Description
WP Auctions is more than just a plugin, it’s a breath of fresh air for the WordPress community. Not only will this plugin enable hundreds of thousands {we’re hoping millions} of bloggers to run their own auctions for whatever they want on their blog, but we are also enabling them to keep 100% of the profits generated.
No need to pay a listing fee, no need to pay a re-list fee, no need to pay a final sale fee, no need to pay a gallery image fee. In fact there are no fees to be paid to anyone at all! Because, you run the show.
Once you upload and activate the plugin you are ready to set up your first auction. It couldn’t be simpler. Your readers can also stay up to date with your very own auctions RSS feed.
Installation
- Download the plugin file, unzip and upload it to your WordPress plugin folder
- Activate the plugin
- Place the Widget or the Code in your sidebar
This makes the plugin available to WordPress and it should now appear in your plugin folder.
This “starts up” the plugin. At this point, the plugin is active.
You can either visit your “Widgets” panel under your Presentation tab to simply drag and drop the WP Auctions widget onto your sidebar or you can place this code <?php wp_auctions(); ?> wherever you want the widget to be shown on your sidebar.
Options
WP Auctions lets you customize your auction widget with its own heading, a currency choice of USD, EUR, YEN or GBP, and whether you want to be notified by email whenever a bid is placed on your blog for any item up for auction.
Under a newly created “WP Auctions” tab you will see “Options”. Click on it to name your auction widget - like “Sally’s Auctions” and fill in the other details. We suggest keeping your auction heading simple and to the point.
Your PayPal email is also inserted here. This is important, it’s how you get paid.
Manage
This is where you can manage your auctions. Once you “Add” an auction you can see in real time what bids have been placed, for how much and by whom. Their names will be linked to their email. If you feel that a bid is not genuine, or blatantly fraudulent, simply “Cancel” it. This deletes it from the auction permanently.
You can also Delete an auction, Edit it to add any more data or End it.
Once an auction ends it automatically gets placed in the “Closed Auctions” area and an email is sent to the winning bidder with a PayPal link {you entered this email in your “Options” tab} for payment. Once you get paid you ship or transfer whatever it is you auctioned on your blog.
No fees paid to anyone, except PayPal of course. Can’t win ‘em all.
You can also re-list an auction from this panel if you wish, or permanently delete it. The choice is yours.
Add
This is where the magic happens.
Enter your auction details as specified in the fields shown and click on save to start placing auctions on your own blog.
For images you can either use the built in image hosting feature from ImageShack or upload the images to your server and place the URL where it resides on your server in the fields indicated. Please be aware that all images get resized.
- The sidebar image gets resized to 125 x 125 in dimensions, and
- The “Popup” image and thumbnail get resized to 190 x 190 and 50 x 50 respectively.
For best performance please try to meet those limitations when using images. Currently only one image is supported per auction.
Style
This is where you will be able to change the style of your plugin. The basic plugin ships with one default theme called “Dawn”. Once our Style store opens you will be able to add a different style to your plugin to customize it for your blog.
Known Issues
- Some CSS styles of the plugin may sometimes get overridden by your WordPress theme’s stylesheet. This only affects the “Other Auctions” area in the plugin.
- A few WordPress themes may have scripts that come packaged with it, these have been known to cause the “Popup” to not appear.
For error reporting please visit the Errors page.
