Manage your Market Page

"Market Pages" were created for the Lasqueti Market Association, primarily as an easy way for farms, bakers, and craftspeople to maintain the listings in the Lasqueti Farmer's Market.
A Market Page allows you to maintain a list of produce or products you offer for sale.  It is an easy and flexible way to keep your page up-to-date with what you currently have available.  If you want to be part of the Farmer's Market and maintain your own Marktet Page, please contact the webmaster.

How-to Maintain your Market Page

Note: you must be logged in to maintain your pages - the website "knows" that you "own" these pages, and so provides all of the editing options that are not visible to other users on the site.

A Market Page has 3 distinct components:

  1. The Market Page itself - this contains basic information about the farm or producer.   It has a web address (URL), which will be something like lasqueti.ca/jewel box farm  or lasqueti.ca/wild isle foods
    Once this page has been set-up, you should not need to change it often.  If you do need to change some of the information on this page, you'll see an "Edit" tab along the top of the page (this is only visible to the "owner" of the page).  When you edit your page, you can change the photo and "biography" text that appears in the right sidebar, you can change the "Teaser Image" that shows when a link to your page appears in a list, and you can change the content of the page Body itself. 
    For more help on using the web editor to format your page, please see How-to: Format your Posts.
  2.  A List of Products - your product list is shown at the bottom of your page, and displays an alphabetical listing of all of your "available products".  This list of products also shows up in the Farmer's Market.  You can manage your list of products using the "Edit Product List" tab available on your Market Page.  Here you can set the availability of your products (make sure you press "Update"  to save your changes!), and edit or delete products from the list.
  3. A Set of Product pages - each product in your list actually has its own page. In fact, your product list is actually just a summary of all your product pages.  The product page can contain extra details that don't show up in the list.    You can Edit an existing product either by visiting its page and selecting the Edit tab, or by visiting your "Edit Product List" tab and selecting the Edit link beside the product.  See below for adding a new product.

These 3 components are linked together automatically by the website, so that everything shows up where it should - your farm is listed in the Lasqueti Business Directory under Food lasqueti.ca/marketplace/business/directory, your products appear on the Browse Products page lasqueti.ca/marketplace/market/browse,  and you are listed in the Farmer's Market lasqueti.ca/marketplace - you don't need to worry about how to get stuff in the right place, it is all taken care of. 

Adding New Products

You can add a new product by visiting your Market Page and selecting the "Add Product" tab, or by selecting "Post to Website... Product" from your personal menu (in the left sidebar). 

Every product must have a Title - this is required.  The title is what shows up in the product lists, so should describe the basic product.  E.g., "Cucumbers", or "Rye Bread", or "Dreamcatchers".    The only other two fields that you must always fill out are the Lasqueti Market category and the "This is related to..." page selection:

Important: In order to get all the "automated linking" stuff to happen, you need to ensure that you select your farm in TWO places on the Add Product form:

  1. At the top of the form you'll see a drop-down selector labelled "Lasqueti Market" - you must select your farm here so that your products show up in the Farmer's Market.
  2. Near the bottom of the form is a drop-down box labelled "This is related to..." - also select your farm here - this attaches the product to your Market Page.

Ideally, this would be automated or at least require only one select, but I couldn't find an easy way to make it all work - I may be able to streamline this part of the interface in future. 

All the other fields are optional - use whichever ones you feel are suitable for your purposes:

  • Photo - choose Browse to select an image from your PC, then Upload to upload it to your page - see How-to: Upload Photos Step 7 for detailed instructions.  The site will automatically re-size photos, but if it is a very large file you may need to scale it as there is a maximum upload size.  A tiny copy of the photo will show up in the product lists, and the full-sized image will appear on the product page.
  • Summary - the text you enter here appears beside the product title in lists, so keep it short!  This is intended to give the variety, or other pertinent details.  E.g., "Long English", or "Organic", or "variety of sizes"
  • Full Description - add all the details you want!  This does not show up in the lists, but does show on the product page if someone clicks on the product link to find out more.  Go nuts.
  • Price - totally optional.  Make sure you give the units, e.g., $1.50 per lb, or $5.00 each, or $3 per bunch.  The price only shows up on your Market Page - never in the Farmer's Market - this is to avoid a "race to the bottom".  You can change the price any time, just like anything else, by simply editing the product page.
  • Availability - only "Available" products appear in the lists, so select "Not Available" if you want the remove a product from your product list.  This allows you to maintain a stock of products, but only show a sub-set of them at any given time, obviously the ones you currently have available.  You can most easily manage product availablity on the "Edit Product List" tab on your Market Page - here your "Available" products are listed first, followed by the "Not Available" ones.  You can set each products availability right on this page without having to go in and edit each product separately - but don't forget to press the Update button to save your changes!

That's it.   There is a fair bit to learn here, but once you've done it a couple times, it should be an easy process.  If it's not, or if you need some extra help, please feel free to contact the webmaster.