Households

• Contributors: akirk
• Tags: family, chores, co-parenting, inventory, wp-app
• Requires at least: 6.0
• Requires PHP: 7.4
• Tested up to: 7.1
• Stable tag: 1.1.0
• License: GPL-2.0-or-later
• License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html

Run a household, or several: who is at which home today, what each house needs people to know, the things kept there and what still needs doing.

Description

A WordPress app for running a household — or several. Most family apps assume one home; this one is built for the families that have more than one. Built on WpApp, so it runs as its own app at /households/ instead of inside wp-admin.

Try Households in WordPress Playground · Try it with demo data

Try it in OpenStation — the same app opened in desktop mode with the OpenStation plugin.

What it does

• An overview about you, not about your houses. The front page answers what today wants from you: on the left what the household you are standing in still has open — everybody's, each line saying whose it is or that it is nobody's — and the things kept there; on the right your homes, the one you are at filled in, and the fortnight ahead as one dated list with appointments, handovers and birthdays merged. Filters and the add form live in the URL, so a filtered list can be handed to somebody else.
• Saying where you are, from the overview. Every household folds open to the people you may speak for — yourself, and anyone in a household you organise — as checkboxes, so a parent taking two children to the grandparents' is one press. It is about today alone and leaves the rotation untouched.
• Who is where. Everyone across your homes, listed once each, with where they are today, a day-by-day board for the next fortnight, and the handovers that follow from it. People moving together on the same day are one handover, because that is one trip.
• Rotations. Anyone in more than one home can have one: children between separated parents, a week at the grandparents, a share in a holiday house. A rotation names its homes in order — as many as the family uses — and repeats a 14-day cycle. Week on/week off, 2-2-3, alternate weekends, or set the fourteen days yourself. It is stored on the person, so every home reads the same answer.
• Overrides by tapping a day. A tap wins over the pattern and leaves it untouched, so a swapped weekend does not shift every week after it. Switched to from that day onwards, it clears whatever was arranged after it in the fortnight. For someone with no pattern at all, a stated day stands until the next stated day — somebody who moves on Tuesday is still there on Wednesday.
• Belonging follows from being there. Saying someone is at a household they are not in yet puts them in it. Leaving is separate and deliberate, and removes the membership only: the person record and everything written on it stays.
• People without accounts. Everyone in a home has a record whether or not they can log in, which is how a toddler whose shoe size is worth writing down gets one. A record can be pointed at a WordPress account, or at nobody at all. The plugin mints no accounts — they are made in WordPress and pointed at a person from the manage page.
• What travels with a person. Clothing and shoe size are fields, each stamped with the day the value last changed, so a size not measured since spring says so. Everything else — allergies, medication, what somebody minding them should know — is written on the person, and earlier versions are kept.
• About this home. The wifi network, where the water main valve is, which day the bins go out: facts that are true of the place, readable by everyone in it.
• Things kept here, and where they have got to. Where a thing lives is asked once per household, because the spare charger is in the hall drawer at one house and beside the bed at the other. Where it is is one mark on the thing itself, and may be a house that does not keep it — a thing taken along for the weekend is lent, not moved. A household page lists what it has a place for (saying which are away) plus a Here just now list of what has been brought to it.
• Packing. Marking a thing as going somewhere sits beside where it is rather than instead of it, and so does packing it: a thing in a bag by the door is still at the house it was always at. /households/pack/ gathers everything going the same way as one list per trip, dated from the moves the fortnight already holds, and the whole bag is carried in one press. A trip with something waiting says so beside the move on the overview and beside the handover on the board.
• Two decisions, not five roles. Whether someone administers a home is asked per home; whether someone is a child is a property of the person. Nothing else is a role, so there is no permission language to learn.

How it is built

• A home is a term, everything in it is a post tagged with that term, and there are no custom tables. A person is a post, and a WordPress login is optional identity attached to it via post_author. What is written about a person is the post content, so it has revisions.
• The two permission decisions are asked through the ordinary capability API — current_user_can( 'manage_household', $home_id ) and organise_household. Whether someone administers a home lives in term meta; whether someone is a child lives on the person.
• No build step. Every page is server-rendered PHP: it reads through Storage, and every change is a <form method="post"> posting back to the page it was made on. A template_redirect handler checks the nonce, does the work, and redirects to the same URL, so a refresh repeats nothing and anything refused is named in the URL and said by the page.
• Nothing needs JavaScript. Two places use a little and neither depends on it: a confirm() on removing someone from a home, and the whereabouts board, which posts its own forms and splices the server's reply into the rows already on screen so paging a fortnight scrolls rather than reloads. Both scripts make the request the browser would have made on its own.
• src/Access.php — who may see or change what. src/Storage.php — every read and write. src/Whereabouts.php — rotations, overrides, handovers. src/App.php — routes and form handling. src/View.php — form helpers. Templates live in templates/.

Development of this plugin happens on GitHub. Pull requests welcome.

Installation

1. Upload the households directory to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress
3. Visit /households/

Installing from a git checkout instead of a release ZIP needs the Composer dependency to be fetched first:

cd wp-content/plugins/households
composer install

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this plugin create custom tables?

No. A home is a taxonomy term, and people, tasks, appointments, facts and things are posts tagged with that term. Rotations and overrides are post meta. Remove the plugin and your database is as it was.

Does everyone in the household need a WordPress account?

No. Everyone in a home has a person record whether or not they can log in, so a small child whose shoe size is worth writing down still gets one. A record can be pointed at a WordPress account later, or at nobody at all. The plugin never creates accounts itself.

How do I set up shared custody or a week at the grandparents?

Give the person a rotation. It names its homes in order — two, three, as many as the family uses — and repeats a 14-day cycle: week on/week off, 2-2-3, alternate weekends, or the fourteen days set by hand. A rotation is stored on the person, so every home reads the same answer.

What if a single day is different from the pattern?

Tap that day on the whereabouts board. The tap wins over the pattern and leaves it untouched, so a swapped weekend does not shift every week after it. Switched from that day onwards instead, it clears whatever was already arranged after it in the fortnight.

Where does the plugin put its pages?

At /households/, as its own app rather than inside wp-admin. That comes from WpApp, the framework this is built on.

Is there an upgrade path from Family Manager?

No. This started as Family Manager, was renamed to Households, and has since been rebuilt from scratch. It is a prototype — start it fresh.

Screenshots

1. The overview: what the household you are standing in still has open, your homes, and the fortnight ahead as one dated list.
2. The overview on a phone: the same list, with each task's assignee and the things kept at each home below it.

Changelog

1.1.0

• Whereabouts: rotations over a 14-day cycle, per-day overrides, and the handovers that follow from them.
• Packing lists gathered per trip from the moves the fortnight already holds.
• Things that know where they live per household and where they are just now.
• People records independent of WordPress accounts, with sizes stamped by the day they last changed.