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Your First Listing

After you activate your license, the Dashboard shows a Welcome checklist with a progress bar. It walks you through the same steps as this page, and ticks them off as you go. This page gives you the path in one place, with links to the full guides.

The goal: one inventory type, one listing, shown on a page of your site.

The short path

  1. Create an inventory type
  2. Add categories
  3. Set up your templates
  4. Add a listing
  5. Put your inventory on a page

1. Create an inventory type

An inventory type tells DMS what you sell: Cars, Boats, RVs, Equipment. Each type gets its own menu, listings, categories and templates.

  1. Go to Dealer.ms > Types and add a new type.
  2. Give it a name, such as Vehicles.

Full guide: Inventory Types.

2. Add categories

Categories are the details shoppers filter by, such as Make, Model, Year, Body Style and Condition. Each category holds a list of terms (Make: Ford, Toyota, Honda).

Create a few now. You can always add more later.

Full guide: Categories.

3. Set up your templates

Three templates control how your inventory looks:

Template What it is
SRI (Search Result Item) The card for one listing in the results.
SRP (Search Results Page) The page that lists all your inventory, with filters.
VDP (Vehicle Details Page) The full page for a single listing.

You can build each one in Elementor, or import a ready-made one. Importing is the quickest way to start. You can restyle it afterwards.

Full guide: Templates & Pages.

4. Add a listing

  1. Open your type's menu in the sidebar and click Add New.
  2. Fill in the title, price, categories and details.
  3. Add photos.
  4. Click Publish.

For a vehicle you can skip the typing: enter the VIN and DMS fills in the specs for you. See VIN Decoding. If you have many listings, load them from a file with an import instead.

Full guide: Managing Listings.

5. Put your inventory on a page

  1. Create or open a normal WordPress page and edit it with Elementor.
  2. Add your SRP template to the page.
  3. Publish and view the page.

Your listing now shows up in the results, and clicking it opens your VDP.

What to do next