After installing AWPCP, you will see a Classifieds section of your WP Admin panel (usually on the lower left) that looks something like this (you may be missing the "XML Sitemap Options" until you download the AWPCP XML Sitemap plugin to go with it):
You should change the name of these pages as you wish them to appear on your site and then click "Save Settings". That will create the basic structure used by AWPCP and allow you to see it on the front end of your website. You can always go back and reset these names any time you like. But in order to see AWPCP working on the user-facing side of your website, you must save the page names at least ONCE.
Widget: AWPCP uses various widgets (Search, Latest Ads, and if you have it installed, Featured Ads) to display information. Some themes use different wrapper tags for their widgets than others. This allows you to change those wrappers to match your theme.
SEO Settings: If you want to use URLs of the form /something/like/this instead of /something?like=this, which Google prefers, then you need to check this option AND set a non-default permalink option (we suggest /%category%/%postname%/, but anything that isn't one of the defaults will do nicely)
User Ad Management Panel: Checking this option will turn on the Ad Management panel for all WP profiles on your site. That means a registered user can see and manage all of their posted ads in a single place. Turning this option on automatically turns on "Require Registration" as you must have registered users to take advantage of this setting.
AWPCP uses the pages created here to manage the various aspects of your classified ads. For each created page, a shortcode is added to the page which then outputs the AWPCP classifieds content for each page in the appropriate way.
The names shown here are the default names for the pages. You can (and probably should) use something different for these page names, particularly the top-level page ("AWPCP Main page"), named AWPCP by default.
ALL of these pages are required by AWPCP and deleting any them is very, very bad. If you do that, AWPCP will not work as expected. Luckily, if you accidentally delete them, it's easy to get them back. Make sure you have all page names filled out and then click "Restore Pages" at the top of this tab.
Menu Items: Here, we control which links to display at the top of the Place Ad page. They are all enabled by default, but you can customize this however you like depending on your board's needs.
IMPORTANT: If you are using PayPal or 2Checkout in test mode, make sure you have the "Put payment gateways in test mode" checked. Conversely, when you are done with testing, make sure you are using your REAL PayPal or 2Checkout credentials and you turn off "Put payment gateways in test mode". Failure to do so will result in missed payments and possible strange errors.
NOTE:. If you turn on registration in AWPCP, your site must also allow users to register in the first place. This is a WordPress setting that you can find under Settings->General. Look for the Membership field and make sure "Anyone can register" is checked. If it is not, your users will be unable to post Ads if you require registration!
Reply to Ad Message: AWPCP uses a Craigslist-like notification system. The poster's email is never displayed to the end user. Only when the person browsing the ad clicks on the Contact link from the Show Ad page can they contact they poster, and only through a form they submit on your site. The ad poster will then receive this email template.
Incomplete Payment Message: If you have a paid classifieds board and there is a problem during the payment phase of placing an ad, this is the email template used to notify the user of that problem.
Renew Ad Message: If you turned on the user's notification to receive an email when their ad is about to expire (within the expiry threshold) in Ad/Listing settings, this is the email template used for the message.
Advanced Email Configuration: These settings should only be used when your WordPress site doesn't seem to want to send email via the standard WP mail functions. This allows you to specify SMTP settings for an email server. If you use these settings, AWPCP will use them instead of the standard WP mail functions. Use with care.
Support for Facebook API will be removed in the future. Facebook significantly reduced access to their APIs across all apps on April 4, 2018. Now it takes longer and is more difficult to configure Facebook Apps that can post content to pages or groups. As a result, it is unlikely that this integration is going to work for new users. We introduced support for Zapier/IFTTT Webhooks as an alternative and expect customers to migrate to that integration method.
If you are currently using the Facebook API integration method and not having any issues, you don't have to do anything right now. If you are having issues, please read the Common Problems and Solutions section at the bottom to try to fix them.
As of April 4, 2018, all applications need to go through App Review in order to get access to the Page API and Groups API. That means that you may need to submit your app for review (ask for the manage_pages, publish_pages, publish_to_groups permissions), before AWPCP can display the list of pages and groups you manage and be able to post classifieds ads to those groups and pages.
Go to AWPCP's Facebook Settings page and enter the App ID and App Secret for your App. If you created a new app, those are the values we mentioned in step 6 in the previous section. If you are using an existing App, just go to , chose you app and look for those values on the Basic Settings page:
In order to post Ads to Facebook Pages and Groups, the plugin needs an access token to communicate with Facebook on behalf of the owner of those pages and groups. The User Authorization step is designed to help admin users get and configure an access token from Facebook.
You will be asked to grant the permissions mentioned above only the first time you click the link. However, the process should always end with an access token being entered in the User Access Token field.
If your page or group is listed in Facebook but is not being shown in the Facebook Settings screen, then an error occurred during the configuration or you Facebook App doesn't have enough permissions approved. Try clicking the Diagnostics button above the General Settings section:
or repeat the configuration process again, paying special attention to any message displayed at the top of the page. Sometimes errors that cannot be handled automatically occurs; in those cases the plugin will detect them and provide feedback about what happen so you can correct the information entered, repeat the action or contact support, depending on the error.
If automatic posting is enabled, AWPCP will attempt to post an Ad shortly after it is posted and enabled. On the other hand, if automatic posting is disabled, you can post specific Ads to Facebook from the Listings section:
The Send to Facebook action will appear for every Ad that hasn't been posted to Facebook before and only if the Integration has been properly configured and at least a Facebook Page or a Group has been selected as destination.
The plugin does not control the visibility of posts created on behalf of users. To change the audience for your posts, you need to go into your Facebook account settings at =applications and update the app's configuration:
As explained in the screenshot, that's the setting that controls the audience for posts the app makes on your behalf. Normally you want to make your content available to as many people as possible, so choose Public to achieve that. However, if you have a reason to restrict access to your content, you can pick any of the other values available when you click on that dropdown.
If you receive an error that contains this message after trying to send a classified to a Facebook page or group, please make sure you are using AWPCP 3.8.6 or above. If you are using a newer version and still seeing that error, you may need to verify ownership of your domain on Facebook's Business Manager: -verification
Invalid Scopes: manage_pages, publish_pages, publish_to_groups. This message is only shown to developers. Users of your app will ignore these permissions if present. Please read the documentation for valid permissions at: -login/permissions
The XML Sitemap tab displays the status of the AWPCP XML Sitemap configuration. Normally, there is little that needs to be done from this tab once the Google XML Sitemap Generator plugin and the AWPCP XML Sitemap plugin are both installed. The sitemap is automatically updated with new entries from AWPCP as they are added.
Regions Control allows you to create standard regions, such as cities, states, countries, counties, villages, etc. and present the user with a drop down list for the Place Ad process instead of allowing free form text entry, which is difficult to search on.
Furthermore, Regions provides an important ability to filter listings based on selecting a particular region (state, city, whatever) by the user. Listings for a category, search result or the entire classified database will be filtered to that's user's chosen location, making their results relevant.
All fields are required. Enter the name of the plan (which will be displayed to the users when they place ads), the cost/price of the plan, the term/duration (how long an ad will be active on the site after being placed), as well as the Images allowed for an ad.
A typical configuration might be to have several plans with varying durations (like 30, 60, and 90 days) or plans with different images allowed for an ad (1, 2, or 4) or a combination of the two. You should try to keep it simple for your users. A user that easily understands what you're offering is a user that will quickly buy it if they like it.
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