[Resolved] Is it possible to build a multi vendor site with toolset and woocommerce?

[Author]

Posts

[Lykke Scavenius]

I'm sorry this is a long one, it's necesary for me to find out if I should use toolset for this project.

I have installed wcVendors Pro + woocommerce on a site, and I realize first of all, it's difficult to setup, and the interface is not what I want, I want to add form options, and I want to design the vendor control panel and vendor pages differently, and much more.
I have tried testing multiple of these plugins to find an easy way to create a multi vendor site, but they can't be customized enough.

The only way to get it how I want, is to "build it" myself - but, these multi vendor shops have multiple important features that I'm not sure can be built/integrated without a "ready made" plugin like that.

I am hoping you can tell me, if using toolset and woocommerce (plus some extensions), will make this possible, or if I should not even try?

Obviously I can build
- My account page
- Signup/login
- Add products form
- View orders page
- Add custom fields to products and vendors
- build custom shop pages and product pages and display the vendor information.

My biggest worry first,
>>Can I add a commission functionality, so that when they get paid, the money are sent to "me", and they have an overview of their sales and commisions, and they can have their money paid to their account

But I am also worried about these things
>> Automatically hide the wp-admin area and the wordpress top bar from all users
> When a customer makes an order, they can buy multiple products from different vendors in one order (that's how it is on other sites), can I make it so the order is split up and sent to the vendors? And can it add shipping costs for multiple vendors?
>> Automatically post all their products for review and need publish by admin
>> Admin set specific users to be able to publish roducts directly
>> Can I "create" the user/vendor frontend URL, where they can have their banner, info and only their products..
>> Can I add a "become a seller" signup, with a setup wizard to name the shop and so on? (and can this be done both starting out as a guest and starting out as a customer? If guest, it includes signup/login?)
>>Can I offer them to make one time payments for "highligting" products? (Meaning e.g. can I as admin offer services/products only shown in their accounts?)
>>Can I expand the my account area with "manage products etc" menu items and content, after changing from "customer" to "vendor" user type?
>>Can I make it possible for sellers to change order status and create shipping labels?
>> Create automatic info for Woocommerce to make vendors fill out as little product info as possible?

There are probably many more features that could become a problem, but when looking at the WcVendors admin settings, these are the things I'm worried about.

I know it's a lot, but as said I just need to know if it is possible to build a Multi vendor shop like this using Toolset, Woocommerce, and ... I don't know which but some addon plugins?

Best regards
Lykke

[Christian Cox]

In short, no, this level of customization is outside the scope of what you can accomplish with Toolset. We offer several APIs that might be useful, but at the end of the day Toolset is going to fall quite short of the goal here because it's not what Toolset is designed to accomplish. Whether or not there are 3rd party extensions out there that will accomplish exactly what you want in combination with Toolset I cannot say. I can tell you there are no existing integrations between Toolset and such extensions.

Can I add a commission functionality, so that when they get paid, the money are sent to "me", and they have an overview of their sales and commisions, and they can have their money paid to their account
Toolset doesn't handle any kind of account payments, and doesn't have built-in calculations of sales and commissions. You would have to build functionality to pay your vendors by writing custom code, or using some third-party WooCommerce extensions.

Automatically hide the wp-admin area and the wordpress top bar from all users
Toolset doesn't do this, but you can create a custom code snippet that does it: https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/show_admin_bar

When a customer makes an order, they can buy multiple products from different vendors in one order (that's how it is on other sites), can I make it so the order is split up and sent to the vendors? And can it add shipping costs for multiple vendors?
Toolset doesn't help with this. It will require major customization to the WooCommerce system with custom code or 3rd-party extensions.

Automatically post all their products for review and need publish by admin
Admin set specific users to be able to publish roducts directly
You can use Access to set publish capabilities for specific User roles, but Products are complex post types that are not easily managed with Forms. Variable products, for example, are not supported. Only the simplest products can be added or edited with Toolset Forms.

Can I "create" the user/vendor frontend URL, where they can have their banner, info and only their products..
Are you talking about creating a separate domain for each vendor dynamically, like vendorname.site.com, othervendorname.site.com? This isn't something Toolset is designed to accomplish.

I think it should be apparent by now Toolset isn't capable of fulfilling the requirements of this project. This is a MAJOR application that is not easy to create by extending Toolset here or there. Instead, I think you would have better luck and better value customizing one of the vendor systems that already exists. You may need a developer, but it will be less development than you will need to create such a system from scratch.