Phorest Reviews

Stream live client reviews from your Phorest salon POS into WordPress.

Atelier-themed landing widget + full paginated /reviews page, pulled read-only from the Phorest 3rd-party API. Built for Mint on the Avenue (Winter Park, FL) and reusable by any Phorest salon.

• Read-only. Pulls reviews only — no booking writeback, no payments (Phorest doesn't expose PhorestPay via the API anyway).
• Resilient. Fresh cache → last-good snapshot → the Atelier theme's original hardcoded review block. The site never blanks when Phorest is unreachable.
• Artist visibility by name. Add former artists under Settings → Phorest Reviews → Hidden artists. Matching reviews disappear before cards, counts, averages, and filter options are generated; Atelier mirrors the list and honors it in the hardcoded fallback even if the plugin is later disabled.
• Encrypted at rest. Credentials are AES-256-GCM encrypted in wp_options; the key lives in a PHP-guarded data file under wp-content/ (survives plugin updates, direct HTTP requests exit before the key bytes).
• Honest SEO. Optional schema.org ItemList of the visible reviews. No self-serving LocalBusiness AggregateRating rich-result claim.
• PHP 7.4 / 8.1 / 8.3. No Composer, no Python, no external runtime — pure WordPress.

Install

1. Clone or download into wp-content/plugins/wp-phorest-reviews/.
2. Activate in Plugins.
3. Go to Settings → Phorest Reviews.
4. Pick your Phorest server (US/Canada/Australia or Europe), enter your Business ID, API username (global/you@salon.com) and API password (issued by Phorest Support — request via api-requests@phorest.com, CC the salon owner).
5. Click Discover branches to auto-find your Branch ID, or paste it if you know it.
6. Click Save settings — credentials are encrypted before storage.
7. Click Refresh reviews cache now to pull immediately (otherwise the first page load with a shortcode triggers a pull).

Usage

Place shortcodes on any page or post:

<!-- Atelier landing widget: newest 3 reviews at 4★ or above -->
[phorest_reviews_home]

<!-- Override count + minimum rating -->
[phorest_reviews_home count="6" min_rating="5"]

<!-- Full reviews page with stylist + rating filters -->
[phorest_reviews_page]

On any theme, create a WordPress page called "Reviews", use the slug /reviews, drop in [phorest_reviews_page], and publish. With the supplied Atelier v2.9.69 theme, leave the page body blank: page-reviews.php loads the live plugin surface automatically and falls back to the original hardcoded reviews if the plugin is unavailable. The landing widget links to /reviews automatically.

For classic widget areas, add Phorest Reviews — Landing Widget under Appearance → Widgets. Page builders can use [phorest_reviews_home] instead; both render the same surface.

Where credentials live

Threat model (honest):

• ✅ Defends against DB-only attackers (SQL injection, DB backup leaks, plugin exports) — ciphertext in wp_options is useless without the key file.
• ❌ Does not defend against full-filesystem attackers — they have the key file too. That is impossible to prevent without an external key source (wp-config constant or a KMS), which this plugin does not assume since many salon sites don't have filesystem root access.

To rotate the key: Settings → Phorest Reviews → Regenerate encryption key. All stored credentials become unreadable; re-enter them.

Performance

Phorest's API rate limit is 100 rps — generous. A full pull of Mint's 914 reviews takes ~5s across 10 round-trips. The transient cache (default 30 min TTL) means normal page loads don't hit Phorest at all. Reviews are low-churn; the default cadence is plenty.

No webhooks

Phorest's API does not support webhooks (per their docs). The plugin schedules a WordPress cron refresh every 30 minutes, also refreshes on cache miss, and offers a manual "Refresh now" button. Failed refreshes preserve and serve the last-good snapshot.

Honesty rules

Carried over from the salon-platform:

• No fabricated ratings. The visible average is computed from the complete cached Phorest dataset. JSON-LD omits AggregateRating because Google disallows self-serving LocalBusiness review rich results.
• No false platform attribution. For Mint, the sampled facebookReview / twitterReview flags are false — we do not claim any Google/Facebook cross-posting. If a salon uses Phorest's Online Reputation social auto-boost, verify per-review source before claiming it.
• Real review text only. Never invented or paraphrased.
• Privacy-friendly author display. First name + last initial ("Lizzette R.").

Development

# Lint all PHP files
find . -name '*.php' -exec php -l {} \;

# phpcs with WordPress standards (optional)
composer install
vendor/bin/phpcs --standard=WordPress .

CI

GitHub Actions lints PHP 7.4 / 8.1 / 8.3 on every push and PR.

License

BUSL-1.1 — see LICENSE. Production use is governed by the license terms.

Related

• phorest-api — Python skill wrapping the same API (for the salon-platform catalog pull-live into NEDB).
• wp-portal-bridge — sibling WordPress plugin (the HMAC tunnel pattern this plugin inherits discipline from).
• salon-platform — the Portal app this reviews plugin feeds into.

Built by Interchained LLC.