Create your first board

A board is the container for your ideas and your roadmap. Most sites need only one board. If you sell more than one product, you can create one board per product. This page walks you through creating your first board.

Before you start

Open the board form

  1. In your WordPress admin, click SimpleBoards in the left menu.
  2. Click Boards. You will see a list of boards. The list is empty the first time.
  3. Click Add New at the top of the list. The board setup form opens.

Fill in the board

The board setup form has two parts. The top has the Board Name and Description. Below them is a tab called General. On a fresh install only this one tab is shown. (If Pro is active you will also see Workflow Automations and Design. You can ignore them for now.)

Board Name

Type a clear name. This is the heading visitors see at the top of the board. Examples:

  • Product Roadmap
  • Feature Requests
  • Acme App Ideas

Description

Add a short sentence that tells visitors what the board is for. This is shown under the title. You can leave it empty.

General tab settings

Each setting has a sensible default. You only need to change one if it does not fit your case.

  • Enable Ideas Tab. When this is on (the default), visitors can send in ideas. They appear on the Ideas tab on the board. Turn this off if you only want to show a one-way roadmap with no public input.
  • Default tab. This sets which tab is selected when a visitor opens the board. The default is Roadmap. If your board is mostly about gathering ideas, change this to Ideas.
  • Board header. When Hide board title and description is checked (it is checked by default), the title and description you typed above are not printed inside the board. This is helpful when the page itself already has a heading. Uncheck it if you want the title shown.
  • Roadmap controls. Two checkboxes (Display Filter and Display Sort By) control whether visitors see a filter and a sort dropdown on the roadmap. Both are on by default.
  • Ideas controls. Same two checkboxes for the Ideas tab.
  • Comments. Check Disable comments for this board to hide the discussion area on every item in this board. The default is unchecked, so comments are on.

Save the board

Click Create Board at the bottom of the form. The page reloads. You will see a green message that says "Board saved.". The form is now in edit mode. A new field has appeared in the top section.

Find your shortcode

After the board is saved, the top section shows a new field called Shortcode slug. Under it, you will see a code in this format:

[sbir_board product="board-name"]

The slug is built from the board name. For a board named Product Roadmap, the shortcode is:

[sbir_board product="product-roadmap"]

You will use this shortcode in the next step to show the board on a page. Copy it now, or come back to this page later.

If you change the board name in the future, the slug does not change automatically. Edit the Shortcode slug field by hand if you want them to match. A warning will tell you that any old shortcode using the old slug will stop showing this board.

What gets created in the background

Saving a board creates one WordPress entry of the Board type. The board does not yet have any items. You can add items in two ways:

  • Type a draft idea into the board form as a visitor, after you have placed the board on a page.
  • Add items from the admin under SimpleBoards > Items.

You do not need any items yet to test that the board works on a page. The next step is to put it on a page.

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Last updated

2026-05-23 · SimpleBoards 1.0.4