Installing

Installing the plugin is as simple as other plugins from WordPress.org. Please go to Plugins → Add New and search for “auto listings”. Then click the Install button to install it. Finally, click Activate button to activate the plugin.

IMPORTANT: After installing the plugin, you’ll see a notification in the admin area, asking you to install an additional plugin called Meta Box. This is a required plugin for Auto Listings to work. So please follow the instruction in the notification to install Meta Box.

In case you update the plugin Auto Listings from 1.x version, then you need to install Meta Box manually. It’s available on WordPress.org. So please just go to Plugins → Add New and search for “meta box”, install and activate it!

Once the plugin is installed, you should set up configure the plugin in the order of the steps below.

1. Settings

Navigate to Listings → Settings to configure the plugins settings. This should be done first.

There will already be some default settings that have been set up, but you should go through each tab and set up the plugin as it suits you.

2. Add a Seller

The plugin creates a custom role called Auto Listings Seller. This role, along with the Administrator role, are permitted to be a Seller.

Sellers appear in the ‘Seller’ dropdown when adding/editing a listing, allowing you to set the Seller for that Listing. The main purpose of having ‘Sellers’, is so that the Enquiry Contact Form can be directly emailed to whoever is set as the Seller.

If you want to allow multiple Sellers, then you should add these WordPress users by going to Users → Add New and set their role as Auto Listings Seller.

3. Add a Listing

Add a new Listing by going to Listings → New Listing.

Listings are a custom post type and can be published like any other post or page.

3.1. Add Vehicle Specs (using the CarQuery API)

You can pull in the vehicle data from over 68,000 unique models and automatically populate the Specification fields.

Within the Listing, navigate down to the Vehicle Select box and click on the ‘Load Makes & Models‘ button. This will call the CarQuery API and will populate the Years field firstly.

Selecting a Year will then populate the Makes dropdown with available makes from that year. Selecting a Make will then populate the Models and so on until you have your chosen vehicle.

Once you have selected your vehicle, hit the ‘Populate The Fields’ button and it will automatically populate the Specification fields below with all available data for that vehicle.

You can also edit the Specification fields freely.

3.2. Add Listing Address

The listing address should be supplied as it will be used in the search box to find listings within regions/city/state etc.

The address fields use Google Maps to help you find the exact location and to find the latitude and longitude of the address. This helps to find appropriate nearby listings when searching.

To add an address, simply start typing your address in the Vehicle Location field. Google will help you to find the exact address. Once found, click on the address and the address fields below will auto populate.

You can choose to display the address any way you like with the ‘Displayed Address‘ field. This is the field displayed on the front of the site, the other address fields are only used for searching purposes.

3.3. Add Images

Scroll down to the Images section and click on ‘Add Images‘ button. You can then upload images as per usual with the WordPress media uploader.

The first image will be used as the main thumbnail for the Listing. You can simply drag and drop the order of images once they have been added.

3.4. Add Body Type

Body Type is a custom Taxonomy, much like Tags or Categories for posts.

You can add new Body Types by scrolling to the Body Type section and clicking ‘Add New Body Type’.

3.5. Listing Settings

The Listings Settings section shows number of Enquiries on the Listing, an Archive button, the Seller dropdown and a Hide Items option.

The Archive button allows you to archive a listing once it is sold or no longer required to be live on the site. Archiving a listing will remove it from the front end of the site but it will still be available in the admin area under the Archived folder.

Selecting the Seller of a listing allows the contact form to appear on the listing and all enquiries will go direct to the Seller.

The Hide Items option allows you to hide any of the items listed. The items are Price, Contact Form, Map and Address. The main purpose of having this option is to still allow the data to be populated, which can be used by the search, but these details might not want to be displayed on every listing.

4. Add & configure Search Box

The search box can be added via a shortcode anywhere and there can be multiple search boxes (such as sidebar and above listings).

The shortcode to add is

[auto_listings_search]

Complete settings for the search box can be found here.

5. Enquiries

If you add a Seller to the Listing then the contact form will automatically appear on that listing.

All enquiries are emailed to the seller and are also stored under Listings → Enquiries.