Restaurant bookings on WordPress, no plugin needed

Why not a plugin?

A booking plugin stores your bookings in your WordPress database, on your web hosting, next to your blog posts. That sounds convenient. In practice it means your bookings go down when your site goes down, your host's backups now contain personal data you are responsible for, every WordPress and PHP update is a risk to the thing your business depends on, and the plugin author can change the price or stop maintaining it whenever they like. Most restaurant booking plugins also have a free version that is deliberately crippled and a paid version that costs more than Tablez.

With Tablez, WordPress only shows the form. The bookings live on tablez.uk, the staff app works on any phone, and if your website is ever hacked, offline or being rebuilt, bookings carry on. You can even switch themes or leave WordPress entirely and keep the same booking page.

Adding Tablez to WordPress

Block editor (Gutenberg)

1. Edit the page where you want the form. A "Book a table" page is the usual choice.
2. Add a block, search for Custom HTML, and add it.
3. Paste your embed code. It looks like this, with your own venue slug:

<script src="https://tablez.uk/embed.js" data-venue="your-venue"></script>

4. Update the page. That is it.

Classic editor

Switch the editor from Visual to Text (or Code) and paste the same line where you want the form. Do not paste it in the Visual tab, which will turn it into text.

Elementor, Divi, WPBakery and other page builders

Every builder has an HTML widget or module. In Elementor it is called HTML; in Divi it is the Code module; in WPBakery it is Raw HTML. Drag it where you want the form and paste the line.

A "Book a table" button in the menu or header

If you would rather not add a page, use button mode. Paste this in an HTML widget in the header or sidebar and it drops a button that opens the form in an overlay:

<script src="https://tablez.uk/embed.js" data-venue="your-venue" data-mode="button" data-label="Book a table"></script>

Or simply add a menu item that links to https://tablez.uk/book/your-venue. It opens the booking page in a new tab and needs no code at all.

Common WordPress questions

"My theme strips scripts"

Rare, but some security plugins or contributor level accounts are not allowed to post scripts. Log in as an administrator, or use the iframe version from the widget page instead.

"I use a caching or optimisation plugin"

Tablez is fine with WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, Autoptimize and the rest. If you have a setting that delays all scripts until the user interacts, the form will appear after the first scroll or tap; exclude embed.js from delaying if you would rather it loads straight away.

"I have a cookie banner"

The embed sets no cookies on your site. The booking form itself, inside its frame, uses one session cookie to protect the form. There is no advertising tracking anywhere. Most cookie banners do not need any change.

"Does it work with WooCommerce?"

It works alongside it. Tablez does not take payments through WooCommerce; it is a booking form, not a checkout. Deposits are coming soon within Tablez itself.

Moving from a plugin

Keep the plugin running until the last booking it holds has happened, and put Tablez on the page in its place today. Add any future bookings from the plugin into Tablez by hand in the staff app, which takes a few minutes. Then deactivate and delete the plugin. If it stored customer data, export and delete that too, so you are not keeping personal data you no longer need.