MetCPT — Corporate Content Hub for WordPress

A WordPress plugin built for IIUM Holdings Sdn Bhd to manage corporate events, procurement tenders, career vacancies, and news content across multiple subsidiary companies — with structured admin entry, styled public listings, and full single-page templates.

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Features
• Requirements
• Installation
• Updates
• Configuration
• Shortcodes
• Recommended Page Setup
• Archive Display
• Server Cron Setup
• File Structure
• Custom Post Types
• Data & Storage
• Security
• Performance
• Changelog
• Support
• License

Overview

MetCPT registers four custom post types (Events, Tenders, Careers, Companies) and exposes a set of shortcodes that render structured, styled listings on ordinary WordPress pages. It is designed to sit alongside a page builder such as Elementor: listings are placed on pages via shortcodes, while the plugin owns the single-post templates for each content type.

Features

Events

• Custom post type with an 8-section meta box (schedule, VIPs, itinerary, attendance, FAQs, guidelines, call-to-action, contact)
• Automatic status detection (Upcoming / Today / Past)
• VIP attendee list with configurable role badges
• Itinerary builder (time / activity / person-in-charge)
• Single event page with Google Calendar integration and WhatsApp sharing
• [events_list] shortcode with month dividers and filtering

Tenders

• Custom post type for procurement opportunities
• Two display templates — A (searchable table) and B (editorial layout), switchable globally or per-shortcode
• Automatic status calculation (Open / Closing Soon / Closed) from the closing date
• Daily email notifications for tenders nearing their closing date, with de-duplication
• [tenders_list] and [tenders_preview] shortcodes

Careers

• Custom post type for job vacancies
• Relational company system via the metcpt_company CPT
• Controlled Department dropdown (managed in Settings) and fixed Job Type options
• Application tracking with closing dates; "Apply" hidden automatically once closed
• [careers_list] and [careers_preview] shortcodes

News Grid

• Editorial news layout for standard WordPress posts
• Uniform responsive grid (repeat(3, 1fr), minimum 6 cards)
• Optional category filtering
• [news_grid] and [category_posts] shortcodes

Admin

• Settings page — tabbed configuration for General, Events, Tenders, Careers, Posts, plus an Error Log and How-To reference
• Dashboard widget — content-health overview (counts, closing-soon alerts, missing-field detection), transient-cached for 5 minutes
• Error Log — captures PHP errors, warnings, notices, uncaught exceptions, and fatals originating from MetCPT's own files, stored in a dedicated table with a filterable UI, detail modal, per-entry resolve, and 30-day auto-purge of resolved entries
• Dummy data tools — one-click seed/clear of sample content for local testing (behind a toggle; idempotent seeding)

Requirements

Installation

Via WordPress admin (recommended)

1. Download metcpt.zip from the latest release.
2. Go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the zip, and click Install Now.
3. Click Activate.

Manual

1. Extract metcpt.zip into /wp-content/plugins/metcpt/.
2. Activate MetCPT from the Plugins screen.

After activating, go to Settings → Permalinks and click Save Changes once to flush rewrite rules.

Updates

MetCPT self-updates from its GitHub releases via the bundled Plugin Update Checker. When a new version is released, WordPress shows an update on the Plugins / Dashboard → Updates screen; an administrator clicks Update to install it. Updates are always deliberate and admin-initiated — there is no silent or push-based deployment.

Configuration

Open MetCPT Settings and configure, at minimum:

• Tenders → Page URL and Careers → Page URL — used by the "Back" buttons on single pages and the "View all" links in previews
• Events → Archive URL — used by the "Back to Events" button
• Tenders → Notification Recipient and Closing Soon Threshold (days)
• Tenders → Categories and Careers → Departments — the dropdown options shown when editing content
• Posts → News Grid — header label, headline, view-all link, and default category

Then create your first Company, and start adding Events, Tenders, and Careers.

Shortcodes

Events

[events_list]
[events_list filter="upcoming"]
[events_list filter="past" order="DESC"]
[events_list posts_per_page="5" show_excerpt="no"]

Tenders

[tenders_list]
[tenders_list template="a"]
[tenders_preview]
[tenders_preview template="b" posts_per_page="6"]

template="a" (table) or template="b" (editorial) overrides the global Active Template setting for that shortcode. Specify it explicitly on any page where the layout matters.

Careers

[careers_list]
[careers_list filter="open"]
[careers_list company="iium-holdings" department="ICT" type="Full Time"]
[careers_preview posts_per_page="3"]

News

[news_grid]
[news_grid category="csr"]
[news_grid label="Our Stories" headline="Latest from" headline_italic="the group."]
[category_posts category_slug="news" posts_per_page="5"]

[news_grid] attributes fall back to the Posts settings tab when omitted (label, headline, headline_italic, view_all_text, view_all_url, category, posts_per_page, show_excerpt, order, orderby). [category_posts] requires category_slug and accepts posts_per_page, order, orderby, show_excerpt, and show_date.

Recommended Page Setup

Archive Display

Listings are served by WordPress pages containing shortcodes, not by CPT archives. Create a page for each module (slugs events, tenders, careers) holding the relevant list shortcode. These pages use the theme's page template — keeping header, footer, and navigation — and avoid conflicts with page builders that intercept CPT template loading. The archive-URL settings point the single-page "Back" buttons at these pages.

Each module also ships a template-archive.php fallback that styles a raw CPT archive URL (e.g. ?post_type=metcpt_event) if one is reached directly. These are an active fallback, not dead code.

Server Cron Setup (Recommended)

WordPress wp_cron runs on page traffic, which can delay tender notifications. For reliable timing:

1. Disable the pseudo-cron in wp-config.php:

   define( 'DISABLE_WP_CRON', true );

2. Add a real daily cron job (e.g. 8:00 AM):

   wget -q -O /dev/null "https://yoursite.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron"

File Structure

metcpt/
├── metcpt.php                          # Plugin entry point + auto-updater bootstrap
├── uninstall.php                       # Cleanup on deletion (preserve-by-default)
├── readme.txt                          # WordPress-format readme
├── LICENSE                             # GPL-2.0-or-later
├── libs/plugin-update-checker/         # GitHub release update library (YahnisElsts)
├── includes/
│   ├── core/
│   │   ├── class-metcpt.php            # Main loader class
│   │   ├── post-types.php              # CPT registration
│   │   ├── helpers.php                 # Shared standalone helpers
│   │   └── migrate-from-haraka.php     # One-time Haraka → MetCPT data migration
│   ├── admin/
│   │   ├── settings-page.php           # Settings UI + registration
│   │   ├── settings-fields.php         # Field renderers
│   │   ├── cron.php                     # Daily tender-closing email task
│   │   ├── dashboard-widget.php        # Admin content-health widget
│   │   ├── error-log.php               # Error capture, DB, AJAX, purge cron
│   │   ├── error-log-page.php          # Error Log tab UI
│   │   ├── docs-page.php               # How-To tab UI
│   │   └── dummy-data.php              # Seed / clear sample content
│   ├── events/    (meta-boxes, shortcode-list, templates.php — registers templates/events/*)
│   ├── tenders/   (meta-boxes, shortcode-list, shortcode-preview, shortcode-template-b, templates.php — registers templates/tenders/*)
│   ├── careers/   (meta-boxes-company, meta-boxes-career, shortcode-list, shortcode-preview, templates.php — registers templates/careers/*)
│   └── posts/     (shortcode-general, shortcode-news-grid)
├── templates/                          # Single and archive-fallback markup per module
│   ├── events/    (single.php, archive.php)
│   ├── tenders/   (single.php, archive.php)
│   └── careers/   (single.php, archive.php)
└── assets/css/                         # Per-module CSS (tokens, general, events, tenders, careers, posts, admin, settings, docs)

Custom Post Types

Data & Storage

MetCPT stores content in native WordPress tables (wp_posts, wp_postmeta, wp_options) and creates one custom table, wp_metcpt_error_log, for the error-logging feature. On deletion the plugin preserves all data by default; a full-cleanup block in uninstall.php can be enabled to remove posts, meta, options, and the log table.

Security

• Nonce verification on every meta-box save and AJAX action
• Capability checks (edit_post for content, manage_options for admin actions)
• Input sanitized on save (sanitize_text_field, sanitize_textarea_field, esc_url_raw, absint)
• Output escaped (esc_html, esc_attr, esc_url, esc_textarea, wp_kses_post)
• All database access parameterized via $wpdb->prepare()

Performance

• Dashboard widget cached via transient (5-minute expiry), invalidated on post save/delete
• Asset cache-busting keyed to file modification time
• Lean shortcode queries with optional category narrowing

Changelog

1.2.1 (2026-07-10)

• Rewrite rules now flush automatically once after each plugin update (version-gated, on admin_init), so the manual Settings → Permalinks → Save step is no longer needed following an update. Fresh installs already flushed on activation.

1.2.0 (2026-07-10)

• Removed six settings that were registered and rendered but never read: accent colour, organisation name, events default order, events show-excerpt, default submission address, and default tender fee.
• Removed the redundant News-Grid live preview from the Posts settings tab (the same preview remains in the How-To tab).
• Fixed an undefined-array-key warning in the manual cron trigger's nonce check.
• Made the dummy-data seeder idempotent — it now refuses to seed on top of existing dummy content instead of stacking duplicates.
• Completed and corrected the uninstall.php option-cleanup list (fixed two mismatched option names and added all currently registered options).

1.1.0 (2026-07-10)

• Rebranded from "Haraka" to "MetCPT" with a one-time automatic data migration for post types, options, post meta, the error-log table, and scheduled cron hooks.
• Switched updates to public-repo GitHub releases (no authentication token required).
• Redesigned the settings page and refreshed the newsroom and tenders-preview layouts onto shared design tokens.

1.0.0 (2026-06-14)

• Initial production release: Events, Tenders, and Careers modules; [news_grid]; dashboard widget; closing-tender email notifications; styled archive fallbacks; safe uninstall handler.

Support

• Internal: IIUM Holdings Web Development Team
• Issues: github.com/ismetdev/metcpt/issues

License

Proprietary — for internal use by IIUM Holdings Sdn Bhd and its subsidiaries.

Developed for IIUM Holdings Sdn Bhd · v1.2.1 · July 2026