December 02, 2022

Sharing Club Plugin

Share books, dvd, tools, toys or any object with your community. Your users can easily lend, borrow and rate items and you know who borrowed what.

Sharing Club lets you create a list of the items (like DVD, books, tools…) you want to lend to your users.
They can easily book, comment and rate these item. On the admin side, you can track what you’ve lent, who borrowed it and when.

Useful for any NGO, association or community with a sharing philosophy.
Currently available in english, french and dutch – feel free to translate it (using WordPress online interface or the provided files in the languages folder).

The shared object are based on WordPress custom post type and taxonomy (custom categories) which means that :

you can use other plugins to extends the Sharing Club possibilities, see the FAQ below
you can use easily integrate them, straight in your theme or using the provided templates files (see comments inside the PHP files)
you can search for objects from anywhere in your website, like you would do for any other post

If you like this plugin, I would really appreciate if you can leave it a positive review (you need to create a WordPress account if you don’t have one yet).

Installation

Automatic installation

The easiest way is to let WordPress do the job for you :

Log in to your WordPress dashboard
In the dashboard left menu click on Plugins > Add New
Search for Sharing Club
Once you found it, simply click on Install now

Manual installation

Unzip all files to the /wp-content/plugins/sharing-club directory
Log into WordPress admin and activate the Sharing Club plugin through the Plugins menu
Go to Sharing Club > Add object in the left-hand menu to add the item you want to lend
Manage your lendings through Sharing Club > Lendings

The items list will then be available on this “archive page” : http://yourblog.yourdomain*/shared_item/*

You’ll get an e-mail notification when an item is requested.

You can also customize how the items will be listed and displayed using your own templates :

templates/archive-shared_item.php display the items list based on a custom walker : templates/Walker_Category_Posts.php
templates/single-shared_item.php display the booking form and all its options.

Make sure your theme supports the “featured images” so you can display the shared item picture in your item list.

NB: dates are currently in the dd/mm/yyyy format

Screenshots

The admin
The front-end with (basic description, rating and reviews)

FAQ

Can I add more fields to the shared items or the lendings ?

Yes, if the “notes” field is not enough, you can add other custom field using Advanced Custom Fields.
If you’re tech savvy and want to add extra functionalities to the lendings, you have to know that they are actually “custom comments”, mapped liked this :

User user_id Object comment_post_ID Lending date comment_date Return date comment_date_gmt Reviews comment_content Admin notes comment_agent Rating comment_karma

So, feel free to use the other fields from the wp_comments table to store extra lending data.

Can my members share their own objects ?

Yes, you can allow your users to join the club and add their objects. If they are not administrators, use Ultimate Member to give them a restricted access to your admin. You can display the user name next to the item title uncommenting <?php the_author(); ?> in templates/single-shared_item.php or in the shared item list modifying the templates/Walker_Category_Posts.php accordingly.

Is this plugin compatible with BuddyPress ?

Yes, actually it was developped for a BuddyPress community in the first place.

Can I import several objects at once ?

Yes, you can create a spreadsheet with all your objects, save it in CSV format and use a plugin like Really Simple CSV Importer to import it in your admin.

I find this plugin helpful, how can I help you back ?

If you like this plugin, I would really appreciate if you can leave it a positive review (you need to create a WordPress account if you don”t have one yet).
If you find any bug or if you have some idea to improve this plugin, you can use the support forum.

Changelog

1.3.1

Fixed some missing translations. Thank you joeytroy 🙂

1.3

Fixed the user name display bug on the shared_item page
Added an option to make your shared object visible to anybody (without login)
Added an option to hide the rating and comment form

1.2

Fixed the capabilities bug for admin.
Added dutch translation (thanks again Jeroen).

1.1

For each object, you can use the “excerpt” field to write a short note for admin purpose (ie : library reference, useful comment) to help you manage your objects
For each lending, you can now write an “admin note” (ie : is the item returned damaged ? broken ? dirty ?)
(thanks to Jeroen for his suggestions !)
Improved compatibility with other plugins such as ACF, Ultimate Member, Really simple CSV importer…

1.0

Public release – the plugin icon is based on Hand by Nick Abrams from the Noun Project