Also I forgot – the entire buying process would always start with the buyer entering an UK postcode to search for vendors in his/her area and then pick one of the default categories.
Example:
Postcode: SE1 2SW
Service: Sewing
then it would list all the vendors. Buyer would go on their profile –> pick a specific service (e.g. skirt sewing) –> book a date and time slot –> pay.
Vendor delivers –> buyer confirms as delivered –> vendor gets paid less commission (the payment bit can be done manually by me initially, not a big deal. I just need the vendor to be able to see stats).
Thanks
I’m not aware of any set of plugins that will provide exactly what you need.
There are plugins for some of your requirements.
But you will need to provide custom code to bridge the gaps.
So unless you are a developer, it will not be possible at free/low cost.
Thanks shanebp. I was afraid that’s the case but it is what it is then… Could you please recommend some of the plugins? I am literally overwhelmed by all the information I found and don’t know where to start lol
google “micro job wordpress theme” and would give you couple of paid options
Would something like Woo Commerce do what you wanted? I know its compatible with WordPress. I’ve never used it though so I don’t know.
Magento is good but complicated, I have vague memories of seeing some plugins for WordPress that work with Magento.
Phil
@insearchofasolution Just thought I would chime in on this.
You would be able to do this but it depends on the approach you take, You could use buddypress for the social network side of things for the messaging between users etc and profile pages/groups etc whilst building a custom user interface for most of the other options you mentioned and tie them together for each user.
Its good you are clear about what you are exactly wanting to build and its all down to research, You can most definitely create separate vendor pages and account pages using custom post types and fields and creating templates for these pages etc.
If you don’t know how to do all of this you may struggle though, unless a specific plugin meets your requirements, I myself have been using an amazing suite of plugins over the past year or so that will help you do a lot of this yourself , they are brilliant for creating complex websites and layouts without having to write everything from scratch. You will have to have knowledge of html and css etc at the very least to use them efficiently though, they do come at a cost and you are looking at $300 for the complete set, these plugins are a little more advanced than other plugins to use as they are developer orientated and can be overwhelming at first if you are new to them, but if you stick with them you will start to realize the doors these plugins can open for you on wordpress and can help make your workflow loads faster and make your project come to life. do a search for TOOLSET PLUGINS by wp-types.
I hope this helps a little bit, creating a complex website as you mentioned above will take patience and time if you are new to doing it, I am in the middle of a few complex builds myself and to be honest with you I now pre-fare to use these plugins for most of my projects now as I can easily create any type of custom post with custom fields and display them via content templates without having to create the templates from scratch on each project.
The best thing about the custom fields you can create with these plugins is that you can create user specific fields and control access to everything with the access plugin, giving you full control over everything and you can create quite complex membership sites yourself.
@mcpeanut thanks a lot about all the info! I have tried to hire several programmers who claimed to have extensive WP experience, but unfortunately all 5 of them failed and backed up after a couple of days. None of their work was of any use unfortunately. These were off an unnamed micro-job platform, so maybe I just was not lucky enough to find a reliable one. But no offence meant to anyone. 🙂
So what I decided to do was to build the core by myself – like you said – with help of plugins, random tutorials from the web,… All the trial and error way. I came quite far and the “only” thing left is some of the plugins need to be connected or slightly customized for which I am going to hire someone, because even though I know HTML/CSS, I don’t know that much about php. I only can follow tuts – like a monkey :))) I still think this is a better way than have someone build the whole thing on small budget. Of course I can imagine a nice development with thousands of $$$ available.
Anyway, what I have done is use the BuddyPress as the absolute core, adding all the functions like following a user, messaging, portfolio, … I have then used WC Vendors for the marketplace bit. As such, the users don’t really access any shop pages, or search by categories. I have populated the products onto a custom tab in BP (hope that makes sense). So now I am at the stage when I try to find someone again to “finish it off”. Wish me luck 🙂
I’ll have a look at those plugins too, thanks for that.
If you using wc vendors then have a look at wc4bp paid plugin..it provides integration between woo and bp
@insearchofasolution no problem mate.
Seems like you know what you are aiming for so its really down to time and research, you do not need to be a master with PHP to pull this off yourself, although knowing the basics helps. If you can understand what you need to change or integrate you can find answers with a little google searching and quite often you can find various different solutions to similar problems others may of come across.
About the plugins I mentioned, you should go to the wp-types website and set up a demo install of toolset for yourself, just search the website and there will be an option for you to have a test environment set up for free hosted on their servers where you can test out all the plugin suite, it will even let you install the dummy content for various complex website setups that have been created with toolset for demonstration purposes, it shows what is possible with these plugins when used together as a package. Its worth taking a look at trust me on this one.
I have only messed with the vendors plugin you have mentioned briefly so I have not tried it out with buddypress but as @sharmavishal has mentioned above you might also want to check out the paid plugin he mentioned to if it has BP compatibility.
