SantaPress: The Ultimate WordPress Advent Calendar Plugin Transform your website into a magical Christmas experience with SantaPress, the WordPress Advent Calendar plugin that captivates your visitors throughout the holiday season. Delight your audience with daily surprises, quizzes or special gifts, making them return every day until Christmas! SantaPress offers many customization options, from a snow fall effect to hidden mode, keeping your visitors engaged and excited.

Why SantaPress? With SantaPress, you can create your own personalized advent calendar experience:

4 beautiful designed layouts with 25 unique door images. That makes a total of 100 door images to choose from.
Upload your own door images.
Multiple ways to open doors: Choose from links to single page, pop-ups, WooCommerce product links, or external links.
Full Customization: Use your own modal windows with content, videos, graphics or your own content for extra holiday flair.
Interactive Quizzes: Optionally add trivia questions to each door and integrate them with Contact Form 7 for engaging, interactive experiences.
Flexible Layouts: Use your own designs or set any number of doors, whether it’s 24, 25, or even a custom number.
Hidden Mode: Keep the calendar a surprise with hidden mode, revealing it after a time delay or a custom trigger.
Snowfall Effect: Bring the festive feeling to life with customizable snowfall animations.
Click Tracking: Track interactions on each door to understand user engagement and behavior.
️ Custom Scripts & CSS: Add custom JavaScript or CSS to each door for tracking or visual customization.
Responsive Design: SantaPress looks beautiful on any device, from desktop to mobile, with Retina/HiDPI support.
GDPR-Friendly: No external scripts are loaded, and tracking only records clicks—no personal data.

Even more features:

Multi-calendar support for different parts of your site
Compatible with popular plugins like WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, and WPML
Perfect for boosting engagement and holiday sales
Clean, developer-friendly code with full documentation

What users say:

“Thanks for your very quick response to my inquiry; this is probably the quickest response I’ve ever had in a tech matter :-)”
Tom

“Such a fun plugin that helped us tackle our yearly advent calendar with ease. Easy to generate a calendar with just a few clicks. Plenty of options (without being overwhelming). And beautiful design (I love the snow effects)”

“Our embed scripts are now working and now we’re excited to bring the best web-based Advent Calendar experience we’ve ever had to our users.” Jason

Changelog

Last update (Version 1.8.0 – 2025-11-06):


= 1.8.0 =
* General adjustments
* Improved template selection and Auto-Layouts
* CSS Fixes

= 1.7.4 =
* Fix: Background color doesn't apply when not using Auto-Layout
* Improved CSS filesize

= 1.7.3 =
* Added compatibility with WordPress 6.8.3
* Added compatibility for ACF 6.6.0 

= 1.7.2 =
* Fix: $this->check_doors() should be called after init hook
* Fix: include a function to disable page transitions for Elementor when opening doors

= 1.7.1 =
* Integrated trim() functions to remove empty lines in ajax answers
* CSS fixes 

= 1.7.0 =
* Added compatibility with WordPress 6.6.1
* Added compatibility for ACF 6.3.5 
* Added compatibility for Contact Form 5.9.8

= 1.6.5 =
* Reduced overall filesize
* Fix: Check quiz cookie for each door instead of having it bound to one specific door

= 1.6.4 =
* Updated ACF from 6.0.2 to 6.2.1
* Added compatibility for WordPress 6.3.1

= 1.6.3 =
* Added WPCF7 hidden fields (santapress_title, santapress_question, santapress_answer)
* Added DE translation
* Added CH translation (thanks to Rolf Müri - mm-design.ch)
* fix: warning on 404 pages
* fix: warning on WooCommerce category pages

= 1.6.2 =
* fix: fix on acf answer boolean fields

= 1.6.1 =
* fix: acf compatibility

= 1.6.0 =
* Added compatibility for WordPress 6.0.2
* Added compatibility for ACF 6.0.2 
* Added compatibility for Contact Form 5.6.3

= 1.5.5 =
fix: prevent flickering on iPhone/mobile Safari (-webkit-backface-visibility)
fix: added default box-sizing property to all modals
fix: theme compatibility (visibility for modal)
fix: replaced php date() with current_time() to compare past days with timezone set in wordpress
feat: added door-past and door-current classes to doors

= 1.5.4 =
fix: added nonce to answers on regular pages
fix: IMPORTANT security bugfix while fetching door content through ajax

= 1.5.3 =
fix: fixed decoding issue in quiz answers

= 1.5.2 =
fix: javascript execution after ajax call
fix: quiz was loading twice in modal due to a content filter function
fix: acf path bugfix when acf was detected on site

= 1.5.1 =
fix: ACF compatibilty
fix: using $this->version instead of $version which led to a warning in class-santapress-admin.php
fix: ajax request were not passing the content filter (which also adds the quiz automatically if no shortcode was found)

= 1.5.0 =
* refactor: all public ajax calls are now made by using WordPress ajax functions
* feat: comments are now allowed on single door posts (not modal)
* feat: users can now choose number of cols via shortcode attribute (see https://santapress.halloecho.de/docs/#shortcode) 
* fix: acf enqueue warnings when acf was detected on site
* fix: stop playing video after closing the modal
* fix: moved santaprass scripts to footer
* fix: Contact Form 7 (> v5.4) compatibilty (wpcf7.initForm > wpcf7.init)
* fix: css adjustment/fixes and security improvements

= 1.4.2 =
* feat: New option to select an embed mode for modal within global settings - you can now choose between ajax and iFrame integration
* fix: door categories display

= 1.4.1 =
* build: WordPress 5.8 compatibility check => done
* build: updated acf version
* fix: acf compatibility issues when ACF is already activated on site

= 1.4.0 =
* feat: door categories
* fix: jquery modal compatibility fixes

= 1.3.10 =
* fix: modal not appearing on some themes (multiple uses of the_content() within the final door page)

= 1.3.9 =
* fix: compatibly with newer WC versions
* fix: prevent SantaPress from hiding custom field on other post types
* fix: disable past doors
* fix: CSS improvements
* feat: added WPML compatibilty

= 1.3.8 =
* fix: CSS bugfixes (mobile adjustments)
* fix: titles in nav menu disappeared when you open doors as _blank pages
* feat: show error message in console when modal content can't be fetched

= 1.3.7 =
* fix: bugfix modal (jquery-modal should run in noConflict() mode) to be compatible with themes that are using bootstrap modal or other plugins (e.g. Avada)
* fix: option "disable past doors" returned indexOf undefined because there was no door link in preview mode
* fix: when option "show title" was disbled the door post id couldn't be not fetched
* fix: minor js bugfix

= 1.3.6 =
* fix: css bugfix in modal when showing santapress hat and snow flake pattern
* fix: php bugfix

= 1.3.5 =
* fix: bugfix in regular expression
* build: 1.3.5 - tested compatibilty with WP 5.5.1

= 1.3.4 =
* feat: new variable „hide_after_close“ in hidden mode shortcode

= 1.3.3 =
* feat: individual correct/incorrect reponses on each door (not only globally)

= 1.3.2 =
* fix: wpcf7 integration to regular posts (not only after quiz answers) - thanks to Tojama

= 1.3.1 =
* Code & security adjustments

= 1.3.0 =
* New Features
* Compiled jQuery Modal CSS into santapress CSS
* Compiled jQuery Modal JS into santapress JS
* Minfied CSS and JS
* Introduced Quiz
* Bugfixes
* Many Code and graphical changes

= 1.2.0 =
* Added SantaPress snow
* Added auto door layouts
* Added hidden mode and more shortcodes
* Made door type global
* Bugfixes
* WPMU compatibility

= 1.1.0 =
* Added different sections in settings page
* Localization changes
* Code cleanups

= 1.0.0 =
* Initial Release

SantaPress WordPress Plugin