littleWORKS of Mercy

WordPress plugin for a private, approval-based parish/community request board.

What it does

• Creates littleWORKS member and coordinator roles.
• Stores parish/community groups, memberships, requests, responses, and audit entries in custom tables.
• Provides pending registration review by site admins and assigned group coordinators.
• Keeps private requests visible only to approved members of the same group.
• Sends notification emails without exposing private request details in email.
• Lets members control new-request and response email notifications.
• Gives coordinators a roster for the groups they manage.
• Adds admin audit-log visibility.
• Adds built-in registration anti-spam checks plus optional hCaptcha/reCAPTCHA settings.
• Lets coordinators create and email secure invite links for automatic group approval.
• Extends remember-me sessions through plugin settings, with a shorter default for coordinators/admins.
• Uses Plugin Update Checker for GitHub-hosted updates.

Shortcodes

Create normal WordPress pages and place these shortcodes:

• [lworks_registration] for public access requests.
• [lworks_member_links] for session-aware request/sign-in links or logged-in dashboard links.
• [lworks_login] for member login.
• [lworks_dashboard] for the private request feed and posting form.
• [lworks_coordinator] for frontend coordinator approval.
• [lworks_profile] for standalone member notification settings.

Set the registration, dashboard, and coordinator pages in littleWORKS > Settings after creating them.

GitHub Updates

The plugin vendors yahnis-elsts/plugin-update-checker and checks:

https://github.com/stronganchor/private-social-network/

The checker uses the main branch and GitHub releases. For private GitHub repositories, define a token in wp-config.php:

define( 'LWORKS_GITHUB_TOKEN', 'github_pat_or_fine_grained_token_here' );

Prefer a fine-grained read-only token scoped only to this repository. Do not commit real tokens to this repo.

To release a version:

1. Update the Version header in littleworks-of-mercy.php.
2. Update LWORKS_VERSION.
3. Update readme.txt stable tag/changelog.
4. Commit and push.
5. Create a GitHub release/tag for the new version, or let the checker compare the main branch plugin header.

First Setup

1. Install and activate the plugin.
2. Go to littleWORKS > Groups and create at least one group.
3. Create pages for registration, login, dashboard, and coordinator review.
4. Go to littleWORKS > Settings and select the registration, dashboard, and coordinator pages.
5. Add existing WordPress users as group coordinators from littleWORKS > Groups.

Group invite links are shown under littleWORKS > Groups after the registration page is selected.

Registration Anti-Spam

The registration form includes a hidden honeypot field and signed form-age checks. Admins can also enable hCaptcha or Google reCAPTCHA v2 from littleWORKS > Settings after adding the provider keys.

Developers can add custom anti-spam fields with the lworks_registration_antispam_fields action and reject submissions with the lworks_registration_antispam_result filter.

Privacy Notes

This plugin keeps access checks on the server side. Private request content is never included in notification emails. It is still important to run the site over HTTPS, keep WordPress/plugins/themes updated, restrict admin access, and use MFA for administrators and coordinators.