What Countersign does

Countersign answers one recurring question: can you prove everyone was told? You share a document, notice, policy or link from your WordPress admin, decide who it goes to, and each person confirms they’ve been made aware of it. Every confirmation is logged with a date and the exact wording they agreed to, and you can export the whole register at any time. It’s designed to be effortless for the people acknowledging — no accounts, no passwords, just a personal code and one tap.

Sharing

• Share a title plus an optional note, an optional external link (e.g. a SharePoint or Drive location), and an optional private file attachment.
• Target each item to everyone or to specific people — each person sees only what’s addressed to them.
• Write your own acknowledgement statement per item (what the person is confirming), or use the sensible default.
• An overview screen shows every shared item with an “acknowledged / total” count and the names and timestamps of who has confirmed.

Acknowledgement (the person’s view)

• A single shortcode, [countersign], turns any WordPress page into the acknowledgement page.
• People enter their personal access code, see only their items, open or download any files or links, and confirm with a clear confirmation step.
• The code is remembered for the session, with a “Switch” option to clear it.

People & access codes

• Maintain a roster; each person gets a unique access code (8+ characters, letters and numbers, not case-sensitive).
• Set the length of auto-generated codes, assign a custom code, regenerate a code, or copy one to the clipboard in a click.
• Remove someone and their code stops working immediately, while their past records are kept.

Audit trail

• Every acknowledgement is recorded with the person’s name, the item, the date and time, the exact statement confirmed, the code used, the IP address and the device (browser user-agent).
• One-click CSV export of the full register for your own records or audits.

Security & privacy (self-hosted by design)

• All data lives in your own WordPress database and on your own server — nothing is sent to a third party.
• File attachments are stored in a protected folder with unguessable names, never in the public Media Library. People receive a signed link that expires after one hour and is verified against their code and the item’s recipients before the file is served.
• Uploads are type-checked and rejected if the real file type can’t be verified.
• Access-code attempts are rate-limited per IP with a short lockout to slow guessing.
• Fonts use the visitor’s own device by default — nothing loads from Google unless you switch it on.
• The admin area is protected by your normal WordPress login.

Make it yours

• Customise brand colour, text colour, page and card backgrounds, the “awaiting” status colour, and heading/body fonts, with a live preview and one-click reset.
• The look applies to both the acknowledgement page and the admin screens.

Translation-ready

• The entire interface is translatable, with a .pot template included so you can localise it into any language.

What’s included

• The complete plugin, ready to install via Plugins → Add New → Upload.
• Built-in setup and usage notes, full changelog, and the translation template.
• Licensed GPLv2 or later.

Requirements

• A self-hosted WordPress site (wordpress.org), not WordPress.com.
• For attachment uploads, PHP’s fileinfo extension is recommended so document types verify correctly.