How To Use Our Services Showcase Pro Plugin for WordPress – Smartcat

Thanks for choosing the Our Services Showcase Pro plugin by Smartcat.

This WordPress plugin lets you show off your business’ key services to customers quickly and easily, in a beautifully formatted template.

In once glance and a few clicks, online visitors learn your qualifications and certifications, find out who to contact and how, view the price of your services, and more. Not to mention – a stunning image showcase that shows your customers what you can do.

This article walks you through the plugin settings, and includes everthing you need to know to get the most from this plugin. If you still have questions after reading, feel free to get in touch by leaving a support ticket for our Support team.

1. Getting Started

Once you’ve purchased Our Services Showcase Pro, you’ll find yourself on the Smartcat purchase summary page. Everything you need is here – a link to download your purchase, plus the license key you need to activate it.

If you’ve navigated away from this page, don’t worry – an email receipt with the same information will also arrive in your inbox. To start your download, click the link labelled “our-services-showcase-pro1”. You can install the plugin two ways:

Add the file to your root folder. Unzip the download file and move the unzipped folder in your WordPress directory. Navigate to the root folder of your WordPress install and open the folder labelled “wp-content”. From there, open the folder “plugins,” and drag or copy the “our-services-showcase-pro1” folder into it. Reload your WordPress Dashboard and you will now see a menu option titled “Services”.
Install the plugin directly to your WordPress dashboard. Leave the downloaded file in its zip format (.zip). From the WordPress Dashboard, select “Plugins” from the sidebar menu. At the top of the next page, click “Add New” then “Upload Plugin.” Upload “smartcat_our_team.zip” and click “Install Now.” Reload your WordPress Dashboard and you will now see a menu option titled “Team”.

Activating Your Plugin

Copy and paste the License Key from the Smartcat purchase summary page or the purchase receipt you received by email into the license field and click “Activate”. The key is about 30 characters long, a mix of numbers and letters. (Note – the license key is to be confused with Receipt ID, another long string of nunbers and letters you’ll see on your receipt. The license key is near the bottom of the email, below the link “Generate & Download Invoice”.)

If you’re already using the free version…

Please note, if you already have the free version of Our Services Showcase installed on your site, available from WordPress.org, deactivate it before you upload the Pro version of the plugin. When you activate the Pro version, all of your settings from the free version will carry over.

2. Adding A Service

In your WordPress dashboard side bar, select “Service” > “Add New.”

Enter the title of the service to the Title field. The main content box can be used to provide a brief description of the service, describe typical results and explain how it’s delivered to the customer .
Additional information, including the price of the service and social media account links may be added using the section below the main content area.
A small list of standout skills or proficiencies may also be listed, along with a 1 – 10 rating. For instance, if the service you’re adding is Private Yoga Instuction, your list of ranked skills might include “Yin Yoga” “Ashtanga Yoga” and “Guided Meditation.”
If you don’t want these fields to display, simply leave them blank.
You can also set a featured image. For best results, use an image with an aspect ration of 1:1, such as 300 x 300 pixels.

Managing Service

On the main “Services” page, you find a list of all active services.

Edit their details or change their featured image by clicking on the title, or selecting “Edit”.
Change their position in the showcase from your WordPress Dashboard under “Services” > “Re-order Services.”
Click and drag the member to move them, and release the mouse button once that member is in the ideal position.
Once the order is set, select “Save Order.”

Deleting & Retrieving Services

To delete a service from the showcase, hover over their name then select the red “Trash” link.
If you have made a mistake, you can still retrieve the deleted service.
From the Trash, find any deleted members and select either “Restore” or “Delete Permanently”.

3. All Settings

From your WordPress Dashboard sidebar, select “Team” > “Settings”

Service Settings

Template: Select the template you want to use. You can view them all in the Our Services Showcase demo.
Grid Columns: Set the number of columns per row of services.
Carousel Columns: Set the number of columns visible in the carousel slider at once.
Title Font Size: Set the font size in pixels, eg. 20 px.
Main Color: Set a hex code value using our easy color-picker.
Link Color: Set a hex code value for links using our easy color-picker.
Word Count: Set the number of words visible from the page your Service Showcase appears on, before a user clicks on the service.
Link Text: The words that will appear on your link button, such as “Find Out More” or “Get A Quote”
Number of Services to display: Specify a limit to the number of displayed members, or -1 to show all members.

Single Service View Settings

Template: Set the way a service is displayed when selected from the showcase. “Card (pop-up)” displays an index card style display of a single member. “Side Panel” slides a frame out from the right side of the screen. A custom template may also be selected from the drop-down menu. The custom template should be a file located in “/inc/template/team_members_template.php”.Card Popup/Panel Margin From Top: Defaults to zero. To create more space between the top of the screen and the upper edge of the pop-up panel, add a two digit number here.
Display Social Icons: Toggles whether social icons are displayed when viewing an individual service.
Display Attributes: Toggles whether attributes are displayed when viewing an individual team member.
Skills Title: Describe attributes as appropriate, eg. Certificatins, Qualifications, Relevant Experience.
Social Links: Select whether these should open in a new page, or the same page.
Social Icons: Select whether you would like them to appear as flat or round.
Image Style: Specifies whether the featured image should have a round or quare border, when viewing an individual service.

4. Placing Our Services Showcase Pro On A Page

Now that you have your services are loaded into the plugin, you may be ready to add it to a page on your site. To include a showcase display on any page of your site, place the shortcode below wherever you want it to appear within the page.

5.Sorting Services In To Groups

The “Groups” function in Our Services Showcase Pro allows you to post different categories of services on to different pages of the site. You can use it to sort services by department, location, or any other criteria.

Create a new Group by going to “Services” > “Groups” in your WordPress dashboard.
The group will have a “slug” which you’ll add to the short-code when you want to the Showcase to display only services of a specific group.
To display a group, add the slug to the shortcode as follows:

6. Changing The Template Using Shortcodes

The default template is “Template 1 – Icons.” You can change this layout by including a different extension to the shortcode when you add it to a page. View the other layout options in the Our Services Showcase Demo. To change the default template, select “Settings” under the “Team” menu, and select the desired template from the drop-down list.

You can us different short code layouts on different pages, and – depending on your theme – sometimes twice on a single page.

The options that can be placed within the quotes are as follows: enhanced_grid, icons, images, accordion, quad, columns and carousel :

Carousel

Enhanced Grid

Icon Grid

Image Grid

Accordion

Image Grid #2

Icon Grid #2

7. Single Service View Options

There are three formats for the single member view for each team member for the Pro version of this plugin.

The default is Post Page. This will load the single service page based on your theme’s single.php file.
Card Pop-up (shortcode extension: single_template=”vcard”) This will load a lightbox and the service details in a sliding box.
Side Panel (shortcode extension: single_template=”panel”) When you click on a service a panel slides in from the right side of the screen that includes all their details in a very appealing design.