Busy Fingers Braids

Busy Fingers Braids is an independent WordPress appointment-booking plugin built for a braid studio workflow. It provides a mobile-first customer booking experience, manual deposit instructions, booking administration, availability management, and a restricted booking-manager role.

Version

The first independent release is 1.0.0. Release history begins with this plugin and does not inherit version numbers from another project.

Customer booking flow

1. The customer chooses a category, service, optional add-ons, date, and time.
2. The customer enters contact information and submits a booking request.
3. The plugin creates a booking reference and temporarily holds the appointment time.
4. The receipt displays the required deposit and the configured Cash App and Zelle receiver details.
5. The customer sends payment and opens the prepared WhatsApp message to share payment proof.
6. Staff verify the payment and confirm the booking.

The payment window defaults to 30 minutes and can be configured from Busy Fingers Braids → Settings → Payment Settings. When the window closes, the appointment hold is released. Payment instructions remain visible for customers who pay late, but the receipt clearly explains that the original time is no longer guaranteed.

The booking flow uses a transparent outer shell so it sits naturally on the active WordPress theme background. Accent, heading, body, muted/helper, and filled-button text colors can be configured from Busy Fingers Braids → Settings → Appearance.

Payment settings

• Cash App supports a Cashtag, phone number, email address, and receiver name.
• Cash App displays one receiver identifier using Cashtag → phone → email priority.
• Zelle supports a phone number, email address, and receiver name.
• Zelle displays the phone number when both phone and email are configured.
• Cash App and Zelle remain separate choices when both methods are configured.
• The WhatsApp Business Number is used for customer payment-proof messages.
• No card payment is required in the customer booking flow.

Booking administration

The plugin includes:

• Dashboard and appointment summaries
• Booking list with booking references and payment status
• Calendar and availability management
• Service, add-on, customer, and staff management
• Deposit and balance reconciliation
• Booking receipt, confirmation, reschedule, and cancellation flows
• Import/export and reporting tools

The Busy Fingers Braids Booking Admin role (bfb_booking_admin) can manage booking operations without access to unrelated WordPress features. Administrators retain access to owner-level configuration.

Shortcodes

• [bfb_booking] — customer booking flow
• [bfb_confirmation] — booking receipt and confirmation screen
• [bfb_portal] — customer appointment portal
• [bfb_services] — service listing

Activation creates the default booking and customer-portal pages when they do not already exist.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.0 or newer
• PHP 7.4 or newer
• HTTPS is recommended for customer and admin use
• WooCommerce is optional

Installation

1. Upload busy-fingers-braids.zip from Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
2. Activate Busy Fingers Braids.
3. Open Busy Fingers Braids → Settings and configure business, payment, WhatsApp, and page settings.
4. Add services and availability before publishing the booking page.

Development checks

find . -name '*.php' -print0 | xargs -0 -n1 php -l
node --check public/js/standalone-booking.js
node --check admin/js/admin.js

Build the production ZIP with:

bin/build-release.sh

License

GPL-2.0-or-later.