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To Get Started:

Start by reading Installing plugins section in our comprehensive WordPress and WordPress Multisite Manual if you are new to WordPress.

Login to your admin panel for WordPress or Multisite and activate the plugin:

• On regular WordPress installs – visit Plugins and Activate the plugin.
• For WordPress Multisite installs – Activate it blog-by-blog (say if you wanted to make it a Pro Sites premium plugin), or visit Network Admin -> Plugins andNetwork Activate the plugin.

Once installed and activated, you will see 2 new menu items in your admin: Classifieds and CustomPress. Classifieds utilizes a custom post type built using CustomPress. Using CustomPress is not a requirement for using Classifieds. It just provides some extra features, allowing you to create custom fields for your listings and allowing you to customize the Classifieds custom post type. Classifieds will automatically create 3 (three) pages upon install.

• Classifieds
• My Classifieds
• Classifieds Checkout

Should you have any issues with this not being done or have the need to recreate these pages, you can completely Trash the pages, then deactivate and re-activate the plugin.  We will come back to these in a bit to see what they do.

Configure the Plugin

Let's get the plugin setup!  We will go through the settings quickly, you will find them easy to manage.  The Classified > Settings menu contains a few tabs to keep the settings neatly organized. Let's get started with the General Settings.

General Settings

The General Settings tab contains a number of sub-sections, let's go through them one-by-one.

Classified Member Role

Here is where you setup how your users use your Classifieds site.

1. Assign a Member Role
2. Optionally add new Roles
3. Remove added Roles

You can choose to assign a default User Role or create your own by selecting a Role from the Assign Member's Role drop-down. Simply enter the name of the role you wish to add in the Add Role Name box and click the Add a Role button.  You will see your entry displayed in the drop-down selector below and above. Easily remove added Roles at any time by selecting it from the Custom Roles drop-down then clicking the Remove a Role button. You can see in the screenshot, we've added a User Role called 'Merchant', we will define this role in the Capabilities tab.

Classifieds Status Options

Classified listings have various statuses available to them and here you can select which you'd like to allow or disallow. By ticking the "Published" option, users will see a "Publish" button when creating a listing. They can use that to automatically publish listings on your site, without needing admin approval. Ticking the "Pending Review" option will allows users to have a "Pending Review" status which will display a "Pending" notice in the Classified listing in the admin area, so admins can easily see it needs reviewing. Ticking the "Draft" option will allow users to save drafts that they can return to and publish later.

Form Fields

Through the Form Fields settings, you can configure how the plugin works with media elements. Tick the Image field option if you want images to be required. When posting, users will see an error message notifying them that they must provide an image. Tick the Media Manager option if you want users to be able to access the Media Manager for image uploads. Specify a default image, by URL, to be used in the Use default image field. Ads that don't have images uploaded will automatically use this.

Display Options

Here you can configure various display elements, let's go through them. Enter a value for the Count of categories. This value will be used when displaying category lists. Tick the Display count in parent categories option to have the plugin show the total number of ads in parent categories. Enter a value for the Count of sub-categories. Tick the Display count for sub-categories option to show the total number of ads in sub-categories. If you'd rather not show categories that have no ads within them, simply tick the Empty sub-category option.

Pagination

With lots of ads posted, it gets overwhelming having them all listed on one page. Classifieds uses pagination to provide easy navigation through all of them. Let's take a look at the options we have available for that. Tick where you want Pagination elements to be display, you can tick one or both of the following options:

• display at top of page.
• display at bottom of page.

Enter a value for the Pagination Range, to limit the number of page links shown in the pagination display. Note: the number of classifieds per page will be controlled by the Settings > Reading value for Blog posts per page.

Notification Settings

To facilitate communication between those posting ads and those wishing to respond, Classifieds provides a contact form for users to easily get in touch with those who have an ad listed. Tick the Disable Contact Form option if you don't wish to use the contact form features at all. Tick the CC the Administrator option to automatically send an email to the Admin anytime the contact form is used. Tick CC the Sender to send an email to the Sender as well. This will help to inform them that the message was sent. Enter an Email Subject. You can use a number of macros within the subject, they'll be dynamically filled with the appropriate values. Enter your custom email content in the Email Content. You can use all the basic features available through the WordPress visual editor here. And similar to the subject, you can use a number of macros which will be dynamically filled with the appropriate values. Be sure to click "Save Changes" before you move on!

Capabilities

This is the tab where you will set the rules for who can do what with the Classifieds.  You can edit any role from 'Administrator' to your Custom Roles that you added on the previous page.  You can see the example using the 'Merchant' role we've created.

1. Select a User Role
2. Tick the Capabilities for that User Role
3. Click to Save Simply select a User Role from drop-down, then tick all the Capabilities you wish to apply to that Role. The following Capabilities are available:

• View classifieds.
• View private classifieds.
• Add classifieds.
• Edit classifieds.
• Edit published classifieds.
• Edit private classifieds.
• Delete classifieds
• Delete published classifieds.
• Delete private classifieds.
• Edit others' classifieds.
• Delete others' classifieds.
• Upload files.

You must click the Save this Role's Changes button after selecting capabilities for each role.

Payment Settings

Should you choose to decide to charge for the ability to create classifieds on your site you can set the Payment terms here. You can choose from Recurring Payments, One Time Payments and Credit based options.  Simply select the check box next to the payment method you prefer, then fill in the remaining values. For Credits, you do not need any other plugins or elements, just fill out the values and your users will purchase the credits via the Payment Gateway you choose on the next tab. You'll also see a "Terms of Service" box filled with dummy text.  You should replace this with your own.

Payment Types

This tab is where you set your Payment Details to accept Payments.  If you want to have a Free Classifieds site then just click the Free Listings box and save the settings, then move on.  Nothing else for you here.  If you select "Free Listings" it will ignore any settings on the previous tab. If you are choosing to charge, select the Gateway you want to use.  The settings box for the applicable Gateway will appear below.  You have the option in any of the paid Gateways to set Redirect URL's on Success and upon Cancellation. Note: You cannot offer both Free and Paid listings.

Shortcodes

This tab lists various shortcodes you can use around your site.  Simply select a shortcode to use and insert it into your page or post.  Please note that you can only use one of the attributes at a time, they are all shown in the examples so that you know what the options are. For instance you cannot insert [cf_list_categories style="grid | list"] into your page or post.  You would need to enter **[cf_list_categories style="grid"]** or **[cf_list_categories style="list"]** . Once you've saved all of your settings it's time to see how it works! Remember those 3 pages that were auto-created? The Classifieds page that was created will automatically list all of your classifieds.  This page is dynamically generated so you don't need to do anything to it. The My Classifieds page will take the user to their list of Classified Ads and give them a link to add a new Classified:   With BuddyPress enabled it becomes part of the User Profile like so: The Classifieds Checkout page is for exactly what it sounds like.  If you have a Free site users will be prompted to Login or Register, once they have done so they will see a Registration Success Message.  If you have the Payment Gateways enabled this is where they will select their purchase and checkout.

Add New, Tags, and Categories

You'll see some other menu items you should already be familiar with.  Add New Classified, Classified Tags and Categories, all work the same as your accustomed, only geared directly for Classified posts.

Classifieds Menu

This is where you will take care of any Pending Ads, if you have your General Settings to not allow Published Ads by users.

Dashboard

You will also notice a handy Dashboard menu item.  This is a super handy location to manage your own classifieds from the Admin area.  

That's it!

That's all the basics! Wha?  Still here?  Well I've got a few more things to share provided that you are comfortable with Advanced Features:

• You can make changes to the Classifieds post type by using the CustomPress menu that is installed with Classifieds. For instance, you'll see that the Ads on our Demo site are set to run for a duration of 10 years.  This is because we added the value in the 'Duration' Custom Field for the Classifieds post type.

*Please note: If you have previously activated the Directory Plugin on your site you will NOT see a Visitor role in your Capabilities Dropdown.  It will be labeled instead "Directory Member Not Paid". If you have trouble with any aspect of configuration or usage or have a cool feature suggestion to make, please head on over to the community forums where support staff and other helpful members are waiting to lend a hand.