordinates” button.
4. The tool will display the generated <div> with the correct coordinates and location name.
5. Use the “Copy Code” button to copy the ready-to-use widget HTML and paste it into a post, page, or widget.

The tool automatically saves a history of your last 5 searches, which persists between sessions. You can easily copy code from previous searches without having to look them up again.

Performance Report

The Under The Weather plugin includes a Performance Report tab on the settings page (Settings > Under The Weather > Performance Report) to provide clear insight into the plugin’s efficiency and API usage.

• Average Daily Usage: A daily average pie chart provides a snapshot of how frequently weather data is served from the cache versus making new calls to the OpenWeatherMap One Call API 3.0 (which offers a free tier of 1,000 API calls per day).

• Last 7 Days of Activity: A 7-day bar chart that displays a more detailed comparison of cached hits versus new calls to the OpenWeather API. This chart includes the current day’s usage, which is not calculated into the daily average.

The performance report demonstrates how the caching system reduces external requests and keeps your site fast. Use this report to fine-tune your Cache Expiration Time and observe the impact on your API call rate.

The report also includes a status indicator that shows whether the optional Rate Limiting feature is currently active. If rate limiting is enabled and requests are being blocked, the raw data table at the bottom of the report will log these events. This can help you identify unusual traffic patterns or potential misuse of your API key.

Credits

• Weather Data: OpenWeather
• Weather Icon Font: Weather Icons by Erik Flowers
• Animated Weather Icons: Meteocons by Bas Milius
• Geocoding & Map Data: Data © OpenStreetMap contributors
• Block Icons: Phosphor

External Services

• OpenWeatherMap API: This plugin connects to the OpenWeatherMap API to retrieve weather forecast data. To provide weather information, the following data is sent to the service:

• Location Coordinates: The latitude and longitude provided in the widget settings are sent to fetch the weather for that specific location.

• API Key: Your OpenWeatherMap API key is sent to authenticate the request.

Here are the links to their terms of service and privacy policy:
* Terms of Service: https://openweather.co.uk/storage/app/media/Terms/Openweather_terms_and_conditions_of_sale.pdf
* Privacy Policy: https://openweather.co.uk/privacy-policy

• Nominatim (OpenStreetMap) API: The Coordinate Finder tool sends the location name entered by the administrator to the Nominatim geocoding service to retrieve latitude and longitude coordinates.

Here is the link to their privacy policy:
* Privacy Policy: https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy