Adding your PeerBoard discussion board to your store on Shopify is very simple. This guide covers the installation and set-up steps.
App installation
Follow the steps below to install the Shopify app:
- Open our page in the Shopify app store - https://apps.shopify.com/peerboard
- Click the “Add app” button
- Log in to your Shopify store
- Get acquainted with the terms and conditions
- Click the “Install app” button.
And you're done! You should be redirected to a management interface of the app in the Shopify admin panel. We’ll explore what you can do here a little bit later.
Connecting an existing board
If you host your discussion board on a PeerBoard subdomain and want to connect it to your Shopify store, follow the guidance above to install the plugin and then take the following steps:
- From your existing board, go to Settings > Hosting.
- Copy API Auth Token.
- Paste the content into the Community Token field in the PeerBoard settings area on Shopify.
The auth token is a unique identifier that will load your boards on Shopify.
💡 Note: Following the steps above will automatically change your board's domain to your Shopify store domain, which you can configure from your community settings.
💡 Note: If you use different emails for your PeerBoard account and your Shopify admin account, you will have access to two admin accounts. We automatically create a Shopify admin account for your board on connecting.
Shopify app settings
There are several options for configuring the Shopify through the app settings on Shopify that complement the internal settings accessible within your PeerBoard account.
Here's a quick overview:
- Board path - The URL for your community board on your site. You can change it to anything, but the link always includes /a/p/ and looks like https:/yourstore.com/a/p/community
- Community token - Used to identify and securely connect to your board.
- Member login options - You can choose between PeerBoard and Shopify native store logins.
You can find how PeerBoard login looks like in the picture below:
The PeerBoard login supports such social logins as Google, Facebook or LinkedIn so it’s easier for your members to sign in. However, they will not end up in your Shopify database by default.
The second option is a native Shopify store login:
This login type will get your community members into the Shopify system and automatically import their session into PeerBoard.
To enable that, make sure that you chose “Accounts are optional” or “Accounts are required” in your Shopify checkout settings.
- Navigation - here you can find the instruction of how to add your community to the store navigation menu.
- Useful links - we added a few important links so you always could find help if it’s needed.
Public and private communities
By default, your board is publicly visible to anybody on the internet.
If you're not using any third-party apps to gate your community's content, you can set it to private by going to Settings > General and changing the access settings.
Finally, you can gate some parts of your community via our User Groups feature.
Last thoughts
Please ask any questions about this integration in our Shopify Questions space. If you experience any bugs, post them in Bug reports.