EzBizi

Description

Your phone number is probably written into your website in a dozen places — the
header, the footer, three service pages, a contact form, an old landing page
somebody forgot. Changing it means finding all twelve.

This plugin lets EzBizi hold the answer instead. You set your details once in
EzBizi, put a shortcode where the value belongs, and the page shows whatever
EzBizi currently says.

Each website gets its own answers. A subdomain is a separate site in EzBizi
with its own token, so nj.example.com can publish a different phone number
from example.com without a second theme, a second plugin, or a second copy of
your pages.

What you can publish

Every field you fill in inside EzBizi becomes a shortcode here:

  • [ezbizi_company_name]
  • [ezbizi_phone]
  • [ezbizi_email]
  • [ezbizi_address]
  • [ezbizi_hours]
  • [ezbizi_license]
  • [ezbizi_service_area]
  • [ezbizi_booking_url]

There is also a general form, [ezbizi key="phone"], which accepts a fallback
for a value you have not filled in yet: [ezbizi key="phone" default="Call us"].

The list is not hardcoded. It comes from your EzBizi account, so a field added
there starts working here without updating this plugin.

Your site keeps working when ours does not

The values are cached, and the last successful read is kept indefinitely. If
EzBizi is slow or unreachable, your pages carry on showing the details they last
received rather than going blank. Refreshing happens in the background, so a
visitor never waits on a request to us.

You need an EzBizi account

This plugin is a client for the EzBizi platform and does nothing on its own. You
will need an account, and a website registered under Web Management, to get the
token it asks for.

External Services

This plugin relies on a third-party service to retrieve the business details
(company name, phone, address, licence, hours) that you configure in your
EzBizi account. It does not work without that connection — retrieving those
values is the plugin’s entire purpose.

EzBizi API

What it is: EzBizi is a business management platform. It holds a company’s
business details centrally so the same phone number or address can be published
across every website that company owns, with each site — including each
subdomain — able to publish its own answers.

What data is sent: Your site token, which identifies which registered
website is asking; your site’s hostname, taken from your WordPress address, so
EzBizi returns the values for this site rather than another one you own; and
this plugin’s version number.

When data is sent:
– At most once every five minutes while your site is being visited, refreshed in
the background rather than while a visitor waits
– When an administrator saves the settings page or presses “Refresh now”

What data is NOT sent by the shortcodes: No information about your
visitors — no IP addresses, no page views, no analytics, no personal data of any
kind. The page a visitor is on is never sent either: per-page values are
selected on your own server from data already received.

The chat and contact form widgets are different, and this is the important
paragraph on this page.
Both are OFF unless you switch them on in EzBizi, and
neither sends anything until a visitor uses one. When a visitor does:

  • Their browser sends what they typed — which may include their name, email
    address, telephone number, and the text of their message or their answers to
    your form’s questions — directly to EzBizi, where it becomes an enquiry you
    can reply to.
  • The address of the page they were on is sent with it, so you can see where
    they were when they got in touch.
  • Because their browser makes that request itself, EzBizi receives their IP
    address the way any website they visit would. It is not stored as part of the
    enquiry.
  • Live chat stores a token in that browser’s sessionStorage so the visitor can
    read replies to their own conversation and nobody else’s. It is cleared when
    they close the tab.

If you switch both widgets off, none of the above happens and this plugin sends
nothing about your visitors at all.

What data is received: Only the business details you entered in EzBizi for
this site — company name, phone number, email, address, opening hours, licence
number, service area and booking link. These are values you have chosen to
publish on your own public website.

The publishing account (optional capability, added in 1.1.0): Once your
token has been accepted, the plugin creates a WordPress user named
“ezbizi-service” on a restricted role, generates an application password for it,
and sends that application password to EzBizi so EzBizi can publish and edit
content on this site on your behalf. The role can publish and edit posts and
pages and upload files; it cannot change settings, manage users, install
plugins, edit themes, post unfiltered HTML, or delete anything. The application
password is sent once, over HTTPS only, and is stored encrypted by EzBizi. If
the handover fails the application password is deleted immediately rather than
left active.

You can revoke it at any time: delete the “EzBizi” application password under
Users, delete the ezbizi-service user, or deactivate this plugin — deactivation
revokes it for you. Changing your site token revokes it too. If EzBizi drops the
pairing at its end, this plugin deletes its own application password at the next
refresh.

Service Provider: EzBizi
API Endpoints:
– https://app.ezbizi.com/api/v1/web/plugin/values (retrieving your details)
– https://app.ezbizi.com/api/v1/web/plugin/service-account (handing over the
publishing credential described above)
Terms of Service: https://www.ezbizi.com/terms/
Privacy Policy: https://www.ezbizi.com/privacy/

Installation

  1. In EzBizi, open Web Management SEO and add your website’s address. A
    subdomain is added separately from its parent domain.
  2. Copy the token EzBizi shows you. It is displayed once and cannot be looked up
    again — if you lose it, issue a new one, which takes a moment.
  3. In WordPress, go to Plugins Add New Upload Plugin, choose the file,
    and activate it.
  4. Go to Settings EzBizi and paste the token.
  5. Put the shortcodes wherever the values belong.

FAQ

Do I need an EzBizi account?

Yes. The plugin displays values held in EzBizi and does nothing without an
account and a registered website.

I changed a value in EzBizi and my site still shows the old one.

Values are cached for about five minutes. Press “Refresh now” on the
Settings EzBizi screen if you do not want to wait.

Can my subdomains show different details?

Yes, and that is what the plugin is for. Register each host in EzBizi
separately. Each gets its own token and its own set of values, so a regional
site can answer its own phone number.

I lost my token.

Issue a new one in EzBizi under Web Management. The old one stops working
immediately, and the site keeps showing its last known details until you paste
the new token in.

What happens if EzBizi is down?

Your pages keep showing the values they last received. Nothing goes blank, and
visitors are never made to wait on a request to us.

Does this send anything about my visitors?

No. See the “External Services” section above for exactly what is transmitted.

What happens when I delete the plugin?

Its settings, cached values and stored token are removed from your database.
Deleting the plugin does not revoke the token at the EzBizi end — use “Issue a
new token” in EzBizi for that.

Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

Contributors and Developers

“EzBizi” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Translate “EzBizi” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Change Log

1.2.0

  • Live chat and a contact form for your website. Both are off until you turn
    them on in EzBizi, and enquiries arrive there beside your other leads, where
    you can reply.
  • Everything about how they look and what the form asks — colours, wording,
    the questions — is set in EzBizi under Web Management › Widgets, so
    [ezbizi_chat] and [ezbizi_form] take no settings of their own and one change
    reaches every site you run.
  • “External Services” above now describes what a visitor’s browser sends when
    they use one of these widgets. Read it before switching them on.

1.1.0

  • EzBizi can now publish and edit content on this site. On connecting, the
    plugin creates a restricted “ezbizi-service” user and hands EzBizi an
    application password for it. See “External Services” above for exactly what
    it may do and every way to revoke it.
  • Deactivating the plugin, or changing your site token, now revokes that
    application password.

1.0.2

  • The plugin now says when it is installed but not yet connected, instead
    of sitting silent with every shortcode empty.
  • Added a Settings link on the plugin’s own row, which is where people
    look for it.

1.0.1

  • Maintenance release. No changes to the plugin itself — published to
    confirm the update path works before a real fix has to travel it.

1.0.0

  • First release. Shortcodes for the business details held in EzBizi, with
    per-site and per-page values, background refreshing, and last-known-good
    values retained when the API cannot be reached.