Campus catalogue and migration

Lumina Edu 1.1 adds an institutional catalogue without changing the existing Program, Instructor or Session records. Existing public program URLs, taxonomy terms, block content and registration links remain in place. The companion plugin owns every new record and renderer, so changing themes does not remove academic data.

Add the new facts in this order

  1. Create Departments and Campuses under Programs in the dashboard. Departments and campuses are public records with their own URLs. Choose a Section icon in each record and add a featured image when photography is available. Directory cards prefer the image and use the icon as the designed fallback, so a published card never depends on plain text alone.
  2. Link a program to its department. Keep the existing subject, level, format, location and schedule terms; they preserve existing Finder links and filters.
  3. Create a Delivery option for each factual program/campus/mode combination. Put the campus-specific duration, fee label and application or enquiry URL on that option only when they differ from the program.
  4. Link an existing Session to its delivery option where it is unambiguous. A session without one remains valid and is still rendered by the existing timetable and Matchboard.
  5. Create an Admissions deadline for a program or an intake. A deadline is public only when its review state is Reviewed, it has a review date, and its review-due date has not passed. Choose the target by name; the editor switches between Program and Session selectors and never requires a numeric post ID.

Delivery options and deadlines also have a Section icon. Use the icon to identify the content's job, not its status: the deadline renderer derives Closing soon, Upcoming, Elapsed, Closed, Cancelled or Rolling from the reviewed record and displays that state beside the date. Every public row also names its target, last review date and available next action.

Relationship fields use named selectors throughout the editor. Program faculty and instructor departments support multiple selections, preserve unpublished choices while editing, and can be cleared without leaving stale links. Deadline controls reveal the time only for a timed deadline, mute the date for rolling admissions, and show a live summary of timing, review state and action. Routing fields receive a visible populated state so editors can spot configured destinations. Repeater controls use familiar WordPress move, add and remove icons and remain keyboard accessible.

WordPress program editor showing named department and faculty selectors.
Program relationships — select departments and faculty by name; no numeric IDs are required.
WordPress department editor showing its visual icon, parent department, head and contact destinations.
Department — choose a reusable visual marker and keep the hierarchy and responsible person explicit instead of inferring them from page copy.
WordPress campus editor showing timezone, address, directions and access notes.
Campus — use an IANA timezone such as Europe/Bucharest and keep practical access information with the campus record.
WordPress delivery-option editor linking one program to a campus and delivery mode.
Delivery option — this is the validated join used by Finder, admissions and action routing.
WordPress admissions-deadline editor showing its icon, target, timezone, review state and action intent.
Deadline — choose its content icon, then maintain a valid target chain and current review; rejected public saves move to draft with an editor notice.

The first upgrade is additive. It does not guess a campus, delivery mode, deadline or application destination from a legacy program term. That avoids publishing a false campus-specific fee or an expired deadline. The plugin records the installed schema version in the database and reconciles portable deadline references in locked batches of 100. An interrupted batch is safe to retry; the upgrade never rewrites existing post content or permalinks.

Published relationships are validated as one chain: program → delivery option → intake → deadline. If a linked program, campus or delivery option is unpublished, the dependent public record is rejected or hidden. Existing unpublished selections remain visible in their editor selector, so editing another field cannot silently clear the relationship.

Date-only deadlines remain valid through the end of their authored timezone's calendar day. Timed deadlines use their IANA timezone; nonexistent or repeated daylight-saving wall times are rejected until the editor chooses an unambiguous local time. Leaving the deadline timezone empty uses the WordPress site timezone.

Native blocks and Elementor Free

Department directory with editorial images, summaries and detail links.
Department directory — featured images lead each academic area; its chosen icon is the designed fallback when no image is available.
Campus directory with location photography, addresses and detail links.
Campus directory — location records combine imagery with practical address and access information.
Admissions deadline list with date icons, status labels, target programs, review dates and actions.
Reviewed deadlines — visitors can scan timing, state, target, provenance and the next action without opening each program.

The Site Editor has six server-rendered blocks:

Block Uses
Department directory Published departments
Campus directory Published campuses and practical location details
Institutional program catalog Programs plus validated delivery-option facts
Admissions deadlines Reviewed deadlines only
Program admissions Delivery choices and reviewed deadlines for one program
Program comparison Two or three selected programs

When Elementor Free is active, one Lumina Institutional Catalogue widget appears in its General category. Its View control selects one of four shared-reader views: program catalog, departments, campuses or admissions deadlines. Do not maintain two catalogues or enter a second application URL in Elementor.

Routing rules

An Apply or Request information link follows this order:

  1. The reviewed deadline's explicit action URL.
  2. The selected delivery option's URL.
  3. The program's new Apply or Request information URL.
  4. The existing legacy registration or consultation destination.

When a deadline closes, expires or becomes overdue for review, Lumina uses the matching request- information route. It does not restore an Apply action merely because the dated claim is no longer eligible for public display. Intake deadlines retain their delivery option while resolving the destination, so a campus-specific application URL is not replaced by a generic program URL.

The plugin renders no empty control. It does not create enrolments, payments, applications, student accounts or form submissions; use the supplied URL to route to the service that does.

Optional integrations

Lumina detects Elementor Free, WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, The Events Calendar, Tutor LMS, LearnPress, Yoast, Rank Math, WPML and Polylang when they are active. Detection adds only a stable CSS class and, for Elementor, the shared-reader widgets. It does not modify another plugin's data, checkout, event, translation, SEO output or learner records. Test each installed integration on a staging site before making a compatibility claim for its exact version.

Before publishing