Test Campaigns

Test Campaigns are admin-only campaigns used to exercise the pledge flow end-to-end without polluting real data. They accept pledges through the real pipeline, fire the real emails, and update the real dashboards — but they are never publicly listed, and their pledges are excluded from cleanup aggregates that would otherwise treat their backers as orphans.

Use them to verify payment gateways, test email templates against live merge tags, rehearse fulfillment exports, or train staff on the moderation flow.

What makes a campaign a test campaign

A test campaign has the Test post status (slug: igcf_test) and a [TEST] prefix on its title. The prefix is the single source of truth for the label — email subjects pick it up via the {campaign_name} merge tag, so every email that goes out about the campaign carries the [TEST] marker too.

Test campaigns are publish-locked: staff cannot transition a test campaign to Active, Paused, or any other status from wp-admin. Attempts to do so are reverted server-side, and the person sees a notice on the next page load explaining why. Trash and Restore are the only allowed transitions (Restore returns the campaign to Test).

Creating a test campaign

There are two ways to create one, both admin-only:

1. Duplicate an existing campaign

On wp-admin → Ignition → Campaigns, open any campaign’s detail page (the Manage row action) and click Duplicate as Test in the actions bar. The clone is created with the [TEST] prefix already in place, every reward tier copied (with the claimed count reset to zero), and the Test status pill in teal.

This is the right starting point when you want to exercise the pledge flow against the same reward structure you already use in production.

2. Add a new test campaign from scratch

Switch to Test view and the campaigns list table’s Add New Campaign button becomes Add New Test Campaign. Clicking it opens the frontend campaign wizard in create mode with the test-campaign flag set, so the final Save button on the review step reads Save Test Campaign and the campaign is created directly at Test status.

The button reads the view from the page address rather than your remembered default, so a browser tab left open from an earlier session cannot create a campaign on the wrong side.

Use this when you want a small, focused campaign with a minimal reward structure dedicated to testing.

What backers see

Test campaigns are not publicly listed. They do not appear in:

The campaign archive
The Campaign Grid or Featured Campaign blocks
The campaign sitemap

A user with the direct URL can reach the single-campaign page and pledge — that is the intended path for testing the full backer experience. Only users with the edit_others_igcf_campaigns capability see test campaigns in admin lists.

Pledges on test campaigns

Pledges on test campaigns are real database rows that move through the real state machine (pending → succeeded, with optional refunds, or pending → canceled). The emails are real emails. The admin CSV exports follow your current view mode: in Test view they contain only test pledges (and the download filename carries a -test marker); in Live view they exclude test data entirely. A campaign-narrowed export still shows that campaign’s own pledges.

What they are excluded from:

Guest-user orphan cleanup — A guest user whose only pledge is to a test campaign is still cleaned up after 24 hours, the same as any other pledge-less guest. The exclusion prevents test pledges from keeping orphaned guest accounts alive.
Email-verification cleanup — Unverified users whose only pledges are to test campaigns are still removed by the daily cron. A test pledge does not “save” an unverified account from cleanup.

Seeing test campaigns in wp-admin

Test campaigns appear in wp-admin only when you are in Test view, and only if you can edit other people’s campaigns. Live view hides them, along with their pledges and their money, from every list and every total.

The view mode is admin-only and never reaches a public page — test campaigns stay out of public archives whichever view you are in. See Live and Test view for the toggle and what else follows it.

Cleaning up

Test campaigns can be moved to Trash like any other campaign. Restoring from Trash returns them to Test. To remove a test campaign and its pledges permanently, empty the trash from wp-admin → Ignition → Campaigns.

Managing Campaigns — Duplicate vs. Duplicate as Test
Live and Test view — The admin-bar toggle that decides which side you see
Campaign Lifecycle — Regular status definitions and transitions