Hey Folks! We assume that you’re struggling to set up a WooCommerce pricing plan extension for your directory listing website. No worries! Stay with us; we’ll guide you through the whole process in this tutorial and you will not miss out on any single piece of the pricing plan functions for WooCommerce. So, without further ado; let's jump into it.
NB: If you would like to use our default pricing plan extension then you can stop here and visit Directorist Pricing Plan.
Requirements:
Before going through the tutorial you must know the basic requirements of our pricing plan program and let's head around it.
First of all, WooCommerce from Automattic is the base plugin that is required to work with our WPP Extension. You can go through official WooCommerce Documentation if you never used it before or to succeed in understanding.
WooCommerce has different modules such as Payment, Shipping, and so on. In order to use our WPP Extension, setting a payment gateway is required. We will show you the COD method in this case.
Also, You need to set up a pricing plan page with a shortcode from Settings. For more details, you can jump directly to this section.
(Extension Settings → Configure Pricing Plan Page)
Navigation: WooCommerce → Settings → Payments
Installation:
Navigation: WP-Admin Dashboard ➝ Plugins ➝ Add New ➝ Upload Plugin ➝ and upload the Extension ZIP file and Activate it.
Concept:
Before going through the tutorial you must know the concept of our pricing plan program and let's head around it.
You may plan to sell your listing within these methods: pricing packages, or pay per listing. We have two types of plans in our WPP program and we use products as individual plans.
Example: Suppose, you have 2 plans, Free & Pro, and these plans will be created as a single product as you create products for your shop and you name your plan packages on the product title.
Navigation: Products → Add New
Plan Type:
- Package: The pricing package plan can be used for bundle items and offerings. Payment for this plan will be charged for a group of Regular Listing or Featured Listings.
- Pay Per Listing: As the name suggests, payment for this plan will be charged per listing submission.
Difference between plan types: The only difference between these plan types is to offer your listing owner bundle listings or individual listings.
Multiple Directory Plan: If you have multiple directories on your website then you need to create individual pricing plan packages for all of them. Example: Two pricing plan package with the same configuration if there are two directories assigned to them and so on.
Plan Customization:
Create Plan: Ok, we are going to create a free and paid plan as a package type. To create this follow these steps:
- Go to WordPress Dashboard → Products and Click "Add New".
- Give your plan a name. For example, basic or pro, etc.
- Enter your plan description in the product description field. You may leave it as blank as it is optional.
- Select the Listing Pricing Plan product type from the Product Data dropdown. Please see the screenshot below for reference.
- Fill out all the fields of the listing pricing plan product type form and hit publish. The description of all the fields is given below.
Visual: After naming your plan come to the bottom and find the product data section. You will find Listing Pricing Plan options to configure them.
Configurations:
There are two configuration types, Basic and Fields. In the Basic section, you will find plan type, listing duration, Number of regular and featured listing limitations, and all of the toggler for enabled extensions in the system. On the other hand, you can find toggles for form field configurations.
Set Pricing: There are two options which are regular price and sale price. You can set them up as your package or pay per listing plan.
Field Structure:
Let's pick Number of Listings filed as an instance.
- Hide From Pricing Plan Page: You can find a checkbox for hiding listing from the pricing plan page on the frontend.
- Limitations/Unlimited: An input field to limit the number of listings or a checkbox to withdraw the limitation for the package.
- Toggler: There are switch buttons to on/off the settings for the listing owner.
Shortcode:
At the very bottom of the product single page, you will discover a shortcode to place individual listings on any page.
It appears useful when you’d like to access a pricing plan for specific users or you have multiple plans but you’d like to show only one of them or you’d like to skeleton your plan with any of the page builders such as Elementor, Gutenberg, or DIVI.
Visual: In a nutshell, a shortcode is a small piece of code, indicated by brackets like [this], that performs a dedicated function on your site. You can place it just about anywhere you'd like, and it will add a specific feature to your page, post, or other content.
Publish Time: After inputting all of your configs please publish from the very top and you are about to finish creating your very first listing package for WPP Extension.
Extension Settings:
Navigation: From Directory Listing → Settings → Extensions → You will discover WPP Extensions Settings including all other extensions in your system.
Right now there are 3 configurations called Skip Plan Page for Paid Users, Direct Plan Purchase, and Restrict Listing Deletion with on/off toggler.
- Skip Plan Page for Paid Users: If the listing owner already purchased a plan then he will be able to land directly to add form fields page and after that, they can choose what package they want.
- Direct Plan Purchase: By default, users are required to select a plan → add a listing → and then make the payment, but “Direct Plan Purchase” allows users to make the payment first before adding or submitting the form.
- Restrict Listing Deletion: Listing owners are unable to delete any listings from the dashboard if it's already assigned to a plan.
Configure Pricing Plan Page:
Navigation: Directory Listing → Settings → Page Setup → Here you will find an option to assign the page where you’d like to show all of the pricing plan packages together.
User Flow - Submit Listing (Direct Purchase):
Pricing Plan Page: Users will directly land on the checkout page if direct-purchase plan is enabled either they would see add form field first.
Checkout Page: After continuing with a package users should redirect to the checkout page. Users will find payment gateways if it's set up from WooCommerce → settings → payments. (Direct Plan Purchase Case)
User Flow - Submit Listing (Default/Direct Purchase Disabled):
Add Listing Page: An add listing form will be shown after continuing with a plan if the direct pricing plan is disabled. Listing owners will fill out the forms based on your configurations set from the backend. After filling in the information they will land on a confirmation page.
User Dashboard: Listing owners have their own dashboard page to manage, edit, and delete their own listings. From this slug /dashboard (created default while installation) they will find an interface to manage all of the payments, bookings, order history, and so on.
Change Pricing Plan: From the dashboard listing owners can change their pricing plan by navigating at the very right corner saying Edit → Pay Now
Website Owner (Backend):
Order Processing: After the user submit the listing website owner (you) will find orders from WooCommerce → orders → change status-completed if everything is okay. Again, you need to approve listings from the All listings Menu.
Listing Status: From the directory builder, there is an option called listing status and here you can find options pending/publish. This means the user listing will go through the admin approval or not.
Listing Approval: Admin gets the listing pending if it is checked from directory builder → general → bottom → Listing status pending either it will live automatically on your website.
Directory Builder:
Listing Expiration: Directory Builder → General → It impacts globally on all of the listing expiration dates registered on your website. Make sure how many days you want to set and if you want to go with unlimited then you can set this value to zero.
Listing Type: Directory Builder → Add Listing Form → Form Fields → “Select Listing Type” is a preset field that is designed to pick the type of regular or featured listing from the add listing form.
Listing Owner Frontend:
Benefits of using WPP:
- DPP Extension has only 3 payment gateway support as extensions and those are Paypal, Stripe, and Authorize.net but if you use WPP Extension, then you are out of the limit and you may find tons of other third party plugins which support tons of gateways.
- If you are using WooCommerce and maintaining a store already then you may consider WPP over DPP Extension.
ABB
WC: WooCommerce
DPP: Directorist Default Pricing Plan
WPP: WooCommerce Pricing Plan
Faqs
- Should I use the pricing plan extension and WooCommerce pricing plan extension together?
Ans: Simply, NO!
- Where should I register the plan package by using the WooCommerce pricing plan extension?
Ans: You need to register the plan as a new product.
Last Updated: April 13th, 2022