📘 Official User Guide
🔰 Introduction
In the world of digital repositories, academic archives, and open access publishing, structured metadata is the backbone of interoperability. To meet these standards, many systems rely on the OAI-PMH protocol (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting).
While WordPress powers over 40% of websites globally, it lacks native support for OAI-PMH — making it hard for WordPress sites to integrate with scholarly search engines, harvesters, and repositories.
That’s where this plugin steps in. The OAI-PMH Provider for WordPress, built by WebCzar, bridges that gap — turning any WordPress site into a compliant, harvestable metadata repository.
🔎 What is OAI-PMH?
OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) is a low-barrier mechanism for repository interoperability. It allows external services — like BASE, CORE, OpenAIRE — to harvest metadata records from repositories via standard HTTP requests.
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It uses verbs like
Identify,ListRecords, andGetRecord. -
Metadata is typically returned in Dublin Core format.
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OAI-PMH endpoints return well-structured XML for easy machine processing.
📦 Plugin Overview
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Plugin Name | OAI-PMH Provider for WordPress |
| Plugin Version | 1.0 |
| Compatible With | WordPress 5.0 and above |
| Metadata Format | oai_dc (Dublin Core) |
| Protocol Version | OAI-PMH 2.0 |
| Author | WebCzar |
| Official Website | https://webczar.co.in |
🚀 Installation Steps
- Download the plugin (Click Here To Download)
- Download the plugin with settings option (Click Here to Download)
- Upload the plugin folder (
oai-pmh-provider/) to:wp-content/plugins/ - Go to WordPress Admin → Plugins and click Activate.
- Visit Settings → Permalinks and simply click “Save Changes” to refresh URL rules.
That’s it — your OAI-PMH endpoint is now live!
🧪 Try it Live (Demo URLs)
Here’s a live working installation to help you test or validate the plugin’s functionality:
Base Endpoint:
🔹 Supported OAI-PMH Verbs (replace yourdomain.com with your domain):
| Verb | Description | Example URL |
|---|---|---|
| Identify | General info about the repository | Link |
| ListIdentifiers | List of record headers (no metadata) | Link |
| ListRecords | Full metadata of all records | Link |
| ListMetadataFormats | Supported metadata types | Link |
| GetRecord | Get a specific post’s metadata | Link |
📌 Using the Plugin
Once the plugin is installed and active, your endpoint is automatically available at:
Replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain.
You can now pass OAI verbs as query parameters. For example:
1. Identify
Returns repository metadata:
2. ListRecords
Returns all published posts in Dublin Core format:
3. ListIdentifiers
Returns post headers only (ID and timestamp):
4. ListMetadataFormats
Shows supported formats:
5. GetRecord
Returns metadata for a specific post:
Replace sample-post with your actual post URL.
✅ Validation
To ensure your installation is working properly, you can test it using the official OAI-PMH validator:
Validator Tool:
https://validator.oaipmh.com
Just paste your base URL:
It will run compliance checks on all supported verbs.
🛠️ Troubleshooting Tips
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If
/oai-pmh/returns a 404, go to Settings → Permalinks and click Save. -
If your
GetRecordreturns “No matching ID”, double-check the exact permalink used. -
Ensure your posts are published and not in draft or private status.
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The plugin currently supports up to 100 records by default — more support (pagination via
resumptionToken) is under development.
💡 Advanced Customization (Optional)
This plugin is fully extendable:
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Add real OAI Sets using WordPress categories or tags
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Support custom post types (e.g., books, papers, projects)
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Implement additional metadata formats (e.g., MARCXML, RDF)
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Add an admin panel for metadata customization
Let us know at WebCzar if you want help implementing these features!
🎯 Ideal Use Cases
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Academic institutions using WordPress to publish journals or research
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Content creators who want their work indexed by academic engines
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Digital archives or cultural projects that require metadata harvesting
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Blogs looking to improve discoverability in OAI-compliant ecosystems
👑 Brought to You by WebCzar
At WebCzar, we build digital tools that empower creators, educators, and organizations to share knowledge at scale. This plugin is part of our commitment to making open publishing infrastructure accessible to all.