Welcome to our documentation! Below are detailed instructions that will walk you through install through notifying the winning contestants, plus video tutorials!
The icon indicates premium features.
Installation
Installing is simple! After purchasing the plugin, simply upload it through the plugins section of your site and click “Activate”.
Once the plugin is activated you will see “WP Contest” in your menu.
General Settings
In this section you will create settings that are applied to all your contests.
Maximum Upload Size
This limits the size of the submissions a contestant can upload. By default it is set to 2MB.
PayPal Settings
The premium plugin allows admins to charge contestants to submit entries through PayPal.
When testing you can select “Sandbox” under PayPal mode, and enter your Sandbox Client ID and Sandbox Secret Key.
When you’re ready to go live switch to “Live” under PayPal mode and enter your live Client ID and Secret Key.
To learn more about creating Sandbox and Live accounts see PayPal’s instructions.
Success Page
Set the page you’d like contestants to be directed to after they submit an entry.
Failed Page
Set the page you’d like contestants to be directed to if their entry fails. This is only used in the premium plugin after a payment fails.
Creating A Contest
Clicking “Add Contest” will prompt you to enter the name of the new contest. The pro plugin allows admins to create multiple active contests .
Contest Settings
After clicking the contest you’d like to work on, you’ll have several settings that will help you manage and run your contest.
Voting Criteria
Our plugin offers very customizable voting criteria. This criteria is used in the voting phase; you can create as many criteria as you like and customize the three voting options. Confused? Watch our video below about how voting criteria work.
Notify Winners
Once judges complete the voting round you get to select which entries are winners. Once winners are selected you can send them an all an email, notifying them that they won. Simply enter the subject, message and click “Send Message” when you’re ready to share the good news!
Additional Fields
Add fields for your contestants to complete when they submit an entry. You can add text, number, dropdown, radio and checkbox fields. These fields are included for each entry, so you can collect information for every entry that is submitted.
Contest Entries
In this section you can see all the entries for your contests. You can also download them all to .csv!
Elimination Round
In the premium plugin allows you to run an elimination round. Elimination rounds allow judges to eliminate entries with a simple “No” vote. You can set the minimum number of “No” votes an entry must have to be eliminated. You can either stop there, or then start a voting round with customizable criteria on a 1-10 scale.
On the admin side you can see all the entries and if the entry is “in” or “out” based on the elimination phase threshold you set.
Voting Round
In the voting round judges rate entries from 1-10 on multiple criteria. Admins can see who has votes, their scores and the overall score.
Shortcodes
Entry Form
[wpc_entry_form contest_id=""]
Add entry forms to any page. If a user is not logged in they will be prompted to login or register before submitting an entry.
Admins can create custom entry fields that contestants must complete for each entry. These can be text fields, number fields, dropdowns, radio fields and/or checkboxes.
Elimination Round
[wpc_elimination_round contest_id="xxx"]
Use this shorcode to create a page for judges to complete the optional elimination round. Here judges simply vote if the entry is a “yes”, “no” or “maybe”. You can set the elimination round threshold on the contest’s settings page.
This content is only available to users with the “Contest Judge” role. All other users viewing this shortcode will see a message notifying them this content is for judges only.
Allow judges to select which contest they would like to work on, or use the contest_id
to show a single contest’s elimination round form.
Voting Round
[wpc_voting_round contest_id="xxx"]
Use this shorcode to create a page for judges to complete the vting round. Here judges score each entry from 1-10 for each criteria created in the contest’s settings.
This content is only available to users with the “Contest Judge” role. All other users viewing this shortcode will see a message notifying them this content is for judges only.
Allow judges to select which contest they would like to work on, or use the contest_id
to show a single contest’s voting round form.
Judge’s Dashboard
[wpc_judge_dash contest_id="xxx"]
Adding this shortcode to a page will show the entries and status to judges.
This content is only available to users with the “Contest Judge” role. All other users viewing this shortcode will see a message notifying them this content is for judges only.
Allow judges to select which contest they would like to view, or use the contest_id
to show a single contest’s judge dashboard.
Lookup Entries
[wpc_search_by_entry]
This shortcode will add a search form to your page, allowing users to lookup entries by contest, ID, contestant and category.
User’s Dashboard
[wpc_user_dash contest_id="xxx"]
This shortcode will add a table of all a contestant’s entries, and their status (e.g. what voting round their entry is in).
Get All Entries
[wpc_contest contest_id="xxx"]
Adding this shortcode will simply display all entries in a contest, visible to all user roles.
Extras!
Download Printable Labels
Your contestants and judges can download PDFs with the entry’s information. These can be used as confirmations for winners, or to include with the entry if it needs to also be physically submitted.
Contestant Dash
Use a shortcode on a page that contestants can access to display all the contestant’s entries.
Judge’s Dash
Use a shortcode on a page that judges can access to display all the entries for a contest.