Installing Tabline

Under an hour on WordPress; two lines of code anywhere else. You'll need your publisher credentials — a slug and an API key — which arrive when your access request is approved.

WordPress (recommended)

  1. Download the plugin
  2. In your WordPress admin: Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the zip, install, and activate Tabline.
  3. In Settings → Tabline, enter: API origin https://tabline.net, your publisher slug, and your API key.
  4. Open any post logged out: the unlock box appears where your content is gated. If you run Leaky Paywall, entitled readers pass your existing access check automatically — no configuration.
Running a page cache? (WP Super Cache, W3TC, Cloudflare "cache everything.") Either exclude gated URLs from the cache or add a bypass rule when the tab_token cookie is present — both are one-line settings in the common plugins. Without this, the server-side access check may not run on cached pages; the reader-facing unlock still works.
Testing on a staging domain? Tell us the domain (staging.yoursite.com, for example) so we can add it to your publisher record — unlock requests are only accepted from your registered domains.

Any other site: the two-line install

Add the snippet to gated article pages, with your slug and the article's ID:

<script src="https://tabline.net/tab.js" data-pub="YOUR_SLUG"
  data-article="ARTICLE_ID" data-mount=".article-body" async></script>

Then honor unlocks one of two ways: client-side, listen for the tab:unlock DOM event and reveal the content (right for client-side meters); or server-side, verify the tab_token cookie against our published keys at https://tabline.net/.well-known/jwks.json — an Ed25519 JWT check of about forty lines, reference implementations available in JavaScript and PHP. Server-side gates should set data-reload="1" on the snippet so the page refreshes once after a purchase.

Prices, passes, and your dashboard

Set per-article and day/week-pass prices from your dashboard ($0.50 minimum), where you'll also find earnings, unique readers, refunds, and the count of Tabline readers who became your subscribers. Connect your Stripe account there to receive payouts — your 80% share transfers as readers' tabs settle.

When a reader subscribes to your site

Tell Tabline so we stop offering them unlocks and count the conversion. On WordPress with Leaky Paywall this is automatic. Otherwise it's one call from your subscription-success handler:

curl -X POST https://tabline.net/v1/publishers/me/subscriber-hook \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"email":"reader@example.com"}'

Questions?

Reply to your onboarding email, or send a note through the access form — during the pilot program, we'll install it for you if you'd rather not touch it at all.