Sharing Club

Description

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).

Screenshots

Installation

Automatic installation

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

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

Manual installation

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

The items list will then be available on this “archive page” : https://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

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.

Reviews

Giving Back

indusu February 10, 2022

Good one. Free and useful for social service organizations. A little more ‘dummies guide’ would have helped:) Thanks for this!

Fits (almost all) our needs really well!

ltrost February 6, 2020

This plugin works really well! There are a few things that need tweaking such as adding a user role for a club librarian to maintain our lending library of books, videos and equipment, and a label that needs to be localized in the “Lendings” page on the backend, but other than that I think this will work perfectly. Thanks for the plugin!

Great Plugin

Mauro Mello May 15, 2019

This is the only plugin that really can help you to implement a sharing system. Great for small libraries and any other kind of item you would like to share. Hope that it will keep being updated! Congrats!

very good

thesimonx April 19, 2018

It would be great if it would be possible to have several units of one item.

Contributors & Developers

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