InterVarsity WordPress Plugin

Copyright 2015-2025 Caleb Evans
Released under the GNU General Public License v3.0

The InterVarsity Plugin is a WordPress plugin intended for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA chapters with a WordPress site. I originally created the plugin for the InterVarsity North County chapter website, but I have since decided to open-source the plugin for the benefit of all InterVarsity chapters. Please note that this is an unofficial plugin which is not affiliated with InterVarsity.

This plugin integrates perfectly with the InterVarsity Theme, which I also created for the InterVarsity North County website. The theme is also open-source, and you are certainly free to build your own WordPress theme that integrates with this plugin.

Download InterVarsity Plugin (ZIP)

Requirements

1. Your site must be running WordPress 4.4 or newer.

2. You must install and activate the Awesome CPT plugin, as this is required for the InterVarsity Plugin to function.

Features

Small group management

The InterVarsity Plugin adds a new section to the WordPress admin sidebar titled Small Groups. In this screen, you can manage small groups just like you can pages or posts, and you are able to perform the same basic operations (add, view, edit, trash/delete).

What's in a small group?

Every small group has the standard title, description, and support for featured images (post thumbnails). This plugin also adds several other fields specific to small groups:

1. Details
2. Time
3. Start Date
4. Location
5. Leaders
6. Contact information
7. Name
8. Phone number
9. Email address

Each small group can be assigned a campus to which it belongs. You can create new campuses under the Campuses section of the Small Groups admin menu in the sidebar. While you can technically assign multiple campuses to a single small group, I recommend that each small group have only one assigned campus.

Similarly, you can create and assign any number of categories to any small group. You can create new categories under the Categories section of the Small Groups admin menu in the sidebar. Unlike campuses, it is acceptable and encouraged to assign multiple categories to each small group as appropriate.

Small group shortcodes

This plugin provides a number of shortcodes which you can use to retrieve information for a particular small group. These are most useful when you wish to mention who's leading (for example) in the small group description. The following shortcodes are available:

• [sg-time]
• [sg-start-date]
• [sg-location]
• [sg-leaders]
• [sg-contact-name]
• [sg-contact-phone]
• [sg-contact-email]

Facebook Like Button shortcode

The plugin also includes a useful shortcode for adding a Facebook Like Button to your site.

Example

[iv-facebook-like-button href='https://www.facebook.com/intervarsity.usa' layout='standard' action='like' share='true' show-faces='true' width='300']

Email link shortcode

For securely displaying email addresses in page and post content, the InterVarsity Plugin includes an [iv-email-link] shortcode. The shortcode works by encoding the email address you enter so as to deter spam bots from harvesting it. This encoding isn't guaranteed to stop all spam bots, but it should help nonetheless.

Example

[iv-email-link email="me@example.com"]Email me[/iv-email-link]

Cyclone Slider Integration

The plugin also integrates with the Cyclone Slider plugin by allowing you to assign sliders to particular pages on your site. A new box titled Featured Slider is added to the Edit screen for an individual page.

The InterVarsity Theme will always show the assigned slider for any page which has one assigned to it. However, if you design your own theme to integrate with the InterVarsity Plugin, you should ensure that your theme respects the slider set by a page.