How to use WordPress to track my client information

WordPress can be used to track information about your clients, however you must remember to keep your WordPress installation up to date and learn about current legal regulations for the security of your client information. There are many great plugins available for WordPress to help you manage your site and to help keep it secure. The goal of this post is to help you organize your basic WordPress installation for tracking information about your clients.

To get started

You must have a WordPress installation where you have the administrative rights to manage your Posts and any Categories and Tags. In WordPress, this is usually someone with the “Administrator” or “Editor” role. You may want to have an Administrator user that will add any necessary plugins to assist with security, and use an Editor role to create and manage client posts. You will want to create a login for each client that will want to view their information you are willing to share. The only setting you might wish to change in the default WordPress setup is under “Settings” / “Permalinks”. I like to set the custom structure with /%post_id%/ to allow categories to work with meaningful names and also to minimize the guessability of a post name by using only the number for each post in the url for the website.

Keeping information secure

There are many great articles on securing your WordPress installation. I have found that having strong passwords and only using accounts with least privileges necessary to accomplish tasks goes a long way with keeping secure. I recommend installing a plugin that will actively monitor your site and block any spam and malicious attacks (as an example, I use the free version of Wordfence on all my sites).

Using the Password feature

WordPress has a feature to require a password for a visitor to view a post or page. A password can be set differently on any given post, or you can use the same password on a group of posts. This can give you the option to have a password for a client to see only their information without having an actual login to your website. You can then use a different password for each client. This does create an issue for you, as you also will need to enter the password just to view the post, even if you are logged into the website as an administrator. As long as you are logged into WordPress, you can however still click on the “Edit Post” link and see the information without the password. Using the password feature is not an issue if you have only a handful of clients at any one time, but as your firm grows it can be an unwieldy proposition to maintain a large list of passwords.

Effectively using the Private feature

WordPress has a feature to mark a post as “Private”. This will hide the post from any user that is not logged into the website, and they must have the correct permissions to view the post per their user role once logged in. If your user role is “Administrator” or “Editor”, you can view all private posts when you are logged in as that user role. If you have the role of “Author”, “Contributor” or “Subscriber”;  you can only see the private posts that are assigned to you by listing you as the author of that post. Note that a post cannot be assigned to a user when their current role is set to subscriber, they must be at least set to contributor or higher.

This brings up an interesting feature of a private post. You can give your client login credentials for your website as a “Subscriber” and they will be able to see any post or page of your website that is listed as public or if the page is listed as private and they are assigned as the author of a post. The subscriber role will not allow them to see any backend settings of your website, nor will they have the ability to edit any information. However, while set as subscriber you cannot list the client as the author. You will need to temporarily give the client the role of contributor, assign any post you want them to see by listing them as an author, and then change their role back to subscriber. Afterwards, only the client can view the post and any site user listed as an administrator or editor can view or edit the post.

Creating posts of information for a client

Posts can be created about individual aspects of a matter for a client. One post can be about the billing information for a client with addresses and phone numbers. Additional posts can be added for each paper file you are keeping on a matter in order to have a place to track who has the paper file or if it has been destroyed or returned to the client at the end of its retention cycle.

Organizing with Categories

Posts can be organized using categories. The simplest organization is to list your clients and matters in a hierarchical manner. For example, in the Categories edit screen you will first list your client in the “Name” field and click “Add New Category”. Then for each matter or client topic, in the “Name” field enter a short matter or topic name, and then for “Parent” choose the client name you entered and add the new category.

Utilizing Tags to extend meta information about a post

Tags are a great way to add a little more metadata to your post. Terms like document types, filing status or even tracking who might have the paper file for a client. I create tags for “Destroyed”, “Returned to Client” and tags with “Out to: [Attorney Name]” to be able to list who might have the physical file.

Viewing Client information

If you have marked all client posts as private, they you will of course need to be logged in as at least an “Editor” role to your site. There are ways to make it easier to locate information about your clients. The search bar that is standard for WordPress will only search the title and content of a post for keywords.

You can add your clients to the menu bar by adding the specific client category for each. However, this will expose the list of clients to the world, even though non logged in users cannot see the posts. There are plugins that can help you add private menus when you are logged into the website.

You could potentially create a private page for yourself and link to each client category. There might be some other potential private solutions. I will continue to research for options. In the meantime, it is just as easy to click on the “Categories” link in the WordPress Admin Dashboard view.

Moving forward

This is not the most full featured way to manage your client information, but it is at least one way to utilize your base WordPress install in a somewhat effective manner. There are other tools and plugins available out there that will provide better functionality. Check out my other posts about these topics. If you are in the legal arena and looking for a way to manage your physical and electronic data and apply retention, then watch for a future plugin from me to assist you. I attend regular Legal Records Manager round tables and I am on the board of a local ARMA chapter. In my experiences, it has come to my attention that there is a need for a records management solution that is freely available and simple enough for someone to install and manage.