How to make digital product marketplace with license manager on WordPress and Rehub theme
Recently we made a new demo for digital marketplaces and now we want to share some secrets and tips on this topic. We will show you basic settings for Digital products, links on documentation, best options, and examples. You can also create your own marketplace where other people can sell their own digital products with the commission. Let’s go
First of all, you need to install and configure Woocommerce. We made a tutorial about all basic configurations for woocommerce recently, please read it first. Now, we will show more specific options special for digital products.
Digital products in Woocommerce
First of all, you need to add some digital products. What is the difference between digital and physical product? It’s only one – a digital product that can be downloaded immediately after purchase. Woocommerce has a Downloadable and Virtual option for this purpose.
So, it’s simple, just enable this option and attach file. You can set also limits, protection, system for downloading. Here is more details about virtual products of wordpress
Best Product Layouts for digital products
Digital products are different from classic products, so, they must have a bit different look on site. For example, I think that it must have also some video previews + specifications (or compatible systems) that must be visible somewhere on the top of the page. We created special product layouts for this purpose. You can find how to enable them in documentation Here are some examples
SideBlock product layout
You can also use Default full width product layouts
Also Section with Sidebar
By the way. Theme has near 20 product layouts, so, experiment with theme to find best for you
How to add product attributes as images, text tags
Please, find how to manage attributes
How to add videos to product
Theme supports video previews. You can add links from youtube and Vimeo in Video area in right-side panel of the product (under the product gallery field). Each link must be placed on a separate line (press Enter to divide links by lines). Some product layouts, like Video Block layout, show video in the top of page, some layouts show them as part of the gallery, some layouts show. them as separate Video tab
How to add video field to product in vendor submit form
If you build Marketplace and not just a single admin shop, you need to use WCFM or other vendor plugin. WCFM has one cool feature, you can add custom fields in submit form. You can do this in Settings. – Product Custom fields. Example of video field
How to change background in Layout
Side block Colored layout, Sections with sidebar layouts and some others have colored background. It’s controlled from two parts. You can set color globally in theme options – Appearance – Background highlight color. If you don’t fill it, the main color of the theme will be used. Also, each product has a Background option in Custom code areas.
How to add demo link for products
The theme has powerful meta getter shortcode and custom code areas. And this is an example of how to use them to extend the layout. For example, you want to add a Demo link for products. We need few things:
- Add link and store it somewhere in product
- Retreive this link from product
- Show it in product
How to add additional data and meta fields to product
You can use the most powerful plugin for this – ACF. But, in our case, we just need only one meta, so, it’s not good to install such a complex plugin to make just one field, because we can use regular wordpress options.
Enable Custom meta area in Screen options
Now, you can make custom fields for products. Make field with key “demolink” (or any other) and add link to demo there
Retrieve meta from product
For this, theme has very powerful shortcode
According to our example, we can use shortcode to get link
[wpsm_custom_meta field=demolink]To turn link text to real link or even button, we can add some html with special classes of theme. This is example
<a href="[wpsm_custom_meta field=demolink]" target="_blank" class="blockstyle border-lightgrey font110 fontnormal padforbuttonmiddle rehub-main-font rehub-sec-color text-center mb15">See demo</a>Theme has many magic classes which can help to format any custom content
How to show custom data in product
We have special code areas for this. You can add them per each product or globally in theme options – shop settings. In this picture we added custom shortcode in area near button
How to add Demo link field for vendor forms
If you build Marketplace and not just a single admin shop, you need to use WCFM or other vendor plugin. WCFM has one cool feature, you can add custom fields in submit form. You can do this in Settings. – Product Custom fields. Example of the demo link field
Design for Digital Download Site
Digital product site requires to have some special design also. For this purpose, we created a special demo for Rehub.
This demo has some special layouts and options. First of all, we added a special product Loop layout for the grid. You can enable Digital Grid option in the theme option – shop settings – Design for archives. You can do this also in woocommerce options of Customizer
Digital Grid has one thing which is not available in other grid layouts. If you add videos to the product, this video can be played directly from the grid without visiting an inner page.
If you need to set images in grid to be full width like on our demo, set next settings for images in Customizer.
Of course, you can use any of our demos for digital marketplace, because all options are enabled in the main Rehub theme, but Redigit demo a bit better for such purposes.
Adding Licenses for Digital products
To add or generate licenses for your products, you can use License manager plugin it’s a simple free plugin with good compatibility with vendor plugins, so, if you use WCFM vendor plugin, you can allow adding licenses also for vendors of your marketplace.
The logic of work for this plugin is simple. You add License generator (set of rules of generated licenses) or submit your licenses from CSV file. Then, attach license generator to the product. Let us show in more detail.
Install plugin and go to settings of plugin. Enable to show License tab in Account and allow users to activate/deactivate license if you need this
In REST API, enable endpoints that you want to use? What is REST API – it’s a universal API which allows WordPress to be connected with other third party services and plugins. This part requires developer skills from you, so, if you don’t know what is REST API and why you may need it – disable all endpoints of REST API.
If you want to use it, usually, i enable next options, which allows to validate, activate licenses from custom plugins or services.
Plugin has documentation and examples of API requests
if you don’t understand REST API, maybe it’s better for you to generate licenses in your custom plugin and then, import them inside License manager
Instead of importing/adding licenses, you can use License Generator which will generate licenses automatically
Once you added generator, you can assign it to Product
Now, if someone purchased product, user gets also license in order
User can also access to his licenses and downloads in any time in his account
You can also check licenses in your admin panel
By the way, you can use this License manager not only for the digital products. You can use it also for making offline coupons. For example, you can make business with local shops. Imagine, that you make contract with some local shop and users can get a special code which they can redeem in the shop and get discount.
