If you have a listing site or a website where you want to host products from other people, one of your biggest concerns must be the product submission process. Is it alright the way users are adding products from the admin area? Or, should you get a frontend solution for them? Let me give you some food for thought.
Why do I need the Frontend?
- In most cases, vendors find the backend area too complicated. It is possible that you have added a number of features some of which need tech-savvy people to handle. If the users could simply upload product details through a submission form instead, wouldn't it be easier and safer for your marketplace?
- By default, the shop manager role allows product vendors to access all the settings within WooCommerce. But as a website owner, you might want to restrict few features for different users. This is another reason why you need a frontend solution for your WooCommerce store.
- If the users are adding products from the backend, they will see the same product fields every time. But as a website owner, you might want to reduce the number of fields. By using a frontend plugin, you will be able to display the fields that you actually need for your website.
- But what if you find out you need to change the default product fields given there? Unfortunately, you or your users can not customize any backend features. This is a big reason why you must use a frontend solution to edit the product fields according to your business requirement.
- There are many e-commerce solutions out there. But your plan is to keep it simple, avoid the extra expense, clutter and just avail the frontend posting.
Security and Confidentiality
Apart from these four points, there is another crucial factor. The backend of a WordPress website stores almost all the information. You might feel insecure about sharing administrative data with your vendors. Besides, it is important that you let vendors focus on what do they best, which is product sourcing and sales. The control of the technical aspects must remain in the website owner or developer's hand.
Aren't you convinced that you need a frontend solution for your WooCommerce store? If the answer is yes, do bear with me. Because now I am going to tell you how you can let your vendors upload the products using WP User Frontend!
Required Pages to Get Started with Frontend Submission
In order to let your users upload products to the WooCommerce store, you need to have these 3 pages:
- Dashboard and Edit Page
- Product Upload Form
- Upload Page
Let's get started with how you can create this page for your WooCommerce products.
Creating the Dashboard & Edit pages
Go to Dashboard → Pages → Add a new page
The easiest process to do it is to create two new pages named Dashboard and Edit and simply paste the shortcodes. For the Dashboard page use [wpuf_dashboard post_type="product"] and for the edit page use [wpuf_edit].
Now if you want to control user access in the frontend, go to WPUF → Settings → General Settings. To enable editing of products, select the page where [wpuf_edit] is located from the drop down menu.
Then go to the Dashboard menu, and change your user settings accordingly. You can let your users edit or remove a product by themselves or restrict this option. This setting is vital because it allows you to have adminship power over the website users. You should apply it in such a way it helps eliminating errors and makes the website responsive.
Create Product Upload Form
Go to Post Forms → Add Form → WooCommerce Product
This live-form editor will appear. Add all the necessary fields according to your website requirements. This feature is highly customizable. You can drag and drop any field from the right option bar to modify this form.
For example, you can add custom fields and taxonomies for WooCommerce such as product_type, product_cat, product_tag, product_shipping_class. You can also add various product types (simple, variation, downloadable, etc), categories, tags, shipping classes to help the users to bring variety to their offerings.
When you are satisfied adding fields to the form hit save and copy the shortcode which is shown right beside the page title.
Create the Upload Page
Now comes the final stage of submitting product from the frontend.
Go to Pages → Add new page and create a page named “Upload Page” or whatever you prefer. Now paste the shortcode you of your product upload form in this format [wpuf_form id="copy-paste id"].
Publish the page and then view it. Now your eCommerce website is ready for the vendors and store managers! Just the way you wanted it. 😀
Stay Tuned for More
The next blog post of this series will be on how the website users can add or edit their products using WPUF. Keep an eye on the weDevs blog and social profiles (Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin) access those.
Meanwhile, if you have any confusion about creating product submission forms or its use cases, kindly let us know. We will be glad to help you out in any possible way!
Learn more about WP User Frontend
But if you want order management from the frontend, you have to check out Dokan plugin.