Setup wizard

The setup wizard runs once, right after you activate Ambikly. It has six steps and takes about two minutes. It sets your currency and units, turns on an offline payment method, creates a shipping rate, switches tax on or off, and publishes the five storefront pages.

Nothing in the wizard is permanent. Every value it writes is editable afterwards, and the last section of this page maps each step to the screen where you change it later.

How the wizard opens

Activation sets a 60-second transient. On your next admin page load, SetupWizard::maybeRedirect() consumes it and sends you to wp-admin/admin.php?page=ambikly-setup.

The redirect is skipped in three cases:

• You bulk-activated plugins (activate-multi is present in the URL).
• The request is an AJAX request.
• Your user cannot manage_options. The wizard is Administrator-only, and so is every one of its REST routes.

If the redirect does not fire, an admin notice appears on every admin screen: "Ambikly: Finish the setup wizard to start selling", with a Skip link on the right. Clicking the wizard link takes you to the same URL. Clicking Skip sets ambikly_setup_complete to 1 and the notice never returns — it does not configure anything, it just stops asking.

The wizard takes over the whole screen: the WordPress admin menu, admin bar and footer are hidden while you are on it. A Not now link in the footer drops you back at the WordPress dashboard without marking setup complete, so the notice will still be waiting.

Step 1 — Store

Sets the basics that every price and weight in the store depends on.

Field	Control	Default	Notes
Country	Dropdown	US	18 countries only: US, CA, GB, AU, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, IN, BR, NP, PK, BD, JP, SG, AE, ZA
Currency	Dropdown	USD	9 currencies: USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, CAD, JPY, INR, NPR, BRL
Store name	Text	Your site title	Used in emails and on invoices
Weight unit	Dropdown	kg	kg, g, lbs, oz
Dimension unit	Dropdown	cm	cm, m, in

Writes to: ambikly_settings_general, merging the keys store_country, currency, store_name, weight_unit and dimension_unit into whatever is already there.

The country and currency lists here are short

The wizard ships a compact 18-country, 9-currency list. If yours is not on it, pick the closest, finish the wizard, then set the real value under Ambikly → Settings → Store Settings, which carries a longer list — 36 countries and 11 currencies. The Store Settings tab saves to a different option group (ambikly_settings_store), and Ambikly reads that one first — so the Settings value always wins.

Careful: The weight and dimension units you pick here are stored and used for shipping calculations, but the product editor's own labels are hard-coded to lbs and inches and ignore this setting. If you choose kg and cm, the editor will still say "Weight (lbs)". Enter your numbers in the units you selected here and treat the editor labels as cosmetic. See Products.

Step 2 — Payments

Turns on the offline payment methods. Four checkboxes, all unchecked unless the gateway is already enabled.

Field	Gateway id	What it means
Cash on Delivery	cod	Customers pay in cash when their order arrives
Direct bank transfer	bank_transfer	You send wiring instructions on the order receipt
Check payments	cheque	Buyers mail you a check
Manual / staff orders	manual	You mark orders paid yourself, offline or by phone

Writes to: ambikly_settings_payments. For each of the four ids it sets enabled to 1 or 0, creating an empty title / description pair for any gateway that does not have an entry yet. It never touches Stripe, PayPal or Net Terms.

Stripe and PayPal are not offered here — they need API keys, so the wizard tells you they are configured later from Ambikly → Settings → Payment Settings. Net Terms is not offered either; it is the B2B gateway and is configured per company.

Activation has already enabled Cash on Delivery by default, so a store that skips this step still has one working payment method.

Tip: Enable Manual / staff orders even if you do not plan to use it. It is the gateway that makes a full end-to-end test order possible without moving real money, and it is only ever offered to logged-in users who can manage the store — never to a public customer. See Your first order.

Step 3 — Shipping

Creates a starter shipping zone and two methods inside it.

Field	Control	Default	Notes
I sell physical products	Checkbox	Checked	Unchecking it skips the whole step
Flat rate	Number, 2 decimals	10	The cost of the flat-rate method
Free shipping over	Number, 2 decimals	100	Leave blank or 0 to skip creating the free-shipping method

Writes to: the ambikly_shipping_zones and ambikly_shipping_methods tables — not an option.

What actually happens:

• If no zone exists, one named Rest of World is created, matching country * and state *, at position 100.
• If that zone has no methods at all, a flat_rate method titled "Flat rate" is inserted at your cost, taxable, with per_item set to 0. If "Free shipping over" is non-empty, a free_shipping method titled "Free shipping (over N)" is inserted too, with min_amount set to your value and tax status none.
• If the zone already has methods, nothing is inserted. The wizard tells you this on screen: "You already have shipping methods configured — this step will only add the defaults if you don't."

Unchecking I sell physical products returns { "skipped": true } and writes nothing. That is the right choice for a digital-only store.

Because activation already seeded the same Rest of World zone with a $10 flat rate and free shipping over $100, a fresh install usually hits the "already has methods" branch — your numbers here are ignored in that case. Set the real rates under Ambikly → Settings → Shipping.

Careful: The per_item cost written here is always 0 and there is no admin field for it anywhere. Only Title, Cost and Enabled are editable on a shipping method. See Shipping.

Step 4 — Tax

Switches tax calculation on or off and optionally creates one catch-all rate.

Field	Control	Default	Notes
Calculate taxes on orders	Checkbox	Off	Unchecked means no tax is calculated anywhere
Standard rate (%)	Number, 3 decimals	0	Only written if taxes are enabled and the value is above 0
Calculate based on	Dropdown	shipping	"Shipping address (physical goods)" or "Billing address"

Writes to: ambikly_settings_tax — the keys enable_taxes (1 or 0) and calc_based_on (validated against shipping and billing; anything else falls back to shipping).

If taxes are enabled and the standard rate is greater than 0, the wizard also writes a row into ambikly_tax_rates:

Column	Value
name	Standard
rate	Your percentage
country, state, postcode, city	* — matches everywhere
priority	1
compound	0
shipping	1 — shipping is taxed
tax_class	standard

Re-running the step updates that same row rather than creating a second one: it looks for an existing standard rate with country * first.

Only two calculation bases work

The wizard offers shipping and billing, and those are the only two the tax engine implements. A "Store Address" option appears on the Settings screen but has no backend branch behind it — choosing it does not change how tax is calculated. See Tax.

Step 5 — Pages

Creates the five storefront pages. One checkbox per page, all checked by default.

Field	Page title	Shortcode
Shop	Shop	[ambikly_shop]
Cart	Cart	[ambikly_cart]
Checkout	Checkout	[ambikly_checkout]
My Account	My Account	[ambikly_account]
Order Received	Order Received	[ambikly_thank_you]

Under each checkbox the wizard tells you what it will do: "Already created — will be reused" or "Will be created now".

Writes to: the ambikly_settings_pages option, mapping each key (shop, cart, checkout, account, thank_you) to the slug of the page. It also sets ambikly_setup_complete to 1 — this is the step that marks setup finished, so if you leave before it, the wizard notice comes back.

The creation logic is deliberately cautious, because /shop, /cart, /checkout and /account are slugs that other eCommerce plugins claim too:

1. If this step already recorded a page for this key, and that page still exists, is not trashed, and still contains the matching shortcode, it is left alone.
2. Otherwise, if a page exists at the bare slug and contains the matching shortcode, that page is adopted.
3. Otherwise a new page is published, with no explicit slug — WordPress assigns a free one, typically shop-2.

A page that merely sits at /shop is never adopted. Ambikly will not point your storefront at someone else's content. Store pages covers what to do when you end up with a shop-2.

Step 6 — Done

No fields. Rendering this step sets ambikly_setup_complete to 1 and offers two buttons: Go to dashboard and Add a product.

What the wizard does not do

The wizard is deliberately short. It does not:

• Configure Stripe or PayPal — see Stripe and PayPal.
• Set your store address, email, phone, logo or policy pages.
• Create categories or products.
• Set up emails beyond the defaults activation seeded.
• Configure invoices, roles or webhooks.

The wizard cannot be relaunched from the admin

There is no link, button or menu item anywhere in the Ambikly admin that reopens the setup wizard. The wizard page registers itself as an orphan submenu with an empty parent slug, so it never appears in the sidebar, and the React admin does not link to it either. Once ambikly_setup_complete is set, the admin notice that used to link to it is gone too.

Change the settings directly instead

Everything the wizard writes has a permanent home in the admin. Go there rather than trying to re-run onboarding — the Settings screens offer a longer country list, all seven gateways, per-zone shipping and per-region tax rates, none of which the wizard had.

Wizard step	Where to change it afterwards
Store — country, currency, store name	Ambikly → Settings → Store Settings
Store — weight and dimension units	Ambikly → Settings → Store Settings
Payments — the four offline methods	Ambikly → Settings → Payment Settings · Offline payment methods
Shipping — zone, flat rate, free shipping	Ambikly → Settings → Shipping · Shipping
Tax — on/off, basis, standard rate	Ambikly → Settings → Tax & Duties · Tax
Pages — which page is which	No admin screen. See Store pages

The one thing with no Settings equivalent is the page mapping. ambikly_settings_pages is written only by activation and by the wizard's Pages step; nothing in the admin reads or edits it. Store pages explains how to change it.

Reaching the wizard screen directly

The screen itself still exists. An Administrator can open it at:

/wp-admin/admin.php?page=ambikly-setup

Every step is idempotent, so re-walking it is safe — but be aware of what re-running actually does:

• Store overwrites five keys in ambikly_settings_general. Because the Settings screen saves to ambikly_settings_store and that group is read first, your real currency and country are unaffected.
• Payments flips enabled on the four offline gateways to match the checkboxes as shown. Anything you unchecked gets disabled.
• Shipping adds nothing if the first zone already has methods.
• Tax overwrites enable_taxes and calc_based_on, and updates the catch-all standard rate if you enter one.
• Pages is the risky one. It re-checks each page and republishes any it cannot match, which is how duplicate shop-2 and shop-3 pages appear. Uncheck every page you already have before submitting that step.

Careful: This URL is not a supported feature — it is simply a screen that was never removed. On a live store, change settings from the Settings screens instead.

Next

The wizard has published your storefront. Store pages explains what each of those five pages does, how Ambikly finds them, and how to move or rename one.