Requirements¶
Everything below is checked against a stock WordPress install. If your site already runs a current WordPress on current PHP, the only decisions left are how email leaves the site and whether you want GoCardless.
Club Player Manager¶
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| WordPress | 6.0 or newer |
| PHP | 8.2 or newer |
| Database | The site's usual MySQL/MariaDB. The plugin creates its own tables on activation and never alters a WordPress core table. |
| Scheduling | WP-Cron, or a real cron job calling wp-cron.php. Bulk email is queued and drained in the background, so a site with cron disabled will queue mail and never send it. |
| Outgoing email | Either whatever wp_mail() already uses on the site, or an Elastic Email API key. |
PHP 8.2 is a hard floor, not a recommendation — the code uses the standalone true return type,
which older versions cannot parse. The plugin declares Requires PHP: 8.2, so WordPress refuses to
activate it on anything older rather than fataling.
Outgoing email¶
The plugin sends a lot of email: season approval links, confirmations, payment setup links, chase-up reminders, waiting-list notifications and whatever you send by hand from the bulk screens. Two ways out of the site are supported:
- Default WordPress mail (
wp_mail()) — uses whatever the host or another plugin provides. Fine if you already have working transactional mail. - Elastic Email API over HTTPS — recommended. It sends on port 443, so it works on hosts that block outbound SMTP, and it reports bounces and spam complaints back to the plugin's email log. You need an API key with the Email Send permission.
Either way, From Email has to be an address your provider will actually send as. Until it is set, the plugin sends nothing.
Check this before you import anyone
Club Management → Settings → Send test email is the fastest way to find out whether mail leaves the site. Do it before the first season approval run, not during it.
Payments (optional)¶
Payments need a GoCardless account. The plugin uses Instant Bank Pay for
the registration fee and a Direct Debit mandate for an instalment plan, and it needs the site to be
reachable over HTTPS from the public internet so GoCardless can deliver webhooks to
/wp-json/cpm/v1/gc-webhook.
Everything else in the plugin works with no GoCardless account at all — you can record offline payments by hand and never open the Payments settings.
Public pages¶
Three shortcodes belong on ordinary WordPress pages you create: the sign-up form, the season registration form, and the "send me my link again" form. Any theme that renders shortcodes in page content will do. See Shortcodes.
Companion plugins¶
Both companion plugins declare Requires Plugins: club-management, so WordPress will not let you
activate either one before the core plugin.
English FA¶
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| WordPress | 6.5 or newer |
| PHP | 8.2 or newer, with the DOM extension (bundled with virtually every PHP build) |
| Network | Outbound HTTPS to thefa.com, on a schedule |
It reads FA Full-Time's HTML, so it needs the DOM extension and a Full-Time fixtures or results URL per team. There is no API key to obtain. See English FA.
Club Mailer¶
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| WordPress | 6.5 or newer |
| PHP | 8.2 or newer |
| Permalinks | Pretty permalinks — Settings → Permalinks, anything but "Plain" |
| HTTPS | Required. Microsoft Entra and Google Cloud both reject http:// redirect URIs for a web app; bare localhost is the only exception. |
| Provider app | A Microsoft Entra app and/or a Google Cloud OAuth client, registered once by the site admin |
See Club Mailer.
What it does not need¶
- No Composer or Node on the server. Release zips ship with their dependencies already installed and namespace-scoped.
- No multisite. It is a single-site plugin; it has not been built or tested for a network.
- No page builder, no particular theme. The admin side is plain WordPress admin screens; the public side is three shortcodes.
- No accounts for parents. Guardians never log in. They act through private links sent by email, which is deliberate — see Who can see what.
Who needs an account¶
| Role | What they need | What they see |
|---|---|---|
| Club admin | A WordPress account, added under Settings → Club Admins. Any WordPress administrator is one automatically. | Everything |
| Team secretary | A WordPress account whose email matches the Team secretary field on a squad | Only their own squads and the players in them |
| Guardian | Nothing | Only the private links emailed to them |