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Installation & Quick Start

You can have your first policy published and ready for staff acknowledgement in under ten minutes. This guide walks you through installation, the setup wizard, and your first document.

System requirements

  • WordPress 6.7 or later
  • PHP 8.2 or later
  • Any standard WordPress hosting environment (shared, VPS, managed WordPress)
  • The plugin does not require WooCommerce, Elementor, or any other third-party plugin

Installing the plugin

From the WordPress Plugin Directory (easiest)

  1. In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin.
  2. Search for Dantian Policy Management.
  3. Click Install Now next to the plugin.
  4. When the install finishes, click Activate.

Manual installation

  1. Download the ZIP file from the WordPress Plugin Directory or from your account area.
  2. In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin → Upload Plugin.
  3. Choose the ZIP file and click Install Now.
  4. Click Activate Plugin.

You can also manually upload the unzipped dantian-policy-management folder to /wp-content/plugins/ via FTP or your hosting file manager, then activate from the Plugins screen.

Installing the Pro add-on

Note: Install and activate the Free plugin first. The Pro add-on will not activate without it.

  1. Download the Dantian Policy Management Pro ZIP from your purchase.
  2. Go to Plugins → Add New Plugin → Upload Plugin.
  3. Upload the Pro ZIP and activate it.
  4. Go to Policy Management → Settings → Licence, enter your Pro Licence Key, and activate it. Pro features and automatic updates need an active licence.

The setup wizard

The first time you activate the plugin, the setup wizard opens automatically. It walks you through nine steps that take about five minutes to complete. Each step has Save & Continue and Back buttons. If you would rather configure everything yourself, choose Skip setup — I’ll configure manually on the Welcome screen. The wizard runs once; afterwards, every choice it makes is editable under Policy Management → Settings (and the pages it creates under Pages).

Who can run it: administrators (anyone allowed to manage the plugin’s settings). The Pro add-on does not add wizard steps — Pro features are configured in Settings after setup.

Getting back to an unfinished wizard. If you close the wizard part-way through, nothing is lost — each step is saved when you click Save & Continue. Until setup is finished, a Setup Wizard item appears in the Policy Management menu, and a dismissible “Welcome to Dantian Policy Management! Run the setup wizard to get started.” notice links back to it. The notice stops appearing on its own once the site shows signs of being set up (for example, a default audience is saved, the Document Hub page exists, or a document is published).

Skipping. Choosing Skip setup — I’ll configure manually asks you to confirm (Skip setup? → Yes, skip setup, or Go back). Skipping counts as finishing: the wizard will not open again, and the defaults described below stay in place until you change them in Settings.

After setup is finished, following an old link to the wizard takes you to Policy Management → Settings with a short notice explaining that setup runs once.

Step 1: Welcome

A brief overview of what the wizard will configure. Click Let’s Go.

Step 2: Content

Choose the internal names (slugs) for your content: the document post type, the FAQ post type, and the document type, category, and tag taxonomies. These control your URL structure. The defaults work well for most sites — leave them unless you have a reason to change them.

Field Default
Document post type document
FAQ post type faq
Document type taxonomy document_type
Document category taxonomy document_category
Document tag taxonomy document_tag

Each slug may use lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores only, and may be at most 20 characters long. Names that WordPress reserves for itself are refused. If any slug is refused, the wizard shows Some slugs could not be saved with the reason, and the previous (working) value is kept — fix the slug and click Save & Continue again.

The plugin arrives with four built-in document types — Policy, Procedure, Guide, and Form. You manage them later under Policy Management → Settings → Content Management (see Creating and Managing Documents).

Step 3: Branding

Set a Primary colour (default #0073aa) and a Secondary colour (default #005a87). They are applied across the Document Hub, buttons, email accents, and exported PDFs. To add a logo or cover page to your PDFs, go to Settings → PDF Export after setup.

Step 4: Compliance & reminders

Decide how versioning and acknowledgements behave:

  • Enable document versioning — Track document changes with version history and optional approval workflows. On by default.
  • Enable document acknowledgements — Allow documents to require acknowledgement, with expiry tracking. On by default.
  • Default acknowledgement period — How many days an acknowledgement stays valid before staff must re-acknowledge (default 365).

Reminder schedules are not set here — the step links you to Settings → Acknowledgements & Notifications, where you configure them after setup. Out of the box, reminders go out 30, 7, and 1 day before an acknowledgement is due.

Step 5: Audience

Pick the roles that must acknowledge documents by default. New documents that require acknowledgement start with this audience, and you can change it per document at any time. On a new site, Subscriber is pre-selected. Administrators always have access regardless of what you tick.

This step only appears if you left acknowledgements enabled in step 4. If you select no roles, the wizard warns you, and each document must declare its own audience before anyone is asked to acknowledge it — documents left on the default audience will not ask anyone to acknowledge them until you choose at least one role.

Step 6: Email

Set the From name (default: your site title) and From email address (default: your site’s administration email address) for all plugin emails (reminders, approval requests, compliance reports). An address that isn’t a valid email is not saved. Use a real, monitored mailbox — staff often reply to reminders. You can change these later under Settings → System Configuration; the subject lines of individual notification emails are under Settings → Acknowledgements & Notifications.

Step 7: Pages

The wizard can create the pages your staff will use, with the right shortcode already in place. Each page is ticked by default, and you can edit its title before it is created:

Click Create Pages & Continue, or Skip — set up pages later. A page the wizard has already created is shown as Already created with a link, and is never created twice. If you clear a page title, the default title is used. The Document Hub page the wizard creates is also set as your Document Hub Root Page (Settings → Content Management), which breadcrumbs and the saved-search and bookmark shortcuts link back to. You can move or rename the pages later without affecting functionality.

Step 8: Features

Two optional features are off by default — turn them on here, or any time later under Settings → Features:

  • Edit Suggestions — Let logged-in staff submit suggested edits to documents. Suggestions go to a moderation queue (Policy Management → Edit Suggestions — the wizard’s own text calls it “Moderation”) where admins approve or reject them; an approved suggestion creates a new version and triggers the owner-approval workflow. When you switch it on here and haven’t yet chosen who may suggest edits, the roles you picked in step 5 are allowed to suggest edits on every document type. Adjust this later in Suggestion Roles by Document Type (see FAQs & Edit Suggestions).
  • Page Gating — Lock selected WordPress pages until the visitor has acknowledged the required policies. Once enabled, choose which pages to gate under Policy Management → Page Gating. For example, lock your staff intranet home page until the visitor has read and acknowledged your Code of Conduct.

Step 9: Review

A summary of your choices. Go Back to change anything, or click Finish setup to save. You then land on a “You’re All Set!” panel with recommended next steps (including links to view your new Document Hub and My Acknowledgements pages) and two buttons — Go to Settings and Create Your First Document.

If you skipped the wizard, you can configure everything directly in Policy Management → Settings — you don’t need to re-run it.

Creating your first document

  1. Go to Documents → Add New in the WordPress admin menu.

  2. Enter the document title (e.g. “Code of Conduct”) and write the document body using the WordPress editor. You can use headings, lists, images, and any standard block.

  3. Set the document metadata. Governance fields live in two places in the editor:

    • In the editor’s right-hand Settings sidebar (open it with the gear icon if it is hidden): Document Type, Document Categories, Document Tags, the Acknowledgement panel, the Document Settings panel (Confidentiality, Target Audience (Roles), Document Owner, Portal order), and the Compliance & Status panel (Effective From, Risk Rating, Review Cycle (days), Next Review Date, Document Status).
    • In the Meta Boxes area below the editor content (if it is collapsed, click the Meta Boxes bar at the bottom of the editor to expand it): Acknowledgement Content & Comprehension (shown while acknowledgement is required) and Version & Changelog. The Acknowledgement panel’s Edit content & quiz button scrolls you there.

    The key fields:

    • Document Type — e.g. Policy.
    • Document Categories — optional; groups documents within each Document Hub tab.
    • Confidentiality — Public documents are open to everyone, including logged-out visitors. Internal Use, Confidential, and Restricted documents need a login and are limited by the target audience.
    • Target Audience (Roles) — which roles can see this document. If you leave it empty, any logged-in user can see a non-public document.
    • Document Owner — the owner title responsible for approving new versions. The list is empty until you have set up document owners — see “Setting up document owners” below. Leave it blank if you are not using the approval workflow yet.
    • Effective From — when this document takes effect. A date in the future hides the document from non-editors until that date — leave it blank or set today’s date to publish immediately.
    • Review Cycle (days) — how often the document should be reviewed (e.g. 365 for annual review).

  4. In the Acknowledgement panel, turn on Require acknowledgement if staff must formally confirm they have read this document. The panel then shows Who must acknowledge (target roles and user lists) and Timing (when the acknowledgement expires). If you leave the audience empty, the site default audience from the setup wizard applies when you save.

  5. Click Publish.

The document is live for its audience as soon as you publish. Version approval applies to later changes — see below.

Setting up document owners (required before the Document Owner field works)

The Document Owner drop-down lists owner titles you define, in two steps under Policy Management → Settings → User Management:

  1. Define owner titles — in Owner titles (governance roles), click + Add role and fill in both the Role slug and the Role display name (e.g. slug compliance-lead, display name Compliance Lead). A row is discarded if either field is left blank. Use WordPress roles allowed to be owners to choose which WordPress roles can be assigned.
  2. Assign a person to each title — in Assign a user to each owner title, pick the WordPress user who fills each owner title.

Save your changes. The Document Owner drop-down on each document now lists your owner titles.

Enabling the version approval workflow

Owner sign-off does not happen automatically from setting an owner. Turn it on in Policy Management → Settings → Features → Enable Version Approval. You can only switch it on once at least one document owner is assigned or an Approver User Roles entry is configured (under Settings → User Management) — otherwise nobody could approve a held version, and the setting will not save.

Once enabled, each new version you record in Version & Changelog is held for approval: the current version stays live, and the document owner is emailed a secure approval link. Changes made by the document owner themselves (when Auto-Approve Owner Changes is on, the default) or by a user in an approver role go live straight away. The approval-related options live on Settings → Version Approval. See Version Control & Owner Approvals for the full workflow.

Adding the hub to a page

If you did not use the wizard to create pages, you can add the Document Hub to any page manually.

  1. Go to Pages → Add New and give it a name like “Staff Policies”.
  2. In the editor, add a Shortcode block and enter

    Getting started

    Getting started

    Getting started

    Getting started

    Getting started

    Documents & the knowledge base

    Logging & student progress

    Sessions & attendance

    Staff, credentials & evidence

    Timelines & prompts

    Acknowledgements & compliance

    Compliance tracking & reporting

    Emails & the student experience

    Reports & analytics

    Supervision, review & cohorts

    Administration & settings

    Assessment & grading

    Evidence & storage

    Organisation & integrations

    Pro governance tools

    Administration & settings

    Administration & settings

    Administration & settings

    Guides by role

    Planning & calendars

    Administration & settings

    Guides by role

    Guides by role

    Guides by role

    Reference & help

    Guides by role

    Reference & help

    Reference & help

    Reference & help

    Reference & help

    Last 7 days All time
    Creating and Managing Documents 9 views
    FAQs & Edit Suggestions 7 views
    Installation & Quick Start 6 views
    How the Plugin Works — Core Concepts 6 views
    Guide for Students 6 views

    Recently Updated Documents

    Training Coordinator Guide 1 month ago
    Trainer Workspace 1 month ago
    Prompt Management 1 month ago
    Guide for College Administrators 1 month ago
    Shortcode Reference 1 month ago
    .
  3. Publish the page.
  4. Go to Policy Management → Settings → Content Management and choose this page as the Document Hub Root Page, so document breadcrumbs link back to it.
  5. Share the page URL with your staff.

That’s it. Staff who visit the page will see the documents their role can access, a search bar, and the ability to read and acknowledge documents.

What staff see

When a logged-in staff member visits the Document Hub, they see:

  • A summary of their outstanding acknowledgements (or “You’re up to date — no outstanding acknowledgements.”)
  • A search bar
  • A tab for each document type that has documents they can see, with documents grouped by category inside each tab
  • Popular Documents (switchable between the last 7 days and all time) and Recently Updated Documents
  • Recently Viewed — only if you have turned on Track View User Identity under Settings → System Configuration

Logged-out visitors only see documents classified as Public. If there is nothing public to show, they are asked to log in.

When staff open a document that requires acknowledgement and they have not yet acknowledged the current version, an Acknowledgement Required panel appears on the document. They tick the confirmation box (“I have read and understood this document” unless you set your own wording) and click Acknowledge. If a comprehension quiz is turned on, they must pass it first.

After acknowledging, the panel changes to Acknowledged and shows the version they acknowledged, the date, and when the acknowledgement expires.

Worked example: a physiotherapy clinic goes live

A three-site physiotherapy clinic wants every clinician to read and sign off its Infection Control Policy before the next accreditation visit. Staff log in to the clinic’s WordPress intranet with the Subscriber role; the practice manager is an Administrator.

  1. The practice manager installs and activates the plugin. The wizard opens.
  2. Content and Branding — she leaves the slugs alone and enters the clinic’s teal and navy brand colours.
  3. Compliance & reminders — versioning and acknowledgements stay on; the default period stays at 365 days, so clinicians re-acknowledge yearly.
  4. Audience — Subscriber is already ticked, which covers every clinician.
  5. Email — From name “Riverside Physio Compliance”, from address the shared practice mailbox.
  6. Pages — she keeps Document Hub and My Acknowledgements, and unticks Pending Approvals because she is the only person who edits policies.
  7. Features — both left off for now. Finish setup.
  8. She chooses Create Your First Document, pastes in the Infection Control Policy, sets Document Type to Policy, Risk Rating to High, turns on Require acknowledgement (the Subscriber audience fills in automatically when she saves) and publishes.
  9. She emails the Document Hub link to staff. Each clinician sees the policy in the outstanding-acknowledgements summary at the top of the hub, reads it and clicks Acknowledge. Their sign-off appears on the Compliance Overview straight away.

Troubleshooting first-time setup

The wizard didn’t open after activation. The automatic redirect is skipped when several plugins are activated at once, and only happens for administrators. Open it from Policy Management → Setup Wizard (shown until setup is finished). If setup was already finished or skipped, everything the wizard sets is in Policy Management → Settings.

Staff see “no documents” or are asked to log in on the hub. New documents are classified Restricted unless you change the site-wide Default Confidentiality Level (Settings → Content Management), so they are only visible to logged-in users in the document’s audience. Check that the staff member is logged in, that their role is in the document’s Target Audience (Roles) (or the audience is empty), and that the document’s Effective From date isn’t in the future.

Logged-out visitors can’t search Public documents. Search needs a logged-in user by default. To open it to visitors, turn on Allow anonymous access under Settings → Search → Public REST API Access.

The Document Owner drop-down is empty. You haven’t defined owner titles yet — see Setting up document owners above.

Next steps

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