Cat Café Booking — WordPress Plugin

Session-based booking system built for cat cafés. Handles 30/60 min sessions, shared capacity across sessions, Square payments, Twilio SMS, OTP verification, liability waivers, and full admin management.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.5+
• PHP 8.1+
• SMTP plugin (WP Mail SMTP, FluentSMTP, or any wp_mail()-compatible plugin)
• Square account (for live payments)
• Twilio account (for SMS)

Installation

1. Download the latest release zip from GitHub Releases
2. WP Admin → Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin → choose zip → Install → Activate
3. Go to Cat Café → Settings and configure everything before going live

Configuration

First-run checklist

Square Setup

1. Create a Square developer account at developer.squareup.com
2. Create an application and get your App ID and Location ID
3. Create a Checkout Link in your Square dashboard for the booking product
4. Paste the Checkout Link URL into Square Checkout URL
5. For webhook-based payment confirmation, add your Square Access Token and configure a webhook pointing to: https://yoursite.com/wp-json/catcafe/v1/square-webhook (webhook endpoint coming in v1.1)

Twilio Setup

1. Sign up at twilio.com
2. Purchase a phone number (~$1/month)
3. Copy your Account SID and Auth Token from the Twilio Console
4. Add all three to Settings → Twilio

Usage

Shortcode

Place [catcafe_booking] on any WordPress page:

[catcafe_booking]

Full-page template

1. Create a new page
2. In Page Attributes → Template, select Cat Café — Full Page Booking
3. Publish — the page renders only the booking app with no theme chrome

Customer cancel flow

Every confirmation email/SMS includes a cancel link: https://yoursite.com/?catcafe_action=cancel&token=XXXXX

• If clicked more than 24 hours before the session → cancellation processed, guest notified
• If clicked within 24 hours → message shown asking them to call

Admin

WP Dashboard Widget

Visible on the main WP Dashboard. Shows upcoming sessions with booked guests and quick confirm/cancel buttons.

Cat Café → Reservations

• Filter by date or status
• Confirm or cancel individually
• Select multiple → bulk confirm or bulk cancel
• Emergency closure — cancel all reservations for a date
• Export to CSV

Cat Café → Waitlist

• View waitlisted guests
• Promote to reservation when a seat opens
• Remove from waitlist

Cat Café → Settings

All operational settings are editable here. No code changes needed.

Auto-Updates

Set GitHub Repo in Settings to yourusername/catcafe-booking. When you push a new tagged release (v1.1.0), WordPress will surface it in the Plugins update screen automatically.

For private repos, add a GitHub Token with repo read scope.

File Structure

catcafe-booking/
├── catcafe-booking.php          # Main plugin file
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── README.md
├── includes/
│   ├── class-post-types.php     # WP post types + all DB helpers
│   ├── class-settings.php       # Settings get/set/save
│   ├── class-sessions.php       # Session generation + formatting
│   ├── class-reservations.php   # Booking business logic
│   ├── class-otp.php            # OTP send/verify (email + SMS)
│   ├── class-notifications.php  # Email + Twilio SMS
│   ├── class-rest-api.php       # All REST endpoints
│   ├── class-shortcode.php      # [catcafe_booking] shortcode
│   ├── class-page-template.php  # Full-page template
│   ├── class-cron.php           # WP Cron reminder job
│   └── class-updater.php        # GitHub auto-update
├── admin/
│   ├── class-admin.php          # WP Admin menu + pages
│   ├── class-dashboard-widget.php
│   ├── admin.css
│   ├── admin.js
│   └── views/
│       ├── reservations.php
│       ├── waitlist.php
│       └── settings.php
├── public/
│   ├── css/booking.css
│   └── js/booking.js
├── templates/
│   ├── booking-app.php          # HTML shell (shortcode + full-page)
│   └── full-page.php            # Full-page WP template
└── .github/
    └── workflows/
        └── deploy.yml

Roadmap (v1.1+)

• Square webhook endpoint for payment confirmation
• iCal / Google Calendar sync
• Blackout date management UI
• Per-session pricing overrides
• Multi-location support