FAQ

Does the add-on work with CS-Cart (not Multi-Vendor)? No. It is built for vendors and refuses to install on other editions.

Do I need a cron job for the start and end dates? No. The state is calculated from the dates on each request, in the store’s time zone. The start day begins at 00:00, and the end day lasts until 23:59:59.

A vendor’s vacation ended, but the product list still hides their products. The add-on refreshes cached product blocks when a vacation starts or ends, on the first storefront request after the date is crossed. If you use an external full-page cache (Varnish, Cloudflare APO and similar), purge it or lower its TTL. You can also clear the cache in Administration → Storage → Clear cache.

The vendor’s products are hidden, but their product pages still open. Is that a bug? No. In Hide mode products are removed from lists (categories, search, blocks, the vendor store), but direct links keep working. This protects your SEO, and customers following an old link see the vacation banner instead of a 404 page. Add-to-cart is disabled on those pages.

Can customers still buy from a vendor on vacation? Only if Products of vendors on vacation is set to Keep selling. In the other modes, the button is replaced and the server rejects add-to-cart requests, even ones sent from old pages or bookmarks.

What about products that were already in carts? That depends on Products already in the cart: nothing, a warning, or blocked checkout until the products are removed. Orders created by administrators are never blocked.

Can a vendor turn vacation off when the administrator wants it on? Not if the administrator ticks Lock for the vendor. The vendor then sees the settings read-only.

Can I stop vendors from using vacation mode at all? Turn off Allow vendors to manage their vacation mode. Vendors lose access to the page, and administrators can still manage vacations for them.

Is the vacation message translatable? Yes. The first message saved is copied to all languages. Switch the content language at the top of the vacation page to translate it.

I use the Vendor privileges add-on and a vendor’s staff cannot open Vacation mode. Grant Vacation mode: Can view / Can edit to their vendor user group. Root vendor administrators without a user group always have access.

How does it work with Common products for vendors (master products)? Common product pages show the best offer. If a customer adds a common product and the chosen offer belongs to a vendor on vacation, the add-to-cart request for that offer is rejected (in the modes that disable purchasing). In Hide mode the vendor’s offers are excluded from offer lists. Banners are shown on vendor offer pages, not on the common product.

My theme does not show the banner on product pages. The banner uses the products:main_info_title hook from the standard product templates. If your theme replaces the product template without that hook, ask your theme developer to add {hook name="products:main_info_title"}{/hook}, or render addons/kv_vendor_holiday_mode/components/banner.tpl yourself (see Developer notes).

Another add-on also replaces the Add to cart button (for example Catalog mode). Which one wins? CS-Cart uses the last non-empty override by add-on priority. This add-on (priority 2100) only outputs something for products of vendors on vacation, so other add-ons work as usual for all other products.

What happens on uninstall? Tables, settings, privileges, language variables, the email template and the templates are removed. Products are never modified, so nothing has to be restored.

Products of vendors on vacation are shown and buyable again, and the admin panel shows a license notice. Open Add-ons → Manage add-ons → Vendor Vacation Mode. The License card at the top of the add-on page says what is wrong: no key, a key for another add-on, a revoked license, or a domain that the license does not cover. Enter or change the key on the License tab and click Check now. See License.

Does the add-on work on my staging copy? Yes. Subdomains of your licensed domain (for example staging.example.com) and local development hosts (localhost, private IP addresses, *.local, *.test) are covered by the same license.

What happens if your license server is down? Nothing visible: the add-on keeps the last verified result and keeps working for 14 days while it retries. The admin panel shows a notice from the first failed check.

Does the license check slow down my storefront? No. The check runs in the admin panel or from cron, once a day. The storefront only reads the stored result.

Still stuck?

Work through the troubleshooting guide, then contact support with your CS-Cart version, edition, PHP version and the add-on version (1.1.1).