We Built a WordPress Plugin. Here's Why It Matters.

At psyborg® we manage over 150 WordPress websites for clients across Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and beyond. Each site we build and host carries our name … and our reputation.

For years we’ve relied on a third-party white label plugin to keep our branding consistent across those sites. It did the job. But it was someone else’s code, someone else’s roadmap and someone else’s decision about what features mattered.

So we built our own.

Part Mind. Part Machine.

The psyborg® Manager plugin was built using AI-assisted development … specifically Claude by Anthropic. Not to replace the thinking, but to accelerate it. We knew what we wanted. The AI helped us build it faster, cleaner and more securely than starting from scratch alone.

That’s exactly what “part mind | part machine” means in practice. The strategy, the brand decisions, the client relationships … that’s human. The code generation, the iteration, the security checks … that’s where the machine earns its place.

What the Plugin Does Right Now

The plugin handles everything we need to white label a WordPress install as a psyborg® managed site.

On the login page, clients see our branded logo, our background image and a clean branded form. No WordPress logo. No generic grey screen. The first impression is ours.

Inside the dashboard, the WordPress branding is replaced with psyborg® throughout … the admin bar, the footer, the colour scheme. Clients aren’t navigating a generic CMS. They’re inside a managed environment that reflects the care we put into their site.

Non-administrator users can’t see menus they shouldn’t touch … Plugins, Themes, Tools. Clean. Safe. Appropriate for the client role.

The my psyborg® page is where it gets interesting. Every client who logs in lands here first. It’s a two-column page … a welcome message on the left explaining what they have, what we do for them and how to reach us. On the right, the six most recent articles from the psyborg® blog pulled live via RSS. Every client, on every site, sees our latest thinking the moment they log in.

View on GitHub

Security Was Non-Negotiable

Before deploying across our sites, we ran the plugin through WordPress’s official Plugin Check tool. It audits code against the same standards used by the WordPress.org plugin repository.

We passed … but not before addressing:

Output escaping on every variable … esc_html(), esc_url(), esc_attr() applied throughout
Capability checks on every admin page
GPL-compatible licence declaration
Nonce groundwork in place for future interactive features
rel="noopener noreferrer" on all external links

Security isn’t a feature you add at the end. It’s a discipline you build into the process from the start. Especially when your code touches live websites.

You can view our change log here.

How We Deploy It

We manage our entire hosting fleet through ManageWP. Once the plugin passes Plugin Check, deployment is straightforward:

Upload the zip to ManageWP
Select all sites
Push

Future updates follow the same process. Build here. Test here. Push once. Done.

No manual installs. No site-by-site updates. No missed clients on an outdated version.

The plugin is open source and available on GitHub at github.com/we-are-psyborg/psyborg-manager.

Where It Goes From Here

This is version 1.3.0. It does what we need it to do today. But the plugin is designed to grow … and that’s the point.

Here’s what’s coming:

Maintenance mode UI … right now toggling maintenance mode requires WP-CLI or a code snippet. We’ll add a simple on/off switch to the my psyborg® page so any team member can manage it without touching code.

Client support form … a direct enquiry form on the my psyborg® page that routes to our support email address. Clients get a clear, branded way to reach us. We get context-aware support requests.

What This Represents

One plugin across all of our client sites isn’t just a technical achievement. It’s a distribution channel.

Every client who logs into their website sees psyborg® … our logo, our articles, our maintenance plan, our contact details. No third-party branding. No dependency on someone else’s plugin roadmap. No annual licence fee.

It’s also a proof of concept for how we work with AI. We didn’t use Claude to replace thinking … we used it to build faster, iterate quicker and document everything properly along the way. The result is clean, secure, tested code that we understand completely because we directed every decision.

That’s the psyborg® model. Creativity, fuelled by logic.

If you’re a business requiring WordPress development or WordPress maintenance management and want to explore our services … let’s talk.

psyborg® is a Newcastle-based brand identity and graphic design studio. We help businesses build brands with intent … blending creativity with logic to create identities that connect and endure. Contact us to discuss your brand today.

Daniel Borg

Creative Director

psyborg® was founded by Daniel Borg, an Honours Graduate in Design from the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Daniel also has an Associate Diploma in Industrial Engineering and has experience from within the Engineering & Advertising Industries.

Daniel has completed over 2800 design projects consisting of branding, content marketing, digital marketing, illustration, web design, and printed projects since psyborg® was first founded. psyborg® is located in Lake Macquarie, Newcastle but services business Nation wide.