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.

• Contest Title – Edit the name of your contest
• Contest Status – is this contest currently active or inactive? Only the premium plugin allows for more than 1 active contest.
• Current Voting Phase – either select elimination round (must be first round if you choose to include it) or the voting round. Only the premium plugin includes the option for an elimination round. Note – when you’re ready to switch from the elimination round to the voting round you must manually change this setting.

• Elimination Phase Threshold – this looks more complicated than it is! Simply set the criteria that allows an entry to progress from the elimination round to the voting round. First, select if a “No”, “Yes” or “Maybe” vote can eliminate an entry. Then select if the votes must be less than, more than, equal to or not equal to a number of the votes. In the below example if there are more than 1 or 1 “No” votes then the entry will be excluded from the voting round.

• Contest Type – now this is simple. Simply select if you’d like to charge contestants for each entry, or keep it a free contest. Only the premium plugin allows you to charge for entries.
• Upload Cost Per Entry – the cost for contestants to submit an entry. When contestants can submit multiple entries this is the cost per entry (not the cost for submitting all entries). Only the premium plugin allows you to charge for entries.
• Max Number of Files per Entry – set the number of entries your contestants can submit.
• Allowed File Extensions – for premium plugin users, you can set which file extensions contestants are allowed to use for uploaded entries.
• Who Can Submit Entries – select whether any logged in user can submit entries, or if they must register as a contestant first.

• Maximum Number of Entries – set the total number of entries allowed for your contest. Once this limit is reached contestants will get a message that the limit as been reached and they can’t submit any entries.
• Title Field Label – customize the title label on the entry form
• Category Field Label – customize the category label on the entry form
• Categories – create categories for the entries. For example, for a photography contest you might enter categories like “Black and White” or “Portrait”. Many of our plugin customer use categories to select winners in multiple categories.
• Description Label – customize the description label on the entry form
• Upload Field Label – customize the upload label on the entry form, for contests that allow uploaded entries.
• Terms & Conditions Page – set the page that includes the terms that contestants are required to agree to when they submit their entry.

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.