How to create a Checklist

In this tutorial we will cover how to create a Checklist from scratch, step by step. It’s a very simple and straightforward process, so let’s get right into it.

Here’s a video tutorial first, if you are more the visual type of learner. For the text tutorial, just scroll down.

Video Tutorial

Step 1: Basic Settings & List Items

First, you have to visit the plugin page on the left side menu. Click on MagicChecklists to view the main plugin page.

Next, click on the top right button “Add New”. This will take you to the checklist creation form.

You will face the basic settings for the checklist first. Here you can enter the Checklist title, that will be displayed inside the drawer as well. The description will only be visible on the plugin main page. It is there to help you better organize your checklists. Here you also can decide between the dark and light theme of the drawer, depening on your needs. There’s also a toggle switch to enable / disable this checklist.

At the bottom of the page you can see the full list of all list items. This is the main section where you can adjust the list items, add new ones, remove old ones and more. You can also insert hyperlinks into list items as well as basic HTML styling (bold, underline, italic).

Step 2: Advanced Settings

A pretty straightforward creation step. You can set a deadline for the checklist. The background color of the deadline will change, depending on how much time is left. Select which trigger methods you want to use for to open the drawer. At least one must be selected. If not, keyboard shortcut will be selected by default, so make sure you set at least a shortcut. When selecting the floating buttons you can enter a short title that will be used inside the button instead of the full checklist title.

You can also set a checklist priority, if needed. Use the selection dropdown to choose between global checked state handling and per user level. “Per User” gives each user their own checked states. “Global” shares checked states among all users.

Step 3: Access & Permission Control

Added in version 1.2 you can now precisely control who can see checklists and what kind of permissions they have. First you will see a toggle switch to enable / disable general public access. This toggle will make the checklist visible to ALL website visitors, not just logged in users. If enabled, you can set a (optional) description that will be displayed inside the drawer and choose which permission level all users will have with the checklist.

Optionally, you can enable Rate Limiting. Can be useful if you have many users using checklists simultaneously. It will limit open / close trigger and checklist actions such as checking off items, adding new items etc. to 20 and 30 operations respectively.

Next you will see User Role and individual User selections. In the User Role selection you can select native WordPress User Roles AND any new User Roles created by other 3rd party plugins, such as WooCommerce, TutorLMS, SureCart, to name a few.

A very exciting access control is the invite link generator. In this section you can create invite links with tokens as a URL parameter (automatically generated). You can insert a desired usage limit to that link and an automatic expiration date. When either limit is reached, the link won’t work anymore. Even after links have been generated you can adjust the permission level of each link individually. You can delete existing links any time.

You will also notice a red “Force Delete Lock” button. A little explanation: with the new user access management you can set checklists to be editable by multiple users. It could happen that 2 or more users with edit permissions make changes at the same time on the same checklist. To keep checklist data consistent across all instances, we implemented a locking mechanism. The moment a user with editing capabilities opens a checklist, it will be locked for other users (if they have edit permissions). They can still view it and interact with it, just edit actions will be locked until the initial editor closes (saves) the checklist or a maximum of 5 minutes have passed. After 5 minutes it will release automatically. So if you encounter any issues with the locking mechanism, use this button. This will remove any existing lock forcefully.