Scoreharbor documentation

Scoreharbor is a WordPress theme for a credit tools and financial offers website. Visitors get a free credit score estimate, a member dashboard and money calculators; you earn from matched offers, sponsored placements, ads and an optional paid plan. No plugins and no credit bureau data are needed.

1. Getting started

1. Go to Appearance → Themes → Add New → Upload Theme, choose scoreharbor.zip, then switch to it.
2. The theme creates its pages (estimator, dashboard, matches, compare, calculators, plan, join, alerts, guides, glossary, FAQ, about, contact, privacy, terms, advertiser disclosure), its database tables and the offer categories. Existing pages with the same slug are reused.
3. Open Scoreharbor → Welcome for a setup checklist.
4. Open Scoreharbor → Settings → Site and choose your country. Canada uses the 300 to 900 scale; the United States uses 300 to 850. The country also sets wording (chequing/checking, RRSP/TFSA or IRA) and affordability rules in the calculators.
5. To see a fully stocked site straight away, open Scoreharbor → Sample data and click Load sample data. Remove it in one click before launch.
6. Under Settings → Permalinks use any setting except Plain so that /offers/ and /best/<category>/ work.

2. Pages and menus

Each theme page uses a page template (Page Attributes → Template). If you delete one by mistake, use Scoreharbor → Welcome → Recreate missing pages. Menus: Appearance → Menus has a Primary location (added after the built-in links) and a Footer location. The Guides page is set as the WordPress posts page.

3. Score estimator

The estimator asks about late payments, collections or bankruptcy, the age of the oldest account, recent applications, card balances and limits (utilization) and the types of credit held. It weights them roughly the way common scoring models do: payment history 35%, utilization 30%, credit age 15%, mix 10%, recent applications 10%, and returns an estimated range of about ±20 points.

The result is an estimate from the visitor's own answers. It is not an official credit score and is not provided by a credit bureau. A notice saying so appears on every page; you can edit its wording in Settings → Site but please keep its meaning.

Signed-in members' estimates are saved to their history. Visitors who are not signed in still see their result and are invited to join.

4. Members and dashboard

Membership is free. Members can save estimates, set a goal score and date (drawn as a line on the chart), tick off checklist items, and set profile answers used by matching: yearly income, homeowner, business owner and student loans. Members can turn offer alerts on or off from their profile. Switch membership off in Settings → Members & plan. See all members under Scoreharbor → Members & payments.

5. Adding offers

Go to Offers → Add New. Give it a title and description, pick its category (and sub-category, for example Mortgages → Mortgage renewals), set a featured image if you like (otherwise the category image is used), and fill in Offer details:

6. How matching works

Each offer starts at 100 points for a member. It loses 30 points for every band the member is below the offer's band (a few points for being well above), 35 if income is below the minimum, and 60 for each unmet homeowner, business or student loan requirement. The result is labelled Strong (85+), Good (60+), Possible (35+) or Stretch, with short reasons. Band floors: Canada Fair 560, Good 660, Very good 725, Excellent 760; US Fair 580, Good 670, Very good 740, Excellent 800. Fit is a guide, never an approval decision, and the site says so.

7. Categories and compare pages

The theme creates these categories under Offers → Categories. Each has a compare page at /best/<slug>/ with sponsored slots, a side-by-side table, all offers ranked for the visitor and a link to the matching calculator.

You can rename categories and add descriptions; keep the slugs if you want the built-in icons and images.

8. Calculators

Debt payoff planner (avalanche versus snowball), credit utilization, loan payment, mortgage payment, home affordability, HELOC borrowing room, line of credit payment, credit card interest and a monthly budget. All run in the visitor's browser; nothing is sent to the site. Each section has an anchor such as /tools/#heloc you can link to. In Canada, mortgage maths uses semi-annual compounding and affordability uses a stress-test rate of the higher of your rate + 2% or 5.25%, with 39%/44% debt-service limits; the US uses 28%/36%.

9. Affiliate programs

Scoreharbor → Affiliate programs lists real programs and networks to apply to. Each link was checked when this version was released; programs change their terms and pages, so always read the current terms. Approval is up to each program, and most financial programs want a live site with real content and a clear disclosure before they approve you.

After approval, paste your tracking link into each offer's Affiliate link field. Use the real rate, fees and terms from the program's approved creative, and update them when they change.

10. Sponsored slots and disclosure

Offers marked Sponsored appear in labelled slots at the top of compare pages and the home page (Settings → Offers & disclosure → Sponsored slots). Every offer link carries rel="sponsored nofollow". The advertiser disclosure text appears near offers and in the footer and links to the Advertiser disclosure page; edit the text, but keep a clear disclosure switched on. Most programs and advertising rules require it.

11. Offer alerts and subscribers

Sign-up forms appear in the footer, on the Offer alerts page and in join and profile forms. Subscribers are stored in your own database. Under Scoreharbor → Subscribers & alerts you can:

• Export CSV of active subscribers to import into any email service.
• Send an offer alert: pick offers, write a subject and intro, send a test to yourself first, then send. Emails go through WordPress mail (wp_mail) with a one-click unsubscribe link. For larger lists, use an SMTP plugin or export the list to an email service.

12. Credit Builder Plan and payments

The optional plan gives buyers a 90-day repair plan in four phases and letter templates (credit report dispute, goodwill request, debt validation, fraud alert, pay-for-delete request). Set its name, price and days of access in Settings → Members & plan, or switch it off.

Stripe: in Settings → Payments paste your publishable and secret keys from the Stripe dashboard (Developers → API keys). Checkout uses Stripe Checkout, so cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay work without extra code. Use pk_test_/sk_test_ keys to test.

PayPal: paste a REST app client ID and secret from developer.paypal.com and leave Sandbox on to test, off for live.

Test checkout (on by default until keys are added) lets you run the whole flow with no money moving. Turn it off before launch. Saved secrets are never shown again; leave the field empty to keep the saved value. Orders appear under Scoreharbor → Members & payments, where you can also mark an order paid by hand.

Do not describe the plan as removing accurate negative information or guaranteeing a score increase. In many places, selling "credit repair" services is regulated; the plan is written as self-help education. Check the rules where you operate.

13. Ad slots

Settings → Ads has header, in-content, sidebar and footer slots. Paste ad network code (only administrators with permission to post unfiltered HTML can save code) or leave empty to hide the slot.

14. Credit data API (optional)

The theme works fully on self-reported answers. If you later want to show scores from a real data provider, the Settings → Credit data API tab has a switch (off by default), a provider label, an endpoint URL and an API key.

Real credit data needs your own approved data contract. Consumer credit bureaus and resellers only provide scores and reports to businesses they have vetted and contracted, usually with identity verification, consent capture, security reviews and permissible-purpose rules. The theme does not include, resell or connect to any bureau data. Do not switch this on until you have your own signed agreement and have built the consent and identity steps your provider requires.

How it works: when enabled, a member who has given consent (user meta _shb_api_consent = 1) gets a score from the adapter. The built-in HTTP adapter sends GET <endpoint>?member=<hashed id> with Authorization: Bearer <key> and expects JSON like {"score":712,"model":"Provider model","as_of":"2026-11-01","factors":[]}. Results are cached for 12 hours.

To connect a different provider, implement the interface and return it from a filter in a child theme or small plugin:

class My_Adapter implements SHB_Credit_Data_Adapter {
    public function label() { return 'My provider'; }
    public function fetch_score( $user_id ) {
        // Call your provider with your own contract credentials.
        return array( 'score' => 712, 'model' => 'Provider model', 'as_of' => '2026-11-01', 'factors' => array() );
        // or return new WP_Error( 'my_provider', 'Unavailable' );
    }
}
add_filter( 'shb_credit_data_adapter', function () { return new My_Adapter(); } );
// Adjust any result before it is shown:
add_filter( 'shb_credit_data', function ( $data, $user_id ) { return $data; }, 10, 2 );

15. Traffic and click stats

Scoreharbor → Traffic shows page views, offer page views and outbound offer clicks for the last 30 days, a daily chart and your top offers. Data is stored on your site. Bots and editors are skipped. Switch it off in Settings → Site.

16. Guides, glossary and FAQ

Guides are ordinary WordPress posts. The sample data adds 24 guides in categories such as credit basics, mortgages, home equity, banking and investing. The glossary and FAQ pages read from the sample data; you can also write your own terms in each page's content.

17. Look and feel

Upload a logo in Appearance → Customize → Site Identity. Set the accent and header colors and the default light or dark scheme in Settings → Site. Visitors can switch scheme with the moon button. The home page headline and intro are in Settings → Site. A Guide sidebar widget area appears next to guides.

18. Sample data and demo mode

Scoreharbor → Sample data adds 72 fictional offers across all 13 categories (fictional providers, placeholder links to example.com), 24 guides, a glossary, FAQ, sample members with estimate history, sample subscribers and sample orders. Remove sample data deletes only what it added.

Demo mode (Settings → Demo) is for showing the site to others: visitors who are not signed in see the dashboard of the sample member without signing in, changes are not saved and payments always run in test mode. Leave it off on a real site.

19. Responsible use

• Keep the "estimates, not official scores" notice and the advertiser disclosure visible.
• Show offer details accurately and keep them up to date; label all paid placements.
• Use your own brand. Do not imply you are a credit bureau, lender or government body.
• Have a privacy policy that explains what members enter and how it is stored. Members' answers are stored in your WordPress database.
• Rules on financial advertising, lending referrals, credit repair and email marketing (for example CASL in Canada and CAN-SPAM in the US) vary; check them where you operate.

20. For developers

• Post type shb_offer (archive /offers/), taxonomy shb_cat (/best/<slug>/).
• Filters: shb_offer_url (outbound URL, for example to add a sub-ID), shb_credit_data_adapter, shb_credit_data.
• Tables: shb_checks (estimate history), shb_subs (subscribers), shb_orders, shb_stats.
• Translation file: languages/scoreharbor.pot.

21. Support

Questions: admin@007aj.com