Contributors: rbenhase Tags: Beaver Builder, custom modules Requires at least: 4.3 Tested up to: 4.5
Beaver Brewer extends the Beaver Builder plugin by giving admins the ability to easily install "homebrew" modules. It also enables developers to release their modules in an a la carte fashion (no plugin wrapper needed) and even offer automatic updates to their modules through the Wordpress dashboard. You can download the plugin and download some modules right away to get started.
Beaver Brewer is in active development and should be considered a Beta at this stage. For this reason, you should be cautious about using it on a Production site. When more features are added to the plugin, an automatic update will appear in your Wordpress plugin admin page.
Beaver Builder is a fantastic page builder plugin, and its support for custom modules gives it nearly limitless potential. But as the number of Beaver Builder modules increases, they can become a bit difficult for users (and developers) to manage. Beaver Brewer strives to change all that.
Instead of installing a different Wordpress plugin for every set of Beaver Builder modules you want to use, you can now install a single, lightweight plugin that handles them all. This means that a module developer doesn't necessarily need to build out an entire plugin wrapper for his/her project, and this translates into lower overhead and fewer plugins to maintain on your site.
Why install a plugin that contains 30 modules if you're already certain that you're only going to need one of them? Beaver Brewer lets you install individual modules a la carte.
Module developers can use our handy module.config file to enable easy, one-click updates for their module from the Wordpress admin area! All you need is a place to host your latest module zipball (GitHub and Bitbucket work great, but hosting it on your own site works too!).
Whether you're a developer who needs to crank out a module post haste, or just someone who wants to experiment a little, Beaver Brewer makes it quicker and easier to develop new modules from scratch.
You can download the latest version of Beaver Brewer here. Keep in mind that Beaver Brewer is still considered to be in the Beta stage; be careful about using it on a production site (and keep regular backups just in case).
- Upload the beaver-brewer folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
- Activate the Beaver Brewer plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress.
- Install and activate modules under the 'Beaver Brewer' menu in the Wordpress admin.
Please submit all bugs and/or feedback to ryan@beaverbrewer.com.
No, this plugin requires Beaver Builder Premium. But believe me, it's worth the investment!
Not necessarily. Some modules are dependent on a parent plugin in order to work. In order to ensure that your module is compatible with Beaver Brewer, please follow our compatibility requirements below.
Yes, absolutely-- especially if those developers don't offer individual module updates (e.g. making use of a module.config file).
The module.config file is just something I've come up with to enable simple, one-click updates. Not all developers will take advantage of this feature (especially until Beaver Brewer becomes popular). This means that your module will need to be updated manually if/when the developer releases a new version, but it does not prevent the module from being used with Beaver Brewer.
I don't want to use the Beaver Brewer admin (or am having file permissions issues). How can I manually add modules?
Simply drop your module folder into your wp-content/bb-modules directory. If the bb-modules directory does not exist (e.g., because of a permissions issue), you will have to create it.
File/folder permissions issues are the most likely problem you might experience with this plugin. As a general rule, you should use 644 permissions for files and 755 permissions for directories within your Wordpress installation (note that some files, such as your wp-config.php file, should be stricter than this). If the user that Wordpress uses on your server is not the owner of the files/folders in your Wordpress installation, it must be the group owner (and bumping permissions up to 664 for files, 775 for folders will be necessary). Do not use 777 permissions for anything that is accessible over the internet. For more, visit https://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_File_Permissions.
Assuming that you've installed the module correctly, you may want to ensure that it meets the Beaver Brewer compatibility requirements (see below).
Check that your module folder's file permissions allow it to be readable by the webserver. Also check that you've installed it correctly; there should be a folder (e.g., the name of the module) inside the wp-content/bb-modules directory, and inside that folder is where your individual module files should live. If there is no PHP file inside your module folder, Beaver Brewer will not recognize it as a valid module.
Modules that do not contain a module.config file will not be able to provide automatic/one-click updates. This is up to the module developer. While not having a module.config file does not prevent modules from being used with Beaver Brewer, any updates will need to be downloaded and applied manually.
See your error log for more information.
This is when you try to activate two modules that contain identical class names (or a two copies of the same module). You must remove one of the modules, or else rename one of the classes causing the issue.
I plan on releasing complete online documentation for this plugin before it's released into the wild, but the general rule for making your module compatible with Beaver Brewer is that you should avoid making it dependent on a parent plugin. If you follow the Beaver Builder custom module documentation (see this page), only skipping the very first part (about creating a plugin wrapper), you should be fine. The MY_MODULES_DIR and MY_MODULES_URL constants are defined by Beaver Brewer, and the init hook to load your module is already taken care of. You can see and download my plugin boilerplate if you're having trouble getting started.
To enable automatic updates for your module, you can utilize the module.config file. See http://beaverbrewer.com/module-config/ for more info.
There's a lot more I'd like to do with this module in future versions. Here's a few things:
- Add a search / filter modules function on the Beaver Brewer admin page.
- Detect any compatibility issues and warn the user on the admin page.
- Create centralized Beaver Brewer module repository for community use (similar to the Wordpress plugin repository).
- Improve README and provide full online documentation for making modules compatible with Beaver Brewer.
- Improve automatic updates (use a true update server instead of relying on Bitbucket)
- Create simple module boilerplate & generator app (which builds your module.config file, etc. for you).
- Maybe make the Beaver Brewer admin page more closely resemble the Wordpress plugins admin page.
- Invent a machine that warps spacetime just enough to achieve 30 hours's worth of work in just one 8-hour day.