Description

Partyline is a WordPress plugin that lets anyone in your community send in a story, a tip, a moment, or just a cute dog photo. They can submit right from an installable app on their phone, or by text message via Twilio. Partyline optionally gives submissions a quick AI polish using OpenAI, and creates a draft post in your WordPress dashboard for you to review.

It’s the fastest way to turn real, spontaneous contributions into published content. Whether it’s breaking news or just something unexpected and delightful, Partyline brings your readers into the newsroom.

Made for local publishers who are short on time but big on community.

Top 10 Uses for Partyline
A lovingly curated list from experience, originally shared with LINA Publishers in Australia

Cover stories you’d never get to otherwise, like proms, graduations, and scout ceremonies.
Post ridiculous stuff that wouldn’t fly as a “real” article, and watch the traffic surprise you.
File an initial post when a breaking story hits, straight from the street.
Capture the in-the-moment energy of a parade, protest, or town meeting.
Share sunsets and puppy pics, without feeling like a complete sellout.
Keep your advertisers happy by actually posting their community event (and looking cool doing it).
Turn your readers into local mini-celebrities, and spark conversations offline.
Give voice to people who never get quoted. Partyline lowers the barrier to entry.
Redirect PR people to a more productive outlet than your inbox.
Reclaim your newsroom’s social media power, because you were doing it before Facebook anyway.

External services

This plugin connects to the following third-party services. None of them are contacted until you configure the corresponding credentials on the Partyline settings page.

Twilio

Used to receive SMS submissions from your community and to download any media (photos) attached to those messages.

What is sent: when Twilio POSTs an inbound SMS to your site’s webhook URL, the plugin reads the message body, sender phone number, recipient phone number, and any attached media URLs. To fetch authenticated media files, the plugin makes outbound HTTPS requests to api.twilio.com (and to the redirected media CDN URLs Twilio returns) using your Twilio Account SID and Auth Token.
When it is sent: only when an SMS is received at the configured webhook URL and the message includes media attachments.
Service: Twilio, Inc. Terms of Service: https://www.twilio.com/legal/tos . Privacy Policy: https://www.twilio.com/legal/privacy .

OpenAI (ChatGPT)

Optional. Used to clean up spelling/grammar of submitted messages, generate post titles, and (in the app) transcribe voice dictation and draft a title and blurb.

What is sent: the text of a submission (from SMS or the app), plus a short instruction prompt, are sent to https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions. In the app, voice recordings are sent to https://api.openai.com/v1/audio/transcriptions (Whisper) to transcribe them, and the submitted photo may be included so the model can draft a fitting title and blurb. All requests use the OpenAI API key you configure.
When it is sent: only if you have entered an OpenAI API key in the Partyline settings, and only at the moment a submission is being processed into a draft post.
Service: OpenAI, L.L.C. Terms of Use: https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use . Privacy Policy: https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy .

Cloudflare Turnstile

Optional. Used to verify that anonymous submissions and public applications come from a real person rather than a bot.

What is sent: when you configure a Turnstile site key, the public submission and application forms load Cloudflare’s widget script from https://challenges.cloudflare.com, and the visitor’s browser obtains a token. On submission, that token is sent to your server and verified against https://challenges.cloudflare.com/turnstile/v0/siteverify using your Turnstile secret key.
When it is sent: only if you have entered a Turnstile site key in the settings, and only on the public submission or application forms. Without a key, a built-in math challenge is used instead and no third party is contacted.
Service: Cloudflare, Inc. Terms: https://www.cloudflare.com/website-terms/ . Privacy Policy: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/ .

Installation

Upload the partyline directory to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
Go to the Partyline settings page. The contributor app is enabled by default at your-site.com/partyline; share that link with your community.
(Optional) To also accept submissions by text message, enable Twilio in the settings, add your credentials, and point your Twilio number’s messaging webhook at the URL shown there.
(Optional) Add an OpenAI API key to enable AI cleanup and voice dictation.

FAQ

What do I need to use Partyline?

Nothing. The contributor app is enabled by default, so your community can start submitting right away. Twilio and ChatGPT are optional add-ons, not requirements:

Twilio (Optional): a Twilio account and an SMS-capable phone number, to also accept submissions by text.
ChatGPT / OpenAI (Optional): an OpenAI API key, to auto-correct grammar and spelling and power voice dictation in the app.

How do I manage Partyliners?

A Partyliner is a WordPress user with a phone number, which is how a text message is matched back to their account. To manage them, go to Partyline > Partyliners in your admin menu. There you can see everyone at a glance and add a Partyliner directly (name, phone, email).

You can also turn on public applications in the settings so readers can apply. Either way, a Partyliner’s phone number is stored in the format +15555555555 (you can still set it on the standard WordPress user profile too).

Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

Contributors & Developers

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

Translate “Partyline” into your language.

Interested in development?

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

Changelog

1.3.0

FEATURE: Contributor app (PWA), an installable web app where people submit a photo and a story from their phone; now the primary way to collect Partylines, with SMS/Twilio as an optional secondary channel
FEATURE: Multiple photos per Partyline in the app; the first is the cover (featured image), and the AI write-up looks at the cover photo
FEATURE: Optional anonymous submissions, protected by a built-in math challenge and honeypot (with optional Cloudflare Turnstile for stronger protection)
FEATURE: Optional voice dictation (OpenAI Whisper) and an AI write-up of the photo and story in the app
FEATURE: Public “apply to be a Partyliner” page (confirmed by email) plus a dedicated Partyline > Partyliners management screen
FEATURE: New Partyliners get a welcome email with how-to instructions; hand-added Partyliners get a link to set their password, and admins can resend one from the Partyliners screen
FEATURE: When a Partyline is published, it is attributed to the registered Partyliner and they are emailed that it is live
ENHANCEMENT: Phone numbers are normalized to E.164 so text messages reliably match a Partyliner
ENHANCEMENT: Redesigned admin screens and an in-plugin How-To guide
ENHANCEMENT: The app title, home-screen text, and icon follow your site (site title and Site Icon)
ENHANCEMENT: Refreshed the plugin icon and banner

1.2.2

ENHANCEMENT: Removed the unused bundled Broadstreet API client (eliminates direct cURL usage and Broadstreet* class names)
ENHANCEMENT: Removed redundant wp-admin/includes/* requires from the Twilio webhook handler — the sideload helper loads what it needs
ENHANCEMENT: Renamed the has_partyline_phone query var to partyline_has_phone so the prefix leads
ENHANCEMENT: Dropped the Broadstreet entry from the External services section of the readme

1.2.1

SECURITY: Settings AJAX endpoint now verifies a WordPress nonce, requires manage_options, and sanitizes every field before saving
ENHANCEMENT: Moved inline admin scripts and styles into enqueued assets; settings page now bootstraps via wp_localize_script
ENHANCEMENT: Bundled the Partyline menu icon locally instead of loading it from an external S3 URL
ENHANCEMENT: Documented Twilio, OpenAI, and Broadstreet as external services in the readme
ENHANCEMENT: Updated Alpine.js to 3.15.12
ENHANCEMENT: Moved the Partyline admin menu out of the core admin hierarchy band (position 81)
ENHANCEMENT: Stopped writing the raw Twilio webhook body to the log file
FIX: Readme typos

1.2.0

ENHANCEMENT: Replaced AngularJS with Alpine.js in the admin settings UI
ENHANCEMENT: WordPress.org compliance pass — added ABSPATH guards, switched log file I/O to WP_Filesystem and wp_mkdir_p(), replaced date() with gmdate(), prefixed globals, hardened webhook key comparison with hash_equals(), unslashed/sanitized all $_POST/$_SERVER input, removed debug print_r() calls
ENHANCEMENT: Cleaned up build script to exclude dev files from the distribution zip
ENHANCEMENT: Bumped “Tested up to” to 7.0

1.1.0

ENHANCEMENT: Support multiple image attachments
ENHANCEMENT: Added fallback for Twilio images that don’t require authentication
ENHANCEMENT: Refactor code

1.0.2

ENHANCEMENT: Applied escaped outputs as per WordPress Coding Standards
ENHANCEMENT: Tightened up enqueue scripts

1.0.1

ENHANCEMENT: Tightened up conditional checks on a number of variables
ENHANCEMENT: Added server-side authentication to Twilio image retrieval
ENHANCEMENT: Added Twilio-specific settings to the Admin settings page
ENHANCEMENT: Enabled generation of thumbnails based on Twilio-supplied image

1.0.0

Initial public release.