Installing CreditKit Pro
CreditKit Pro installs like any other WooCommerce extension: upload the zip, activate, then enter the licence key. Activation needs PHP 8.1 or later and an active WooCommerce install, and WordPress refuses to activate on older PHP because the plugin header declares Requires PHP: 8.1. Activation creates 15 database tables and adds a Credit System menu to wp-admin.
Before you install
| Requirement | Minimum | What happens below it |
|---|---|---|
| PHP | 8.1 | WordPress disables the Activate link and prints the PHP requirement on the Plugins screen. |
| WordPress | 6.0 | WordPress blocks activation from the Plugins screen. |
| WooCommerce | 7.0 | CreditKit Pro loads nothing and shows an admin notice naming the required version. |
| WooCommerce active | Required | Activation stops on an error page telling the store owner to install WooCommerce first. |
The PHP floor is enforced by WordPress core. CreditKit Pro’s own PHP check only registers an admin notice, so the Requires PHP header is what stops an install on PHP 8.0. The one place CreditKit Pro halts activation itself is the WooCommerce check, which ends the request on an error page.
Installing the plugin
- Confirm WooCommerce is installed and active.
- Go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin and choose
creditsystem.zipfrom the CreditKit Pro download. - Press Install Now, then Activate.
- Open Credit System → License and enter the licence key so the site receives updates.
Uploading over SFTP works too. Extract the zip into wp-content/plugins/ so the folder is named exactly creditsystem, the path the updater installs future releases into.
What activation creates
Activation is idempotent, so re-activating an existing install is safe. Activation creates 15 wp_pcs_* tables covering balances, the ledger, expiry, bundles, teams, approvals, the audit log, the security and fraud logs, API keys and reward rules. Activation also seeds the security defaults, writes the default settings, inserts 7 starter credit bundles, schedules the WP-Cron jobs, registers the credits My Account endpoint and flushes the rewrite rules once.
The rewrite flush sits behind a one-shot option flag, so CreditKit Pro does not flush rewrite rules on ordinary page loads. Deactivation clears that flag and unschedules the cron jobs, drops no tables and deletes no balances.
The admin menu after activation
A Credit System menu appears in wp-admin with 10 items: Dashboard, Credit Bundles, User Credits, Transactions, Reports, Security, Rewards, API & Webhooks, License and Settings.
An eleventh item, Groups & Budgets, appears only after the Teams toggle is switched on under Credit System → Settings → Features, and that toggle ships off. Credit Data Backups, Spending Limits and Blocked Users are named as menu items in older documentation but are now tabs on the Security page. Their old URLs resolve as hidden redirects to the matching tab.
| Old URL | Now redirects to |
|---|---|
admin.php?page=pcs-spending-limits | Security → Spending Limits tab |
admin.php?page=pcs-backups | Security → Credit Backups tab |
admin.php?page=pcs-blocked-users | Security → Blocked Users tab |
admin.php?page=pcs-approvals | Groups & Budgets → Approvals tab |
Checking the install worked
- Open Credit System → Dashboard, which renders summary tiles rather than a database error on a working install.
- Open Credit System → Credit Bundles and confirm the 7 starter bundles are listed.
- Open WooCommerce → Settings → Payments and confirm Pay with Credits is present and enabled.
- Sign in as a customer and open My Account, where a Credits tab appears directly after Orders.
- Give that customer a balance from Credit System → User Credits, then place a test order paid with credits.
Checking the debug log for a PCS: Added context column… line, as older documentation suggests, proves nothing on a fresh install. That line is written by the 2.1.0 schema migration and only appears when upgrading from a pre-2.1.0 version. Use the admin screens above instead.
Upgrading an existing install
A licensed site receives releases through the WordPress updates screen. After a manual upload over an existing install, deactivate and reactivate CreditKit Pro once, because reactivation runs the schema migrations.