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BidKing Plus

First setup

Seven things to do after the wizard, in the order the admin's Finish setup checklist lists them. When the checklist is all ticked, your store is ready for customers.

Sign in at https://your-domain/admin/. The Finish setup checklist in the admin sidebar ticks each item by itself when it sees it done.

  1. Brand your store

    Settings Branding: your logos for light and dark mode and the favicon. Your store name and support email are under General.

  2. Set currency and time zone

    Settings Regional: the time zone, your currency's 3-letter code (for example USD or INR) and its symbol. What you call the wallet's unit (Coins, Credits, Points) is under Settings Rewards.

    The coin price you set in the wizard is under Pricing Coin Pricing. It takes up to 4 decimals, a change of ten times or more asks you to confirm, and every change is logged.

  3. Connect a payment method

    1. Open Payment Gateways and choose a provider, for example Stripe or PayPal.
    2. Paste the keys from that provider's dashboard and keep Test mode on. Test mode sends buyers to the provider's sandbox, so no real money moves.
    3. Copy the return or webhook address shown on the page into the provider's dashboard.
    4. Make a test payment, then switch to Live and turn the gateway on. A gateway with missing keys can't be turned on.

    Prefer manual payments such as bank transfer or UPI? Add your own methods, with instructions and a QR code, in Manual Payment Gateway. They start hidden until you're ready. You review each manual payment under Finance Manual Payments.

    A gateway can charge in its own currency. The amount is converted with a live rate from the Exchange Rates plugin, or with a fixed rate you set on the gateway.

  4. Add your first listing

    Create an auction from Auctions All Auctions, or a product from Shop Products. The checklist ticks as soon as one exists.

  5. Check that email sends

    Settings Email (SMTP): your mail server's host, port, username and password. Port 587 uses STARTTLS and 465 uses SSL. Press Send test email and check it arrives.

    Nothing is emailed until this is set, and a strip on every admin page reminds you while sending is off. Every email the store sends is listed in Marketing Notifications Send Log.

  6. Set up the scheduled task

    One line runs all of the store's background work every minute: ending auctions, emails, clean-ups. Open Security Logs Cron Logs: it shows the exact command and URL for your site.

    cPanel: Cron Jobs, choose "Once Per Minute", and paste:

    Command
    php /home/USERNAME/public_html/cron/dispatch.php >/dev/null 2>&1

    Replace the path with your site's folder; Cron Logs shows the right one. If your host can only call a web address, use the URL with your key from Cron Logs instead:

    URL
    https://your-domain/cron/dispatch.php?key=YOUR_CRON_KEY

    Cron Logs then shows "Cron last ran" and every run. From there you can change a job's schedule, switch one off, or run it now.

  7. Go live

    Settings Maintenance: switch maintenance mode off when you're ready for customers.

Worth setting up early

Live bidding

Bids, prices and end times reach every open page as they happen when the Realtime plugin, included, has a WebSocket server. Point it at a free Soketi server of your own, Pusher Channels, or any Pusher-compatible service, from its panel on the Plugins page: app ID, key, secret, host, port and TLS. Without one, pages keep checking for new bids by themselves.

Sign-up rewards

Settings Rewards: the sign-up bonus, the referral bonus, the bonus a referrer gets when their friend buys coins, and a bonus for signing up with someone's code. Set each to what suits you, including 0.

Rules and policies

Settings Sign-up & compliance: the minimum age, your postal address (marketing email stays blocked until it's filled) and a contact for copyright notices. Your terms, privacy, refund and cookie pages are under Settings Pages & Policies.

Your responsibility

Whether you may run paid-bid auctions, such as penny and unique-bid auctions, where you operate, and any licence you need for them, is yours to check. While the auctions are switched on, sign-up requires a minimum age of 18, which you can raise.

Look and language

Choose your theme and arrange the homepage under Appearance. Customers pick their language from the switcher; turn on automatic translation of your own listings and pages under Settings Auto translations.

Something wrong or unclear on this page? Tell us at [email protected], or see how to get help.