Question User Shop Questions

[Morrus]

I have a question regarding user shops. As I understand, users can create and sell items of the "custom item" type in a shop of their own creation.

1) Do I have to manually give them the shop, or can they create their own shop as long as their usergroup permissions allow it?

2) Are image icons/graphics limited to those I've already uploaded via FTP? Or is there some way users can create their own custom icons for their items? If not, what is it users are selling (custom items are only icons, aren't they?)

I'm using the shop to sell "badges" to show fan affiliation.

 

[Fillip H.]

1) They can automatically create the shop, but they can only have one.

2) They are indeed limited to only existing uploaded items. You can upload images to /dbtech/vbshop/images/customitems and /dbtech/vbshop/images/customitems/shop (or grant trusted staff members an FTP account limited to the /dbtech/vbshop/images/customitems directory, which will also grant them access to the subdir) in order to upload images that can be used by custom shops.

 

[Morrus]

1) They can automatically create the shop, but they can only have one.

Cool.

2) They are indeed limited to only existing uploaded items. You can upload images to /dbtech/vbshop/images/customitems and /dbtech/vbshop/images/customitems/shop (or grant trusted staff members an FTP account limited to the /dbtech/vbshop/images/customitems directory, which will also grant them access to the subdir) in order to upload images that can be used by custom shops.

So they can't actually create and sell icons, just sell icons I made myself? I'm not sure I understand the point of that. Why wouldn't I just sell them myself then - what's the advantage in letting the users sell them unless they actually made them? Am I missing something?

 

[Fillip H.]

It wasn't designed to let people sell custom icons, we designed the feature by looking at something one of our friends' forums had a lot of: "Avatar/Signature Shops".

Basically, on that forum, members used threads to sell their skills as a GFX artist, by using forum currency (or nothing, if they just wanted the practice) as a price.

With this feature, they can use their custom shops and get instructions from people via the configuration of the custom items, without needing to keep checking a forum thread.

We didn't include the ability to upload icons because this meant the item in question would need to be moderated by a staff member before it could be made public. Without moderation, you'd quickly have a problem with lewd images being used.

We're going to add the ability to upload custom icons in a future version, but it's no small undertaking

 

[Morrus]

Without moderation, you'd quickly have a problem with lewd images being used.

Well, no more so than allowing people to, y'know, post messageboard threads and stuff!

Anyhow, fair enough. I was just curious what the function did; I'll just stick to the basic setup.

 

[Fillip H.]

I would say more so, since vBShop items are less obvious to a moderator until someone actually visits the shop or buys the icon, and you will have to wait for an administrator to come and fix it rather than being able to assign section moderators