Brief Introduction
Excited to get started with your own marketplace? Then what are you waiting for? Install our WC marketplace plugin and start now!
Follow these instructions thoroughly to start your marketplace.
System Requirements
The basic system requirements needed to install WCMp:
- PHP 5.6 or later
- MySQL 5.5 or later
- WordPress 4.4 or higher
- WooCommerce 3.0 or higher
Installation and Activation
Now that you have gotten your system requirement down pat let us get started with the installation process. Installing WC Marketplace is as easy as spelling ABC, all that needs to be done is following the given steps:
- Go to Admin Dashboard from there navigate to Plugins, on the plugin page click on Add New
- Then search for WC marketplace in the Search Plugins section
- Upon a successful search, WC Marketplace appears in the search result and an “Install Now” button can be seen adjacent to it. Click on it, to install WC Marketplace on your website.
- After installation, click on “Activate”. WC Marketplace is now activated on your website!
Alternatively, you can also try this to install our plugin:
- Click here to download WC Marketplace from wordpress.org plugin directory
- Go to the “Add New” section as previously mentioned
- Click on the “Upload Plugin” button visible at the top. Browse to the download file location, select the recently downloaded “dc-woocommerce-multi-vendor.zip” file. Then click on “Install Now”.
OR
- Extract the downloaded “dc-woocommerce-multi-vendor.zip” file to the WordPress plugins folder which you’ll find in a location similar to this: “yourhostname/wordpress/wp-content/plugin”. Remember, pushing the extracted file to your plugins folder will not activate the plugin.
- To activate WC Marketplace on your website go to the “Plugins” section in the admin dashboard and click on Activate under WC Marketplace.
Note : Remember WC Marketplace is an extension for WooCommerce. You need to have WooCommerce installed & activated on your WordPress site before using WC Marketplace.
Installed Pages
The minute you install WC Marketplace in your site, it will create two pages with two shortcodes. These shortcodes create a vendor dashboard page and a vendor registration page. This will save you time and trouble of creating one for yourself.
| Name | Shortcode | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboard | [wcmp_vendor] | Display vendor dashboard and all the products, order etc |
| Vendor Registration | [vendor_registration] | Displays the registration form, that user will use to apply as vendor |
Note: With the help of WCMp endpoints found in WCMp Settings you can modify and create your own pages but what you need to do after that, is align the pages with the endpoints, the process of which we will explain in the next section.
WCMp Endpoints
Endpoints are used to show vendors certain content on the frontend side. It allows users to see the content without a need for multiple pages and it’s corresponding shortcodes, thus reducing the amount of content that needs to be installed.
To put it simply let’s understand endpoints with an example, on the shop page or frontend you will see a page called the Vendors Dashboard. Now, this is not what you want for your vendor’s dashboard page, so what do you do in that case? You can go to the vendor’s pages in WCMp Settings and on the vendor’s dashboard field, you can select certain pages. Select the page you want and that would be your vendor’s dashboard page. What Endpoint does is reduces the bulk of creating multiple pages with shortcodes and instead provides you with pages or sections that you can access easily.
Customizing endpoint URLs
WCMp creates pages and sections for you as soon as you activate our plugin. By customizing endpoint URLs you can create titles that are convenient and easy to comprehend:
In order to customize vendor dashboard endpoints, you can go to the Admin dashboard and then navigate to WCMp menu and then go to settings submenu. Once on the setting page go to the Vendors tab and then navigate to vendor’s pages.
Let us take a look at what these endpoints stand for
| WCMp Pages | Set an endpoint | Functions |
| Vendors Announcement | /vendor-announcement/ can be called /vendor-notifications/ | Lets the vendor know of any announcement or news the admin wants to share |
| Storefront | /storefront/ | The vendor can make any changes regarding how his shop’s display |
| Vendor Profile | /vendor–profile/ | This section shows the vendor’s basic information like name, address etc |
| Vendor Policies | /vendor-policies/ | In this section, the vendor can set policies he abides by |
| Vendor Billing | /vendor-billing/ | In this page/section the vendor can set up the method in which he wants to receive his payment |
| Vendor Shipping | /vendor-shipping/ | In this page, the vendor can set up his shipping details like shipping methods and shipping rate |
| Vendor Report | /vendor-report/ | In this section, the vendor will be able to view his reports regarding sales, orders and his customers |
| Banking Overview | /banking-overview/ | Here the vendor will receive reports regarding his total credit amount (the amount he is supposed to receive)debit amount (the amount withdrawn by him) etc |
| Add Product | /add-product/ | This section is where the vendor can add/create a new product |
| Edit Product | /edit-product/ | This section is where the vendor can edit details of his product it reloads the page on which the vendor had created the product, |
| Product List | /product-list/ | This where the vendor can view all his products along with the product status. |
| Add Coupon | /add-coupon/ | Here is where the vendor can add a new coupon |
| Coupon List | /coupon-list/ | Here is where the vendor can view the list of coupons created by him |
| Vendor Orders | /vendor-order/ | Here is where the vendor can view all his orders, add notes to his orders and give permissions for downloadable products |
| Vendor Withdrawals | /vendor-withdrawals/ | Here is where a vendor can request for a withdrawal |
| Transaction details | /transaction-details/ | The vendor can view all the transactions carried out between him and the admin |
| Vendor Knowledgebase | /vendor-knowledgebase/ | This is the section where the vendor can see any new knowledge imparted by the admin |
| Vendor Tools | /vendor-tools/ | |
| Vendor Products Q&As | /vendor qna/ | This is the section where the vendor can communicate with his customer as they answer questions pertaining to the product |
| Advanced Vendor Reports | /advanced reports/ | Here the vendor will receive reports in the form of graph and other information |
Customizing Endpoint Template Files
Endpoint templates are located in WCMp plugin (folder) in the templates (folder) and then go to vendor-dashboard (folder). To overwrite those templates, copy file to {your-theme-name}/dc-product-vendor/vendor-dashboard/{template-file-to-be-updated}.php and do the update.
Troubleshooting
Endpoints showing 404
If you see a 404 error showing on the endpoint page, go to WordPress Admin Dashboard the go to Settings and navigate to Permalinks and Save. This ensures that rewrite rules for endpoints exist and are ready to be used.
Pages direct to wrong place
Landing on the wrong page when clicking an endpoint URL is typically caused by incorrect settings. For example, clicking ‘Vendor Announcements’ from the Vendor Dashboard takes you to the Vendor Store Settings page means you selected the wrong page in settings. Confirm that your pages are correctly configured and that a different page is used for each section.