OnCue Liveblogging
OnCue’s core is a real-time liveblog posted from the WordPress admin: create an event, drop the OnCue block into a post, and post updates from the live console. Everything beyond the core is an opt-in module, off by default: Slack ingestion — a dedicated channel becomes the liveblog feed. Telegram i
About this tool.
OnCue’s core is a real-time liveblog posted from the WordPress admin: create an event, drop the OnCue block into a post, and post updates from the live console. Everything beyond the core is an opt-in module, off by default:
- Slack ingestion — a dedicated channel becomes the liveblog feed.
- Telegram ingestion — a bot in a group (or DM) posts every message.
- More Coverage — a linked-headline list of the publication’s own articles for the event.
- Reader share cards — per-entry share row posting rich Open Graph cards.
- Moderation gate — per-event approval queue for contributors’ posts.
A disabled module registers no REST routes and schedules no jobs; the attack surface is exactly the set of enabled features.
Security note on stored secrets
OnCue encrypts stored channel credentials (Slack/Telegram tokens and secrets) at rest with libsodium, on by default. The encryption key never lives in the database, so a database dump alone cannot decrypt them. Key source:
- ONCUE_ENCRYPTION_KEY in wp-config.php (a 32+ char random string) if you set one — preferred, because you can rotate it independently of WordPress; or
- your existing WordPress security keys (AUTH_KEY etc.), which are already in wp-config.php — so encryption works with no extra setup on any properly installed site.
Only a site with neither (no real salts and no dedicated key) falls back to plaintext, and the Connections screen flags that loudly.
What is not encrypted, by design: liveblog entries and other public content (they are served to readers; encrypting them would break the live stream), and non-secret identifiers like the house-account user ID or the public Slack client ID. Encrypting the whole database or disk is the host’s responsibility (encrypted volumes / MySQL TDE), not a plugin’s.
Changing the key source (e.g. rotating WordPress salts without setting a dedicated key) makes previously stored credentials undecryptable — re-enter them under Connections if that happens.
Typography
The reader inherits the host theme’s fonts throughout, including buttons and form controls. The generated share-card image uses the site’s own typeface too: OnCue resolves the theme’s body font (theme.json / Font Library) to a local TTF/OTF file for GD. If the theme ships fonts only as woff2 (which GD cannot read), upload a TTF of the same family to the Font Library, or point the oncue_card_font filter at a font file; otherwise the card falls back to GD’s built-in font.
