Description

Init User Engine is a lightweight, no-bloat user system for modern WordPress sites. It’s designed for maximum frontend flexibility and gamified user engagement. All dynamic interfaces are rendered via JavaScript with real-time REST API interaction.

No jQuery. Minimal settings. Smart by default.

What you get:

Display user avatar and dashboard via shortcode
Show level, EXP, Coin/Cash, and full user wallet
Frontend login & registration modal with Cloudflare Turnstile (or built-in math captcha) protection
Let users check-in daily and receive timed rewards
Auto-track referral registrations with reward system
Let users buy VIP status using Coin, Cash, or both
Redeem Code / Gift Code and dedicated VIP Code system, with CSV export from wp-admin
Built-in inbox for notifications (uses custom DB table), with pinned/expiring messages and a stats dashboard
Custom avatar support with upload & preview modal
Send custom notifications to selected users or all members from wp-admin
Optional “Require Login to Access Site” mode that gates the entire frontend behind the built-in login modal
Optional one-step “Login After Register” so new users land on the site already signed in

This plugin is the core user system behind the Init Plugin Suite – optimized for frontend-first interaction, extensibility, and real-time gamification.

GitHub repository: https://github.com/brokensmile2103/init-user-engine

Features

Profile & Avatar

Avatar shortcode [init_user_engine] – renders the guest login button or the logged-in avatar with dropdown dashboard automatically
Modal dashboard showing level, EXP progress, Coin/Cash wallet, and quick links
Custom avatar upload with live preview, crop-free flow, and one-click revert to the default/Gravatar image
Configurable upload policy (allow everyone, VIP only, or disable uploads entirely) with a configurable max file size
Optional display name change limit (e.g. once every 7 days, like TikTok), enforced in the profile modal, wp-admin/profile.php, the REST API and WooCommerce Account details
Theme override support: any template file can be overridden by copying it to your-theme/init-user-engine/

Accounts, Login & Registration

Frontend login & registration modal – no theme editing or template overrides required
“Login After Register” option to automatically sign users in right after they create an account (disabled by default)
Failed logins reopen the login modal on the current page with an inline error message, instead of redirecting to wp-login.php
Cloudflare Turnstile captcha on registration, with a built-in math-question captcha as automatic fallback when no Turnstile keys are set
Optional protection of the native WordPress login, registration, and lost-password forms (wp-login.php) using the same Turnstile setup
“Forgot password?” form right inside the login modal, using the native WordPress reset flow (can be turned off; a custom Lost Password URL always takes priority)
Custom redirect URLs for “Register” and “Lost password” links
Optional “Require Login to Access Site” mode that gates the entire frontend behind the built-in login modal
Ability to temporarily disable new registrations without affecting other plugins or WordPress core

Gamification

EXP & Level system with hookable progression logic
Coin & Cash dual-wallet system with transaction logs and a configurable exchange rate between the two currencies
Daily check-in with streak milestones and an online-time bonus timer
Optional Streak Recovery: members who miss a few days can spend Coin to keep their check-in streak alive (allowed missed days and Coin price per day are configurable, off by default)
Built-in reward hooks for registration, daily login, comments, published posts, and completed WooCommerce orders (when WooCommerce is active)

VIP Membership

VIP membership system with Coin-based, Cash-based, or combined purchase options
Multiple configurable pricing tiers per duration, including a lifetime option
VIP bonus multipliers for Coin/EXP earning
Optional VIP purchase lock (globally disable new purchases) and stacking restriction

Referral

Referral module with cookie-based signup tracking
Separate, configurable rewards for both the referrer and the newly referred user

Redeem & VIP Codes

Redeem Code / Gift Code module – code in, rewards out
Dedicated VIP Codes module to grant VIP duration through a code
One-click CSV export for both code lists (full list, streamed in batches, UTF-8 BOM, and sanitized against CSV/formula injection)

Inbox & Notifications

Built-in inbox system with pagination and read/claim/delete actions
Pinned messages that automatically unpin once read, or once their optional expiration time passes
Admin panel to send custom notifications to selected users or all members, with priority and expiration
Inbox Statistics dashboard (Users Init User Engine Inbox Statistics) with date-range filtering

Admin Tools

Manual Top-up tool for Coin/Cash (Users Init User Engine Top-up Coin/Cash)
Per-user overview metabox on the WordPress profile/edit-user screen (level, wallet, VIP status, recent activity), with one-click Remove VIP, Ban Avatar Upload and Unlock Display Name actions

Developer-Friendly

REST API for all features (read/write/modify)
Action/filter hooks for full customization
Pure Vanilla JS frontend – no jQuery, no server bloat

Developer Hooks

Filters

init_plugin_suite_user_engine_online_minutes – Modify required online minutes after check-in
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_vip_prices – Modify VIP package prices
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_referral_rewards – Modify referral rewards
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_localized_data – Modify frontend JS data
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_calculated_coin_amount – Modify Coin reward before apply
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_calculated_exp_amount – Modify EXP reward before apply
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_exp_required – Modify EXP required per level
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_checkin_milestones – Set milestone streak days
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_format_inbox – Modify formatted inbox data
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_render_level_badge – Customize level badge HTML
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_inbox_insert_data – Modify inbox data before inserting into database
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_validate_register_fields – Validate or modify registration fields before account creation
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_after_register – Hook after successful user registration (pass user ID and submitted data)
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_daily_tasks – Add or modify daily task list and logic
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_captcha_bank – Extend or modify the internal captcha question bank used for fallback validation
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_format_log_message – Customize transaction log message display with access to entry data, source, type, and amount
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_should_keep_original – Override decision to keep original uploaded avatar (GIF or other formats)
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_vip_expire_soon_threshold – Modify the threshold (in seconds) used to determine when VIP is considered close to expiration
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_body_vip_classes – Add, remove, or modify VIP-related CSS classes applied to the <body> element
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_theme_colors – Modify theme color system (primary and active colors)
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_streak_restore_max_days – Modify how many missed check-in days a user may cover to keep their streak (return 0 to disable it for that user)
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_streak_restore_cost – Modify the Coin cost of keeping a streak (receives total cost, missed days, and user ID)
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_lostpassword_modal_enabled – Enable or disable the lost password form inside the login modal (receives the current value and the plugin settings)
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_display_name_change_days – Modify how many days a member has to wait between two display name changes (receives the days from the settings and the user ID; 0 = unlimited)
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_display_name_limit_applies – Return false to let a user (or role) change their display name freely (receives the current value and the user ID)

Actions

init_plugin_suite_user_engine_level_up – When user levels up
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_exp_added – After EXP is added
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_transaction_logged – After Coin/Cash is logged
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_exp_logged – After EXP log is recorded
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_inbox_inserted – After new inbox message
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_referral_completed – When referral is completed
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_after_checkin – After user check-in
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_streak_restored – After a user paid Coin to keep their check-in streak (user ID, missed days, cost, new streak)
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_after_claim_reward – After user claims reward
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_vip_purchased – After VIP is purchased
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_add_exp – Triggered when adding EXP via hook
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_add_coin – Triggered when adding Coin via hook
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_coin_changed – After user’s Coin balance is updated
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_cash_changed – After user’s Cash balance is updated
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_admin_send_notice – When admin sends notification via wp-admin.
init_plugin_suite_user_engine_display_name_unlocked – After an administrator lets a member change their display name again (user ID)

REST API Endpoints

Base: /wp-json/inituser/v1/

POST /register – Create a new user account
POST /checkin – Daily check-in (optional JSON body: prompt_restore, restore_streak, restore_cost for Streak Recovery)
POST /claim-reward – Claim reward after online duration
GET /transactions – Get Coin/Cash transaction log
GET /exp-log – Get EXP log
GET /inbox – Get inbox messages
POST /inbox/mark-read – Mark a message as read
POST /inbox/mark-all-read – Mark all as read
POST /inbox/delete – Delete a single message
POST /inbox/delete-all – Delete all messages
POST /vip/purchase – Purchase VIP package
GET /referral-log – Get referral history
POST /avatar – Upload new avatar
POST /avatar/remove – Remove custom avatar and revert to default
GET /profile/me – Get current user profile (includes display_name_limit: days, locked, next_change, notice)
POST /profile/update – Update profile information
GET /daily-tasks – Get list of completed daily tasks and rewards
POST /exchange – Convert Cash Coin based on exchange rate
POST /redeem-code – Redeem gift code (returns Coin/Cash rewards)

License

This plugin is licensed under the GPLv2 or later.
You are free to use, modify, and distribute it under the same license.

Screenshots

Custom Links section for setting Register and Lost Password URLs. — Settings with options for theme color, currency labels, and admin bar/Gravatar control.

Installation

Upload the plugin to /wp-content/plugins/init-user-engine
Activate it via the Plugins screen
Use [init_user_engine] in any page/post/template
You’re done – modals and logic load automatically

FAQ

How do I customize the UI?

The frontend is written in modular Vanilla JS with minimal HTML structure.
Override styles via your theme or inject custom JS as needed.

Where is user data stored?

user_meta: EXP, level, Coin, Cash, VIP, referral
wp_init_user_engine_inbox: inbox messages (custom DB table)

Can I extend or integrate it?

Yes. The plugin is built around WordPress hooks and REST API. You can inject logic via add_action, add_filter, or build your own UI on top of the endpoints.

Is it compatible with WooCommerce or BuddyPress?

Not officially, but it’s modular and can be integrated via code or future addons.

How do I send messages to users manually?

Go to Users Init User Engine Send Notification in wp-admin.
You can search users, customize message type, link, priority, and even set expiration.

Reviews

A3 Manga 26 July 2026 1 reply

Plugin nhẹ, chạy mượt và rất dễ tích hợp vào website. Mình thích nhất là các tính năng như điểm EXP, Coin, check-in hằng ngày, VIP, referral và hệ thống thông báo đều hoạt động ổn định. Giao diện hiện đại, tốc độ rất tốt. Rất đáng để trải nghiệm, 5 sao!

Read all 1 review

Contributors and Developers

“Init User Engine – Gamified, Fast, Frontend-First” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Init HTML

“Init User Engine – Gamified, Fast, Frontend-First” has been translated into 1 locale. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Init User Engine – Gamified, Fast, Frontend-First” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Change Log

1.7.1 – October 17, 2026

Performance (large sites): every Coin/Cash change scanned the whole usermeta table. The atomic UPDATE added in 1.6.8 picked the wallet row with a subquery on the same table (WHERE umeta_id = ( SELECT id FROM ( SELECT MIN(umeta_id) … ) )), which MySQL/MariaDB cannot resolve through the primary key: EXPLAIN showed a full index scan (type: index, about 800k rows). In our 800k-row benchmark each check-in, reward, purchase, exchange or top-up spent about 0.3 seconds in the database, and the cost grew with the table
- The wallet row is now looked up through the user_id index (only the rows of that one user are read), then changed by an UPDATE … WHERE umeta_id = … on the primary key: 1 row examined instead of the whole table, under 1 ms in the same benchmark
- Still atomic: the new value is computed by the database and the funds check stays in the WHERE clause of the UPDATE. If the row changes between the lookup and the UPDATE, nothing is written and the change is retried. Tested with 40 parallel requests on one wallet: no balance spent twice, no credit lost
- A plain single-table UPDATE by primary key: no multi-table UPDATE … JOIN, deterministic for statement-based replication, and no new index on WordPress core tables
- The admin Top-up tool (all members / VIP members) gets the same speed-up, since it makes one wallet change per member
- Balance reads (init_plugin_suite_user_engine_wallet_read(), the X-IUE-Coin / X-IUE-Cash headers, GET /balance) no longer use ORDER BY umeta_id LIMIT 1, which can make MySQL walk the primary key instead of the user_id index. The oldest row is picked in PHP, so the result is the same
- Return values, error codes and the init_plugin_suite_user_engine_coin_changed / ..._cash_changed actions are unchanged
Performance: the Referral log (GET /referral-log) now compares iue_referred_by as a string, the way it is stored, instead of making the database convert every value to a number (which also matched values such as 12abc). The invited members are loaded with one query instead of one query per member
Performance: the list of active VIP members (used by the Top-up and Send Notification tools) no longer asks the database to count rows it never uses (SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS)
Code quality: table checks in the upgrade routine, the log migration, the Edit User box and Inbox Statistics now use the prepared, esc_like()-escaped helper instead of raw SHOW TABLES LIKE '…' queries
Performance (large sites): Top-up Coin/Cash and Send Notification to All members or Active VIPs now run in the background through WP-Cron. Before, get_users() loaded every user ID inside the admin request, then made one wallet change, one log row and one Inbox message per member; with tens of thousands of members the request could hit the PHP time limit halfway, with no way to know who had been paid
- Members are walked by user ID in batches (100 for top-ups, 500 for notifications) with ID > cursor, never all at once and never with OFFSET. Each slice runs for up to 20 seconds (or half of max_execution_time when lower), then the next slice is scheduled right away
- Crash-safe top-ups: for each member, the wallet change, the transaction log row, the Inbox message and the job progress are saved in one database transaction. We killed PHP (kill -9) in the middle of a member: that member was rolled back and handled again, and all 12,003 test members were paid exactly once
- Notifications: if PHP dies during a batch, the next run skips the members who already got the message, so nobody gets it twice
- New Background Jobs table on both pages with progress, members changed / messages sent, failures and status, plus a Cancel button (members already processed keep what they received). It refreshes by itself while the page is open
- Jobs only ever run from WP-Cron: the built-in WP-Cron, or your system cron job if the site sets DISABLE_WP_CRON. The admin page never runs a job by itself, so heavy work you moved to a system cron stays there. When PHP has no time limit (WP-CLI, or php wp-cron.php run from the command line by a system cron job), each run processes up to 60 seconds of work
- If a job makes no progress for 15 minutes (filter init_plugin_suite_user_engine_bulk_job_stall_minutes; keep it longer than your system cron interval), its row shows a warning and a Process from this page button. Only after the admin clicks it does the open page process the job, a few seconds per request, sharing the same lock as WP-Cron
- One job runs at a time, oldest first, and a site-wide lock keeps two processes from running the queue together. Job progress is read straight from the database, never from the object cache. A job interrupted by deactivating the plugin continues once it is activated again
- The same members as before are targeted (members of the current site on Multisite; for VIPs, the members whose VIP was active when the job was created)
- Selected users still runs right away, as before
- In our benchmark the background top-up handled 12,003 members at about 2.7 ms per member, and the notification to 12,003 members took less than one second of database work
- Developers: for these two targets, init_plugin_suite_user_engine_admin_send_notice now fires once per batch, with the members of that batch. New actions init_plugin_suite_user_engine_bulk_job_created and init_plugin_suite_user_engine_bulk_job_finished, new filters init_plugin_suite_user_engine_bulk_job_time_budget, init_plugin_suite_user_engine_bulk_job_batch_size, init_plugin_suite_user_engine_bulk_job_query_args and init_plugin_suite_user_engine_bulk_job_stall_minutes
Performance: avatars in comment lists. Each member’s avatar reads the iue_custom_avatar user meta, which cost one query per commenter not yet in the cache. The users and user meta of the whole list are now loaded at once with cache_users(): 40 comments from 40 different members went from 82 queries to 5. This covers the comment template, the Recent Comments block/widget, the wp-admin Comments screen and the REST API
Fixed: a Coin Top-up that included VIP members wrote their amount with the VIP Coin bonus into the transaction log, while the balance was changed without it (Top-up is a raw adjustment). The log now shows the amount actually applied
Translations: POT file regenerated with WP-CLI, Vietnamese translation updated

1.7.0 – October 11, 2026

New: Display Name Change Limit (Init User Engine → Settings → Display Name). Members can change their display name only once every N days, like TikTok (for example 7). Set to 0 for unlimited changes; 0 is the default, so nothing changes until you set it
- Enforced everywhere a member can change their own display name, not only in the Edit Profile modal: wp-admin/profile.php (WordPress lets members change it freely there), the core REST API (/wp/v2/users/me), WooCommerce Account details, and any other plugin that calls wp_update_user() for the signed-in member. The check runs in wp_pre_insert_user_data, so a change made too early keeps the current display name
- The Edit Profile modal, wp-admin/profile.php and WooCommerce Account details show a clear message with the date and time of the next allowed change. While the member has to wait, the display name field is disabled in the modal and on profile.php
- The Edit Profile modal returns an error (display_name_locked, HTTP 403) and saves nothing when the display name cannot be changed yet; saving other fields with the same display name still works
- Administrators (users who can edit other users) are not limited. A change an administrator makes to a member’s display name does not start the member’s waiting period
- New Unlock Display Name button in the user overview box on the Edit User screen (next to Ban Avatar Upload). It shows until when the member is locked, and one click lets them change their display name again right away; their next change starts a new waiting period. Administrators only, protected by a nonce
- The waiting period starts from the member’s last own change (user meta iue_display_name_changed_at). Changes are recorded even while the limit is 0, so a limit set later applies right away
- Race-safe: the check and the record run under the per-user lock, so two requests sent at the same moment cannot both change the display name
- New filters init_plugin_suite_user_engine_display_name_change_days and init_plugin_suite_user_engine_display_name_limit_applies, new action init_plugin_suite_user_engine_display_name_unlocked, and new PHP helpers init_plugin_suite_user_engine_is_display_name_locked( $user_id ), init_plugin_suite_user_engine_get_display_name_next_change( $user_id ) and init_plugin_suite_user_engine_unlock_display_name( $user_id )
- GET /wp-json/inituser/v1/profile/me now includes display_name_limit (days, locked, next_change, notice)
POST /profile/update now returns the display name actually saved
Improved: the Edit Profile modal now opens right away with a loading spinner and fills in the form when the profile data arrives, like every other modal. Before, nothing happened until the data was loaded, then the modal appeared all at once. If the modal is closed (or another modal is opened) while loading, the late response is ignored; if loading fails, the error is shown inside the modal
Fixed: a display name containing a double quote (") broke the display name field in the Edit Profile modal. The value is now set safely
Translations: POT file regenerated with WP-CLI, Vietnamese translation updated

View full changelog (all versions): Init User Engine – Changelog

Description

Features

Developer Hooks

Filters

Actions

REST API Endpoints

License

Screenshots

Installation

FAQ

How do I customize the UI?

Where is user data stored?

Can I extend or integrate it?

Is it compatible with WooCommerce or BuddyPress?

How do I send messages to users manually?

Reviews

Contributors and Developers

Interested in development?

Change Log

1.7.1 – October 17, 2026

1.7.0 – October 11, 2026

Meta

Ratings

Contributors

Support