Getting started

Requirements

  • WordPress 6.9+
  • PHP 8.2+ (tested up to 8.4)
  • WooCommerce, installed and active

ApprovalTrail’s plugin header declares Requires Plugins: woocommerce, so WordPress won’t let it activate without WooCommerce already running. If you try to activate ApprovalTrail on a site without WooCommerce, WordPress will block the activation and tell you why. There’s nothing to troubleshoot there, just install WooCommerce first.

Installing

  1. In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin.
  2. Search for “ApprovalTrail” or “Proof Approval for WooCommerce.”
  3. Install and activate.

The setup walkthrough

If you activate ApprovalTrail on its own, not as part of a bulk activation of several plugins at once, it opens ApprovalTrail → Setup automatically. If you activated it in a batch, or dismissed the walkthrough, you can always reach it again at admin.php?page=approvaltrail-setup while setup hasn’t been marked complete.

The walkthrough has three steps.

Step 1: A quick look at this site

Four checks run automatically, each with a plain-English fix if it fails:

  • Private storage created and blocked from the web. ApprovalTrail creates an uploads directory that isn’t supposed to be reachable directly. This check confirms it actually isn’t.
  • WooCommerce’s background queue is available. Previews, reminders and clean-up jobs run through Action Scheduler; this confirms it’s working.
  • Whether permalinks give tidy approval links. Plain permalinks still work, but a structured permalink setting produces a cleaner link for your customer.
  • Which order-storage mode is in use: WooCommerce’s High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) or the legacy posts table. ApprovalTrail supports both, so this is informational, not a blocker.

Step 2: When should an order wait for approval?

Turn the production lock on or off, and pick which order statuses it should guard (typically Processing and Completed). You can change this later on the Settings screen; see Holding production until approval for the full behavior.

Step 3: See what your customer sees

This is the step that actually explains the product. Click through, and the walkthrough builds a real sample WooCommerce order with a real sample proof attached to it, then hands you the exact link a customer would receive by email.

Open that link in a new tab. Approve it. Then look at the approval record it just created. One click at the end of the walkthrough removes the sample order — nothing about it lingers in your store.

No settings screen explains ApprovalTrail as well as clicking “I approve this proof” on your own site does. If you only do one thing before going live, do this.

Sending your first real proof

  1. Open any WooCommerce order.
  2. Find the Proof approval panel on the order screen.
  3. Name the proof (e.g., “Front logo placement, v1”), attach the file, and send.

The customer receives an email with their approval link. No account, no password, no login required on their end.

Files above 20 MB upload in pieces automatically, with a progress bar, so a large print-ready PDF doesn’t die to a server timeout. See Files, previews and retention for how large uploads and previews work.

If the customer’s email doesn’t arrive

Don’t panic and don’t wait. The approval link is shown to you right in the admin notice after you send the proof, and again inside the order panel any time. Copy it and send it however you like: text message, a different email address, whatever gets it to your customer fastest.

The most common cause is a site with no SMTP service configured, which WordPress’s default mail function delivers unreliably and which spam filters routinely reject. See Troubleshooting; Site Health checks for this and tells you plainly if it’s the problem.

What’s next

Something here wrong or missing? Tell us and we will fix it.