Requirements and installing

What you need

• WordPress 7.0 or later

• PHP 8.0 or later

• WordPress cron working normally

Cashback Tracker does a lot of its work in the background — importing orders, refreshing shops, sending the summary email. If cron is disabled or blocked on your host, those jobs never run. See Scheduled tasks if you are not sure.

You will also need an account with at least one affiliate network. You do not need one to install the plugin and look around — the sandbox gives you a fake network with fake shops and orders to practise on.

Installing

1. In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.

2. Choose the ZIP file you downloaded and press Install Now.

3. Press Activate.

A Cashback Tracker menu appears in the left sidebar.

If you are replacing version 2, read Upgrading from version 2 before you activate. The upgrade is one-way.

What activation sets up

You do not have to do any of this yourself — it happens the moment you activate:

• A Cashback shop post type, where your shop pages live

• A shop category taxonomy for grouping them

• A member account page, created as a normal WordPress page

• The plugin's own database tables, for orders, coupons, balances and the log

• Permalinks are refreshed, so shop URLs work straight away

The Cashback Tracker menu in wp-admin

First things to do

In this order:

1. Enter your license key. Cashback Tracker → License. Until you do, there are no automatic updates. See License and updates.

2. Set your site currency. Settings → General → Currency and cashback. See Currency and exchange rates.

3. Connect a network, or switch the sandbox on to practise. See Adding a network.

4. Work through Quick start.

The site currency is a one-time choice. Every piece of cashback is converted into it, so it cannot be meaningfully changed once real money is recorded. Pick the currency you will actually pay your members in.

Upgrading from version 2 rather than installing fresh? You will also be asked to initialize the cashback ledger before anything is recorded — see Upgrading from version 2. A new site skips that: with no order history to bring across, the ledger records from the first order.

If shop pages show "Page not found"

Go to Settings → Permalinks and press Save Changes without altering anything. That rebuilds WordPress's URL rules. Activation does this for you, but some setups — particularly a plugin restored from a backup or copied between servers — can end up with stale rules.

Removing the plugin

Deactivating stops all background work and leaves everything else alone, so you can deactivate and reactivate safely.

Deleting the plugin removes its tables and settings. Your shop pages, coupons and member balances go with them. Take a database backup first if there is any chance you will want them back.