Getting Started with Rewardify

This page walks you through installing the Rewardify package, checking that the first-run defaults are in place, and putting the member-facing rewards page on your site. By the end you will have a working rewards engine with a few starter rules and a member page your visitors can open.

Before you install

• Joomla 5 or 6.
• PHP 8.1 or later. The installer checks this and stops if your server is below 8.1.
• Administrator access to your Joomla site.

Install the package

Rewardify ships as a single installable package. You install that one file and Joomla unpacks everything inside it.

1. Download the Rewardify package ZIP from your account.
2. In the Joomla administrator, go to System -> Install -> Extensions.
3. Open the Upload Package File tab.
4. Drag the package ZIP onto the upload area, or click to browse and select it.
5. Wait for the success message. You should see "Rewardify package installed successfully."

Do not unzip the package yourself and upload the inner files one by one. Always install the single package file. It carries the correct install order and the post-install steps that seed your defaults.

What gets installed

The package installs the component, the shared library, several plugins, and one site module:

Item	Type	Notes
com_rewardify	Component	The admin screens and the member app.
lib_shondalai_core	Library	Shared Shondalai library (email, storage, PDF, and more). Required.
plg_system_rewardify	System plugin	Boots the engine. Keep it enabled.
plg_task_rewardify	Task plugin	Provides the scheduled task routines. The installer enables this for you.
plg_privacy_rewardify	Privacy plugin	Wires Rewardify into Joomla data export and erasure requests.
plg_rewards_joomla	Rewards adapter	Reports Joomla core activity (user.login, user.registered, content.article.published).
plg_rewards_communitybuilder	Rewards adapter	Declares the Community Builder adapter.
plg_kunena_rewardify	Kunena adapter	Reports Kunena forum activity. Inert until Kunena is installed.
plg_hikashop_rewardify	HikaShop adapter	Reports HikaShop orders and refunds. Inert until HikaShop is installed.
mod_rewardify_leaderboard	Site module	A leaderboard you can place in any module position.

A licensing system plugin is also installed as part of every Shondalai package.

What the installer sets up for you

During installation Rewardify prepares your defaults so the engine works out of the box:

• Scheduled tasks are created and enabled. Four maintenance routines (drain, expire, reconcile, prune) are added under System -> Scheduled Tasks. You will see a message telling you how many were created. See Scheduled Tasks for what each one does.
• Default currencies are seeded: points (Community Points, the everyday spendable currency) and reputation (lifetime standing). A third currency, event (Event Credits), is also seeded as a seasonal currency, but it is planned for a later release. Today you work with Community Points and Reputation.
• A default level ladder is seeded: Newcomer, Contributor, Regular, Veteran, and Luminary, derived from lifetime reputation.

If you are upgrading from Rewardify v1, the installer also removes the old v1 plugins that the new version replaces. See Upgrading from v1 for the full upgrade path.

First-run checklist

Work through these steps once, in order, right after installing.

1. Open the dashboard. Go to Components -> Rewardify. You land on the Reward economy dashboard. This confirms the component installed and loaded correctly.
2. Enable the adapters you need. Open the Adapters screen (under Integrations in the left nav), or go to System -> Manage -> Plugins. Each adapter is a plugin that reports a host's activity to the engine. Enable the ones for the systems you actually run. The Adapters screen flags "Host not installed" for an adapter whose host component (Kunena, HikaShop, or Community Builder) is missing, so you know which ones will sit idle. See Integrations & Adapters for the full list and what each one reports.
3. Choose your evaluation mode. Open Settings, then the Evaluation section in the left-hand nav. On a fresh install Evaluation mode is seeded to Queued, which holds awarded events until the drain scheduled task processes them. For most sites the simplest choice is to switch it to Instant so rewards post the moment each event arrives and no cron is needed. If you keep Queued, you must enable the drain scheduled task or awarded events never post. (Note that manual.* events always evaluate instantly regardless of mode.) See Events & Evaluation, Scheduled Tasks, and Settings Reference.
4. Review the seeded Rules, Levels and Currencies. Open Rules, Levels and Currencies under "Rules & rewards" and look over the defaults. Nothing earns anything until a Published rule matches an event, so the Rules screen is where you decide what your community actually gets rewarded for. See Rules.

Only Published rules are evaluated. A rule left in Draft never awards anything. After installing, plan to publish or create at least one rule before you expect members to earn.

On a brand-new install the dashboard, the Members list, and the ledger are empty until the first event is awarded. This is normal. Figures appear once a Published rule matches an event and a member earns.

Add the member page

Members see their rewards through a single page that you add as a Joomla menu item. The page is a tabbed app with up to eight tabs: Overview, My rewards, Badges, Campaigns, Catalogue, Leaderboard, How to earn, and Privacy.

1. Go to Menus and choose the menu you want the link to appear in (for example Main Menu).
2. Click New to create a menu item.
3. Next to Menu Item Type click Select, choose the Rewardify component, then pick the menu item type labelled Rewardify (described as "The member-facing Rewardify experience: balances, badges, campaigns, catalogue and leaderboard.").
4. Give the item a title, for example "Rewards" or "My Points".
5. Set the access level and any other menu options as you would for any menu item.
6. Save the item.

Open the new menu item on the front end to confirm the app loads.

Choosing which tabs appear

Three tabs are always shown: Overview, My rewards, and Badges. The other five (Campaigns, Catalogue, Leaderboard, How to earn, Privacy) are optional and can be turned off. To control them, open Settings -> Navigation and toggle each tab. Hide the tabs for features you are not using yet, then show them later when you are ready.

Publish the leaderboard module

The package includes a site module, mod_rewardify_leaderboard, that ranks members by a chosen currency. This is separate from the Leaderboard tab inside the member app, so you can show a leaderboard anywhere on your site.

1. Go to Content -> Site Modules.
2. Click New and choose Rewardify Leaderboard.
3. Set the module Position to wherever you want it (a sidebar, for example).
4. In the module options, set the Currency parameter (it defaults to reputation). You can also set how many members to show, whether to show avatars, and whether to show usernames.
5. Set the menu assignment, then Save and publish the module.

The module only lists members who opted in to the leaderboard, and shows an alias for members who chose one. For the full set of options and the privacy behaviour, see Leaderboard.

Starter recipes

Pick the recipe that matches your site. Each one lists the adapter to enable and a couple of rules to get you started. Build the rules on the Rules screen.

Community or blog

1. Enable the plg_rewards_joomla adapter.
2. Create a rule on the user.registered trigger that grants a small amount of points to the new member.
3. Create a rule on the content.article.published trigger that grants reputation to the article author, so contributors climb the level ladder.

Forum

1. Install Kunena, then enable the plg_kunena_rewardify adapter.
2. Create a rule that grants reputation when a member posts, so active members rise through Levels over time.
3. Add a daily limit (a throttle) to the rule so a member cannot farm points by posting repeatedly. See the Limits section in Rules.

Store

1. Install EasyCommerce, then enable the plg_rewards_easycommerce adapter or install HikaShop, then enable the plg_hikashop_rewardify adapter.
2. Create a rule on the order-completed trigger that grants points to the purchaser, so customers earn spendable points on each order.
3. Set up your redemption store on the Catalogue screen so members can spend those points. See Catalogue & Campaigns.

The triggers you can select in the Rules and Badges editors come from the adapters you have enabled. If a trigger you expect is missing, the matching adapter is probably disabled or its host is not installed. Enable the adapter first, then build the rule.

A note on developer mode

In Settings -> Developer there is a Dev server mode option (developer.dev_mode) and a Vite dev server URL. These exist only for building the member and admin React apps during development. They tell the page to load assets from a local Vite server instead of the installed files.

Keep developer mode off on a production site. As a safeguard, dev server mode is honoured only on local hostnames (such as localhost, .test, .local, and similar), so a setting left on cannot point a live site at someone's local server. Even so, leave it off in production.

Where to go next

• How Rewardify Works for the event-to-ledger pipeline.
• Rules to decide what members earn.
• Settings Reference for every configuration option.
• Integrations & Adapters for connecting other extensions.