We have tried to make the installation and setup of the plugin as simple as possible whilst building in flexibility for the more advanced user to be able to fully customise the style and content.

Once you have downloaded you WP Property Feed plugin zip file you can install in one of two ways;

  1. In WordPress admin go to the plugins section and click “Add New” then click on the “Upload Plugin” option and select the wp-property-feed.zip you just downloaded and click “Install Now”.  Once installed click the “Activate” button to make the plugin available.
  2. Extract the wp-property-feed.zip you just downloaded on your computer and using ftp upload the content to you wordpress site in the wp-content/plugins directory.  Then log into wordpress admin and go to plugins where you should now see WordPress Property Feed listed.  Click the activate link and the plugin will then be available.

Basic setup

Follow the simple steps below to get up and running in minutes;

  1. Enter your API details into the appropriate feed tab in WordPress Property Feed “Settings” menu.
  2. Configure the general settings in the WordPress Property Feed “Settings” menu.  Some the settings on this page control the layout of the results and mapping and you shoudl just play with these until you are happy with the results.  However the fields below are essential for the smooth running of the plugin;
    1. License Code – you will receive this when you start your trial.
    2. Google Maps API key – google now require that you register for a google maps api key to use mapping features on your site.  The key is free and can be obtained at https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/get-api-key IMPORTANT: Do not put any domain restrictions on the google api key the plugin uses google maps both for frontend map drawing but also for backend geo-location and restricting the domains will prevent location searches from working correctly.
    3. Obtain a google reCaptcha key and secret for the property enquiry forms.  Again the key is free and can be obtained from https://www.google.com/recaptcha/
  3. Add a search or quicksearch shortcode to one of your pages OR add the WP Property Feed search widget to one or more of your widget areas.
  4. Update Permalinks.  Because we have added a new custom post type to WordPress you will need to activate the permalink structure by going into your wp-admin settings for permalinks and pressing the “save changes” button.  You don’t have to actually make any changes just saving is enough for wordpress to refresh it’s permalink cache and make your properties visible.

Scheduling

WordPress will re-populate the property list daily and run incremental updates every hour to keep your property data up to date. This should happen automatically using WordPress’s built in schedule service.  You can also manually trigger the update of the the properties in each individual feed settings page by clicking the force re-population before clicking the update setting button.  This will immediately re-populate the properties and can take a while so please be patient.

In the wppf setting page on the right hand side is a status panel that will report on the status of the update schedule.  It is important to monitor this in the early statges as some hosts are know to disable the WordPress cron schedule. If that is the case then this panel will alert you to that issue.  It is possible to trigger the schedule manually using third party services (please see the FAQ for further details) but would ask you to strongly consider your hosting options if this is the case as these kinds of hosts often disable multiple wordpress features all of which could adversely effect your site.

For more information on Widgets, Shortcode and Developer Documentation, see our wppf documentation page