First setup

Sign in at https://your-domain/admin/. The dashboard's Finish setup checklist 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. See Payment gateways.

4. Add your first draw

   Create a prize draw from the prize draws group in the admin menu. The checklist ticks as soon as one exists. See Create a draw.

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: closing draws and picking winners, emails and 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. See Scheduled tasks.

7. Go live

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

Worth setting up early

The live purchase feed

The Live Ticker plugin shows recent ticket purchases on each live draw's page. Its panel on the Plugins page has one switch, Show first name and initial: off, buyers' names are masked, as J*** D***; on, they show as Jane D.

Sign-up rewards

Settings Rewards: the sign-up bonus, the referral bonus and the referrer's bonus when a friend buys coins. A new store starts with a sign-up bonus of 15 coins and, with the referrals plugin, a referral bonus of 10 coins; set them 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.

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 draws and pages under Settings Auto translations.

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