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Bulletins

Bulletins Guide

Bulletins are site announcements that can be shown on a Bulletins page, in the Frontend Dashboard, and, when allowed, as an urgent site-wide banner.

Enable Bulletins

  1. Go to VH360 Theme → Appearance.
  2. Find Bulletin System.
  3. Enable Enable bulletin board for announcements and updates.
  4. Save changes.

Set Who Can Create Bulletins

  1. Go to VH360 Theme → Permissions.
  2. Find Create Bulletins Permission.
  3. Select the roles that should be allowed to create bulletins from the Frontend Dashboard.
  4. Save changes.

Roles selected here can create bulletins from the dashboard if they also meet any membership requirements that may be enabled.

Set Who Can Manage Bulletin Banners

  1. Go to VH360 Theme → Permissions.
  2. Find Manage Bulletin Banners Permission.
  3. Select only trusted roles.
  4. Save changes.

This permission controls who can enable a prominent site-wide bulletin banner from the Frontend Dashboard.

A bulletin can show as a site-wide banner only when it is:

  • Set to Urgent priority
  • Set to Site-wide audience
  • Created or edited by a user who has permission to manage bulletin banners

Create the Bulletins Page

  1. Go to Pages → Add New.
  2. Add a page title, such as Bulletins or Announcements.
  3. Choose the Bulletins Archive page template.
  4. Publish the page.
  5. Add the page to the menu location where you want users to access it.

The Bulletins page displays published, active bulletins. It includes filters for All, Urgent, Important, and Normal, plus a search field.

Customize the Bulletins Page Header

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize.
  2. Open Template Headers.
  3. Use the Bulletins header options to:
  • Show or hide the Bulletins header.
  • Change the Bulletins header title.
  • Change the Bulletins header description.
  1. Publish your Customizer changes.

Create Bulletins from the Frontend Dashboard

Users with permission can create and manage bulletins from the Bulletins tab in the Frontend Dashboard.

To create a bulletin:

  1. Go to the Frontend Dashboard.
  2. Open the Bulletins tab.
  3. Click Create Bulletin.
  4. Enter the Bulletin Title.
  5. Add the bulletin Content.
  6. Add a Short Summary if you want a shorter description to appear in listings.
  7. Upload a Featured Image if needed.
  8. Choose the bulletin settings.
  9. Click Create Bulletin.

The Featured Image upload accepts JPG, PNG, GIF, and WebP images. The maximum uploaded image size is 5 MB.

Bulletin Settings

When creating or editing a bulletin from the Frontend Dashboard, the available settings are:

Priority

Choose one of these priority levels:

  • Normal
  • Important
  • Urgent

The Bulletins page can filter bulletins by these priority levels.

Category

Choose one of these display categories:

  • Announcement
  • Alert
  • Update
  • Info

The category is shown on bulletin cards and helps label the type of announcement.

Audience

Choose who should see the bulletin:

  • Site-wide — visible to everyone who can access bulletins.
  • Role — visible only to users with the role entered in the Target field.
  • Specific User — visible only to the user ID entered in the Target field.

When Role is selected, enter the role slug in the Target field, such as subscriber, editor, or author.

When Specific User is selected, enter the numeric user ID.

Show as Site-Wide Banner

Users with banner permission can choose Show as site-wide banner.

This option only works for bulletins that are both Urgent and Site-wide. If the bulletin is not urgent or is not site-wide, it will not show as a site-wide banner.

Only one urgent bulletin banner is shown at the top of the site at a time.

Expiry Date

Set an expiry date if the bulletin should automatically stop showing after a specific date.

Leave the expiry date empty if the bulletin should not expire.

Dismissible

Enable Allow users to dismiss this bulletin if users should be able to hide the bulletin from their own view.

Dismissed bulletins are also treated as read for that user.

Manage Existing Bulletins

In the Frontend Dashboard Bulletins tab, users can see bulletins they created.

From this tab, they can:

  • Edit their own bulletins.
  • View a bulletin.
  • Delete their own bulletins.

Administrators can manage bulletins from the WordPress backend under Bulletins.

How Users See Bulletins

Users can see bulletins in these places:

  • The Bulletins page.
  • The Frontend Dashboard bulletin widget when there are unread bulletins.
  • The urgent site-wide banner when an urgent site-wide bulletin is enabled as a banner.
  • Single bulletin pages when a user opens a bulletin.

Logged-in users can mark bulletins as read, dismiss dismissible bulletins, and mark all visible bulletins as read.

Membership Access

If the paid membership system is enabled and Bulletin Creation is gated, users without the required membership access cannot create bulletins from the Frontend Dashboard.

To check this setting:

  1. Go to VH360 Theme → Paid Membership.
  2. Find the platform feature gating options.
  3. Check whether Bulletin Creation is enabled as a gated feature.
  4. Save changes if needed.

This controls bulletin creation, not whether users can read published bulletins.

Test Bulletins

After setup, test bulletins with an administrator account and a regular customer account.

Confirm that:

  • The Bulletins page displays active bulletins.
  • Expired bulletins no longer display.
  • Normal, Important, and Urgent filters work on the Bulletins page.
  • Search works on the Bulletins page.
  • Users with permission can create a bulletin from the Frontend Dashboard.
  • Users without permission see the no-permission message.
  • Role-targeted bulletins only appear for users with the matching role.
  • User-targeted bulletins only appear for the selected user.
  • Dismissible bulletins can be dismissed.
  • The urgent banner only appears for urgent, site-wide bulletins that have banner display enabled.
  • Membership gating blocks bulletin creation if Bulletin Creation gating is enabled.

Troubleshooting

The Bulletins page is empty

Confirm that at least one bulletin is published, not expired, and visible to the current user.

A user cannot create bulletins

Go to VH360 Theme → Permissions and confirm the user’s role is selected under Create Bulletins Permission.

If paid memberships are enabled, also check VH360 Theme → Paid Membership and confirm whether Bulletin Creation is gated.

The site-wide banner does not show

Confirm the bulletin is set to Urgent, the audience is Site-wide, and Show as site-wide banner is enabled by a user with banner permission.

The featured image upload fails

Confirm the image is JPG, PNG, GIF, or WebP and is not larger than 5 MB.

A targeted bulletin is not visible to the expected user

For role-based bulletins, confirm the Target field contains the correct role slug. For user-specific bulletins, confirm the Target field contains the correct numeric user ID.