Your hotel, booked directly.

Everything a hotel website needs

Built with hotel managers and designed like the booking platforms your guests already know, so that they book with you directly.

New in version 9

Panda Resort 9 is a complete rewrite on Pandao CMS 8 and PHP 8.2 to 8.5, with the booking engine of Panda Multi Resorts 9. It keeps what you liked, replaces what had aged, and adds what customers asked for over the years. Your data comes with you: see Upgrading from version 8.

Live demo

The online demo runs this very version with the demo content of the package, plus sample bookings and reviews.

Requirements

Panda Resort runs on most shared hosts, VPS and managed servers. Once it is installed, the Diagnostic screen of the administration checks every point below on your own server.

Package contents

The main file downloaded from CodeCanyon holds this documentation and the website, ready to upload. Nothing else is needed: the PHP libraries are already installed, so you do not need Composer.

panda-resort-9.2.0/
├── documentation/            this documentation: open index.html
└── upload/                   the website: upload the contents of this folder
    ├── admin/                the administration (www.your-site.com/admin)
    ├── bin/                  command line: automatic tasks and updates
    ├── config/               the configuration, written by the installation wizard
    ├── extensions/
    │   └── multiresorts/     Panda Resort, on the engine of Panda Multi Resorts
    ├── public/               public files: media, brand images, theme assets
    ├── setup/                the installation wizard
    ├── templates/default/    the theme of the website
    ├── vendor/               PHP libraries
    └── common/, core/, …     Pandao CMS

Installation

Allow about ten minutes. The wizard installs Pandao CMS, and Panda Resort installs itself at your first login.

1. Create a database

   In your hosting panel (MySQL Databases in cPanel, Databases in Plesk), create an empty database with the utf8mb4 character set, and a user who has every privilege on it. Keep its name, its user, its password and its host (often localhost) at hand.

2. Upload the files

   Upload the contents of the upload/ folder to the web root of your domain (often public_html/ or httpdocs/), or to a sub-folder such as public_html/booking/. The quickest way is to upload the zip with the file manager of your host, extract it there, then move the contents of upload/ into place. With an FTP client, make sure the hidden .htaccess files are sent too.

3. Run the installation wizard

   Open the address of your site: the wizard starts by itself. Give the title of the site, its public address (https://www.your-site.com, without a slash at the end), the e-mail address that receives the notifications, the login and password of the administrator, then the details of the database. Click Install.

   www.your-site.com/admin/module=setup

   

   The wizard writes config/config.php and public/robots.txt: PHP must be allowed to write in config/ and public/ while it runs, which is the case on most hosts.

4. Log in

   Click Log in and sign in with the administrator account. At this first login, Panda Resort, shipped with the site, is enabled in a few seconds: its tables are created and the demo content is installed. A message confirms it on the dashboard, and the Panda Resort menu appears.

   www.your-site.com/admin/module=dashboard

   

5. Set up the automatic tasks

   Add the cron job given by the Diagnostic screen, as explained in the next section. Your site is then ready to be made your own.

Automatic tasks

Some work happens in the background: a booking not paid in time is cancelled and its rooms put back on sale, guests are reminded to pay, platform calendars are read, exchange rates are updated and guests are invited to review their stay.

Add a cron job

For tasks run on time, your server runs bin/pandao cron every minute. Open Diagnostic › Advanced configuration: it shows the exact line for your server, with the path of its PHP. Paste it into the cron jobs of your hosting panel (Cron Jobs in cPanel, Scheduled Tasks in Plesk), or send it to your host. It looks like this:

* * * * * /usr/bin/php /home/your-account/public_html/bin/pandao cron >/dev/null 2>&1

Without a cron job, the site runs its tasks itself after a visit, at most every ten minutes, on hosts that use PHP-FPM (most of them). This is enough to try the product, but a quiet site then runs its tasks late: add the cron job before you open the bookings.

www.your-site.com/admin/module=diagnostic

Demo content

A new site does not open on an empty CMS but on a complete hotel website, ready to show and easy to make your own.

The photos are under the CC0 licence or belong to Pandao, so you may keep them on your site. They are copied at the installation, then written at their display sizes by the automatic tasks within a few minutes. No booking and no review are installed.

Make the demo hotel yours in Panda Resort › My property: its name, texts, photos, address and rooms. The demo pages, articles, slides and widgets are edited or unpublished like any content. Importing a version 8 site replaces the demo content by yours.

Launch checklist

The settings to review before you open the bookings, in the order that saves time.

1. General settings

   Settings › General: title of the site, public site URL, time zone (that of your hotel: “today”, arrivals and payment deadlines depend on it), date and time formats. A new site opens in English and French, with the language selector: turn off Enable foreign languages to keep one language. Turn on Enable currencies to let visitors choose theirs.

2. Contact details and e-mails

   Settings › Contact: name, address, phones and e-mail of your company, shown in the footer, the pages and the e-mails. Settings › Email settings: the sender, and the SMTP server of your mailbox for a reliable delivery.

3. Your brand

   Settings › Appearance: logo, footer logo, e-mail banner, favicon and brand colours. See Branding & theme.

4. The main currency

   Configuration › Currencies: the currency of your prices, in which guests pay.

5. The settings of Panda Resort

   Extensions › Panda Resort › Settings: payment methods and deposit, booking options, reviews and maps. See Payment settings.

6. Your property

   Its texts, photos and contact details, its rooms, rates, offers, taxes and services: the next chapters describe each screen.

7. Your legal pages

   The Booking conditions, Privacy policy and Legal notice pages hold model texts: complete the passages between brackets.

8. The anti-robot check

   Create reCAPTCHA v3 keys on google.com/recaptcha and paste them in Settings › General (Captcha: public key and secret key).

9. A test booking

   Book a stay on your site as a guest, with the test keys of Stripe or the sandbox of PayPal, and check the e-mails. Then switch to your live keys.

10. The cron job

    If it is not done yet: see Automatic tasks.

Upgrading from version 8

Version 9 is a new product: it is installed beside your current site, imports its data, and takes over once you have checked it. Your old site and its database are only read, never modified: until you switch your domain, guests keep booking on it, and you can go back at any time.

The importer accepts Panda Resort 4 to 8. Allow about an hour for a typical site, plus the time to check the result. An old site of Panda Multi Resorts, with several hotels, is refused: it goes into Panda Multi Resorts 9, which has the same importer.

Before you start

• Back up the files and the database of the old site.
• Check that the hosting meets the requirements (PHP 8.2 or later: your host can usually change the version of PHP in its panel).
• Put both sites on the same hosting account: the importer reads the folder, the configuration, the images and the database of the old site. The simplest is a neighbouring folder or a temporary sub-domain, such as new.your-site.com. An old site hosted elsewhere is copied to the account, its database imported there, and the database details updated in its common/config.php.
• Prepare your reCAPTCHA v3 keys, the Client ID and Secret of a PayPal REST application (version 9 no longer uses a PayPal e-mail alone), and your Stripe keys.

Import your data

1. Install version 9

   Follow the installation in its own folder, with a new, empty database: never reuse the one of the old site.

2. Open the importer

   Panda Resort › Tools › Import of a previous site (the dashboard links to it while the site has no booking). The old sites found beside the new one are listed; otherwise type the path of its folder on the server.

   www.your-site.com/admin/module=legacy_import

   

3. Read the analysis

   The version found, what will be imported, what will be converted and what cannot be. Nothing is written yet. The demo content of the new site will be replaced: the screen says so and asks you to confirm.

4. Run the import

   It runs by stages (languages, accounts, catalogue, rates, services, activities, bookings, content, settings), in small batches that suit shared hosting. Keep the page open. If it is closed or the connection drops, open the screen again: the import resumes where it stopped. A stage that fails writes nothing, and running the import again never creates duplicates.

5. Read the report

   It stays available in the administration. Action required lists what needs you, each with a link to the right screen (PayPal keys to enter, an icon to choose for a facility, a rate plan converted from a package to check). For information explains what was converted, skipped or handled differently. Solve every Action required before opening the site.

6. Complete and check

   Review the settings, enter the payment and reCAPTCHA keys, set up the cron job, translate the texts of the added languages. Then browse the new site as a guest, in each language, on a computer and a phone: compare the prices of about ten stays with the old site (seasons, children, weekends, offers), make a test booking to the payment, sign in as a customer with an existing password, and look at the planning and a few imported bookings. Delete your test bookings.

7. Switch the domain

   Choose a quiet time, and stop the bookings of the old site shortly before if you can. Run the import again just before the switch: it brings the bookings and accounts created since, without duplicates (records already imported are not updated, so avoid changing the catalogue on the old site meanwhile). Point your domain to the folder of the new site, update the Public site URL in Settings › General, give each platform the new address of your calendars (Platform calendars), and replace the endpoint of the Stripe webhook with the address shown in the settings.

For a large database, with SSH access, the importer also runs from the folder of the new site:

php extensions/multiresorts/tools/import-legacy.php /path/to/the/old/site          # analysis only
php extensions/multiresorts/tools/import-legacy.php /path/to/the/old/site --run    # complete import

Updating

New versions are published on CodeCanyon, in your Downloads, with their notes in the changelog.

1. Back up

   The files and the database of the site.

2. Upload the new files

   Upload the contents of the upload/ folder of the new package over your site. Your configuration (config/config.php), your media and your brand images are not in the package: they are kept. Changes made to the theme belong in a child theme (see Customisation), so that an update never overwrites them.

3. Apply the update

   Log in to the administration: once the files are uploaded, every screen shows a banner with the new version and an Update now button (also offered in Extensions). Click it when the upload is complete, and the database is brought up to date in a few seconds. Until then the booking engine waits, so that new code never runs on an old database: its pages tell your visitors that the site is being updated and to come back in a few minutes, with a code that search engines and the booking platforms read as temporary. Update at a quiet hour, and click right after the upload.

www.your-site.com/admin/module=extensions

Several properties? Move up to Panda Multi Resorts

Panda Resort sells one property. The day you open a second hotel, or sell the stays of other properties, your site moves up to Panda Multi Resorts, which runs on the same engine: nothing to reinstall, nothing to import.

1. Get the add-on

   Multi Resorts, add-on for Pandao CMS, on CodeCanyon, brings the files of Panda Multi Resorts. Take its latest version: it must be at least the version of your Panda Resort.

2. Back up

   The files and the database of the site.

3. Upload its files

   Upload the contents of its upload/ folder to the root of your site: it replaces the files of extensions/multiresorts/, and nothing else. Open the administration: your site is now a site of Panda Multi Resorts, with all its screens. The documentation of the add-on describes them.

Your site takes the structure of Panda Multi Resorts at once: the Rooms page becomes the Hotels page (/hotels), which lists the hotels, each with its own page; the home page features the hotels instead of the rooms; and the Destinations page, with a block of the destinations under the stay search, appears with your first destination. A page or a block you renamed keeps your name.

Your property

Your hotel, resort or guest house: its texts, photos, facilities and contact details make the Rooms page of your site. Panda Resort › Catalogue › My property opens its form.

www.your-site.com/admin/module=hotel&view=form

Requests when full, online cancellation, guest reviews and the free cancellation of the standard rate are set once, in the settings of Panda Resort (see Payment settings).

Rooms

A room is a type of room (Deluxe double, Garden bungalow…), with the number of identical rooms you sell.

Who is included in the price and what children pay are set in the rates screen: see Guests & children.

Facilities

Panda Resort › Catalogue › Facilities holds the facilities you tick on your property and rooms, each with its name, translated, and an icon chosen among more than 180. The demo installs a complete list, from Wi-Fi to baby cot.

How prices work

Guests always see the price they pay: taxes, fees and mandatory services are included in every price shown, as the European Omnibus directive and the rules of the US Federal Trade Commission require.

A price per night is set for the guests included in a room. Extra adults and children add their own price, and a rate plan (an offer) changes it, up or down. Every setting is made once at the highest level that applies, and each level below may replace it:

A field left empty follows the level above, whose value is shown in grey in the field. A room therefore only fills in what differs from your hotel, and a period what differs from its room.

Rates calendar

Prices, stay rules and closed rooms of your hotel, day by day, on one screen: Panda Resort › Pricing › Rates.

www.your-site.com/admin/module=rate&view=list

Change prices and rules

Click and drag over days, on one room or several, or click a room or a day to select its whole row or column. The editor opens on the selection:

• Night price, and a different price on some weekdays (the weekend…);
• Guests and children for this period, when they differ from the room;
• Stay rules: minimum and maximum stay, days without arrival or departure, closed to sale;
• Close rooms, for works or a private use.

A price is kept by rate periods. On a night covered by several periods, the shortest one wins, then the most recent, so that an event wins over its season. For stay rules, the most specific rule wins: that of the room, then the shortest period, then the most recent.

Seasons & copy of a season

The Seasons tab shows the rate periods of the year on a timeline, room by room, with their stay rules and closures.

www.your-site.com/admin/module=rate&view=list&tab=seasons

Next year in one click

Copy a season copies the rate periods of chosen dates to new dates: last summer to next summer, a whole year to the next one. Choose the rooms, a price change in percent and its rounding, keep the same weekdays (Saturdays stay Saturdays), and choose whether the stay rules follow and whether the rates already set on the new dates are replaced.

Guests & children

Set the defaults of your hotel once: a room, or a rate period, only needs a value where it differs.

www.your-site.com/admin/module=rate&view=list&tab=occupancy

The guests included are the adults first, then the oldest children. Children beyond them pay the price of their age bracket, or the extra child price when no bracket matches. The guests give the age of each child in the search.

Rate plans (offers)

Offers sold beside the standard rate, like on the booking platforms: Non-refundable at −10 %, Breakfast included at +15 per person and night, an early booking or a last minute offer.

Panda Resort › Pricing › Rate plans. The standard rate is always offered at the prices of the rooms; each rate plan changes them:

On the Rooms page, the cheapest offer is preselected, so that the price shown first is the best one; the guest may choose another offer, room by room.

Taxes & fees

Define the taxes of your country and of your town once: they are added to your prices, or shown as included, on every booking.

Panda Resort › Pricing › Taxes and fees. A tax has a name shown to the guests, a type, a value and, for taxes per guest, a minimum age:

• VAT included in the prices (%): included in your prices, detailed on the booking;
• Percentage added to the room price (%);
• Amount per guest and night: the tourist tax, with the age under which guests are exempt;
• Amount per room and night, and amount per room and stay (a cleaning fee…).

Added taxes and fees are included in the totals shown to the guests, and every tax is detailed on the booking and in the e-mails.

Services (extras)

Breakfast, parking, airport transfer, late check-out, a cot or a pet: what guests add to their stay at the booking, with a total updated at once.

Panda Resort › Extras › Services. A service has a price, counted once per stay or per night, for the booking, each room, each guest, each adult or each child. Give it a VAT rate, an icon, the rooms it concerns and, if needed, the dates it is offered (heating in winter).

Largest quantity: several, the guest chooses how many (towels, cots); empty or 1, the guest ticks it.

Mandatory: always added and included in every price shown, as the law requires. A fixed fee per stay, such as a cleaning fee, is a mandatory service per stay, for the booking or for each room.

Promo codes

Panda Resort › Extras › Promo codes. A code is typed by the guests on the booking form, whatever its case. Its discount, a percentage or an amount, is taken off the rooms only: taxes and services keep their price, and the VAT included goes down in proportion.

• Rooms: where it works; none selected, every room.
• Bookings from / until: the days it can be used; Stays from / until: the whole stay must be within these nights.
• Minimum nights, Minimum amount, Number of uses (cancelled bookings not counted) and Once per guest.
• Title: for you only, the campaign or partner of the code.

Currencies

You sell and get paid in the main currency of the site. Visitors may see the prices converted into their own currency, as an indication.

1. Add the currencies to offer in Configuration › Currencies, and turn on Enable currencies in Settings › General. Visitors choose theirs at the bottom of the pages.
2. The rates come from the European Central Bank, read every six hours (about thirty currencies). Panda Resort › Pricing › Exchange rates shows them; a rate you type wins over the Bank: to round it, to add a margin for the cost of the exchange, or for a currency the Bank does not publish (dirham, riyal…).
3. Payments, e-mails, the administration and the bookings stay in the main currency. The booking page tells the guest the amount charged, with its equivalent in the currency chosen.

www.your-site.com/admin/module=exchange_rate&view=list

Activities & sessions

A walking tour, a cooking class, a spa day or a boat trip: activities have their own pages, and are booked with a stay or on their own.

www.your-site.com/en/activities/walking-tour-of-oia

The Activities page lists them with their duration, group size and “from” price, and the Rooms page shows them too. At the second step of a booking, the guest adds the sessions held during the stay, from the day of arrival to the day of departure. Booked alone from its page, an activity is a booking of its own; booked while a stay is being chosen, it joins that stay. Places are counted session by session, activity by activity.

The Rooms page

The page of your hotel and of its rooms: photos, rating, facilities, contact details, map and directions, video, then every room with its offers for the dates chosen, the activities and the reviews.

The stay search of the home page asks for the dates and the guests, with the age of each child, and leads to it with the price of the stay, everything included. Its menu entry is Rooms, at /rooms as in Panda Resort 8.

www.your-site.com/en/rooms

www.your-site.com/en/rooms#rooms

As on the booking platforms, the best room for the guests is preselected with one unit, and the guest may book several rooms, of several types and offers, at once. The date picker marks, a year ahead, the nights that are full (red dot) and those not for sale yet (grey dot). On a phone, the total and the Book button stay at the bottom of the screen.

Booking steps

Three steps: the rooms, the details, the confirmation. The total follows every choice, and the prices are checked again when the booking is made.

At the second step, the guest:

• adds the services and the activities of the stay, and a promo code;
• gives their details: name, e-mail, phone, and optionally company, address and special requests;
• chooses how to pay, each option telling what is paid now and what is paid at the hotel;
• accepts the booking conditions, and books.

An online payment opens the secure page of Stripe or PayPal, and the rooms are held meanwhile. The booking forms are protected by the invisible reCAPTCHA v3 of Google, and a booking is never lost when Google cannot be reached.

After the booking

The confirmation e-mail links to the page of the booking, which only its guest can open.

The page shows the status of the booking, the stay, the rooms, the total and the payments. From it, the guest pays what is still due online, cancels online while the free cancellation lasts (payments made with Stripe or PayPal are refunded at once), and, after the stay, reviews it. A guest who booked without an account is offered to create one, with the same e-mail.

Reminders that bring guests back

Complete your booking. Rooms chosen but not booked follow the visitor on the other pages of the site, in a small card with the up-to-date total and a link back to the booking. A room taken meanwhile is flagged, with a link to the other rooms. Closed, the card stays closed for this choice.

Payment reminder. A booking still unpaid receives one e-mail while there is time to pay: a third of the way through the hold for an online payment, two days before the deadline for a transfer or a check.

When the hotel is full

A guest who finds no room wants other dates first, and only then to ask you. The Rooms page offers both, in this order.

• Nearby dates: stays of the same length for the same guests, from 7 days before to 14 days after, the nearest first, with their price;
• A request to the hotel, when Requests when full is on in the settings. It is saved and sent by e-mail to you and to the guest; nothing is booked or paid. See Requests when full.

Customer account

Most guests book without an account; those who create one find all their stays in My account, including those booked with their e-mail before.

• My bookings: the stays to come first, then past and cancelled ones, each with its status, the balance to pay and a link to its page.
• My details: names, phone and address, which fill the booking form in advance.
• Delete my account, confirmed by the password: the details are erased, and the bookings kept for the accounts, without their link to the account.

The e-mail address cannot be changed in the account, since it gives access to the bookings: a guest who needs to change it writes to you.

Bookings

Panda Resort › Bookings lists every booking of your hotel, from the website, from your desk and from the platforms.

www.your-site.com/admin/module=booking&view=list

The booking sheet

www.your-site.com/admin/module=booking&view=form

The stay, its rooms with their room numbers and offers, the totals, the guest and their message. Payments gives the amount asked, what is paid and the balance, and Record a payment adds one received at the desk (card terminal, cash, transfer, check). Actions confirm a request or cancel the booking, with or without an e-mail to the guest. The origin of the booking and the internal notes are never shown to the guest.

Phone bookings & changes

A guest calls, changes their dates, adds a room or agrees on a price: the booking editor lets the hotel change everything, and the total follows.

www.your-site.com/admin/module=booking&view=edit

• New booking (list or planning) or Edit (booking sheet): dates and origin of the booking.
• Rooms: type, room number (the first free one by default), offer, adults and children's ages, and the price of the stay. Empty, a price follows the rates; typed, it is kept. Take every price at the rates goes back to them.
• Services and activities: the sessions held during the stay are offered with their places left.
• Discount and payment, and the amounts: rooms, taxes, total with its VAT, paid and balance.

A room already taken is refused; an overbooking, like a session beyond its places, must be confirmed. Send the updated booking to the guest by e-mail sends them the booking as it now stands.

Planning

Every room of your hotel, day by day: who arrives, who leaves, who is in house, and what is left to sell.

www.your-site.com/admin/module=booking&view=planning

• Move a booking by dragging it to another room of the same type.
• Book by dragging over the free days of a room: the booking editor opens with them.
• To place: the line of the bookings that found no free room, to place by hand.
• A red bar flags a conflict with a platform calendar.
• On a tablet, a long press takes a booking or starts a selection of days; a simple swipe scrolls the planning.

Requests when full

Panda Resort › Bookings › Requests when full gathers the requests sent for the stays you could not sell, with their dates, guests and message. Answer by e-mail, mark a request as handled or to handle again, or turn it into a booking when a room can be found: the booking editor opens with its dates, guests and contact details, and the request becomes Booked. The dashboard tells you when requests are waiting.

Payment settings

Extensions › Panda Resort › Settings › Payment sets how guests pay.

www.your-site.com/admin/module=extensions&view=settings

The other tabs: Calendars (iCal) (how often the platform calendars are read), Booking (requests when full, reCAPTCHA of the booking forms, online cancellation, free cancellation of the standard rate), Reviews, and Map. Each is described in its chapter.

Stripe

Guests pay by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay on the secure page of Stripe (Stripe Checkout): no card number ever passes through your server.

1. Get your keys

   In your Stripe account, Developers › API keys: copy the Publishable key and the Secret key into the Payment tab, with Card (Stripe) ticked. Start with the test keys (pk_test_…, sk_test_…): payments can be tried without charging anything. Both keys must be test keys, or both live keys.

2. Add the webhook advised

   In Developers › Webhooks, add the endpoint below with the events checkout.session.completed and checkout.session.expired, then paste its signing secret (whsec_…) in Webhook signing secret. The payments are then recorded even when a guest closes the page too early.

   https://www.your-site.com/multiresorts/stripe/webhook

3. Try it

   Make a booking with the test card 4242 4242 4242 4242, any future expiry date and any CVC, and check it in Bookings.

4. Go live

   Replace the test keys with your live keys, and add the same webhook in the live mode of Stripe with its own signing secret.

When a guest cancels online during the free cancellation, the payment made with Stripe is refunded at once.

PayPal

1. Create an application

   On developer.paypal.com, with your PayPal business account, open Apps & Credentials and create a REST application in Sandbox mode.

2. Paste its credentials

   Copy its Client ID and Secret into the Payment tab, with PayPal ticked, and turn on Sandbox (test mode): payments are simulated with the test accounts of the sandbox.

3. Go live

   Create the application in Live mode, paste its credentials and turn off Sandbox.

Guests pay on the secure page of PayPal; online cancellations are refunded at once.

Bank transfer & check

The guest receives your bank details, or the payee and address of the check, on the booking page and in the e-mail, with the deadline. The booking waits as Awaiting payment, with its rooms held, and the guest receives one reminder. When the payment arrives, record it on the booking sheet (Record a payment); without payment at the deadline, the booking is cancelled and the guest told.

Platform calendars (iCal)

Sell your rooms on Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo and the other platforms without double bookings: their stays block your rooms, and your bookings block theirs.

www.your-site.com/admin/module=hotel&view=calendars

Connect a room

1. Copy the calendar of the platform

   On the platform, open the calendar settings of the listing and copy its export address (on Airbnb, in the availability settings of the listing, Connect calendars; on Booking.com, Rates & Availability › Sync calendars; the names may change with their interfaces).

2. Connect it

   Open Calendars from the planning, click Connect a platform on the room, choose the platform and paste the address. The calendar is read at once, then at the interval of the settings; Read now reads it again.

3. Give yours to the platform

   Copy the Address of your calendar shown under the connection and paste it in the import settings of the platform.

How it works

• One connection per physical room: a calendar carries no quantity. A room type of several identical rooms has one connection per room.
• The stays of a platform become bookings of your site, with their origin (Airbnb, Booking.com…), in the list and the planning. A calendar gives no guest details: add the guest, the number of guests, notes and the amount to collect on the booking. Do not block these nights releases a wrong block.
• The nights Airbnb closes without a booking (its own availability settings) are not imported, unless you ask for it in the connection.
• Your calendar gives the platforms whole days, without any personal data, and the stays of the other platforms.
• Conflicts. A stay of a platform takes the room of its connection. A booking of your site in that room, whose guest has not arrived, moves to a free room of the same type; otherwise it is a conflict: one e-mail to you, a red bar in the planning and an alert on the dashboard. Nothing is refused or cancelled on its own.
• Safeguards. A calendar that is truncated, invalid or in error cancels nothing; a calendar suddenly empty is only applied when read empty twice; a stay already started is never cancelled.
• Timing. Your site reads the calendars every 30 minutes by default (Settings › Calendars (iCal), from 15 minutes to 6 hours), but the platforms read yours at their own pace, every 2 to 3 hours: a room booked on both sides meanwhile shows as a conflict. A calendar not read for 6 hours sends an e-mail, and the Diagnostic screen shows each calendar.

Guest reviews

Reviews written by real guests, invited after a stay booked on your site, checked by you, and answered by the hotel.

• Who reviews. The guests of a confirmed stay booked on the site (not from a platform), from the day of departure and for 90 days, one review per booking. They write, change or delete it from the page of their booking.
• Invitation. One e-mail the day after the departure, from 10 am (template MR_REVIEW_INVITATION). Stays that ended before the installation are never invited.
• Moderation by the site. In Panda Resort › Bookings › Guest reviews, the administration publishes each review, or refuses it for a reason of the list: abusive words, personal data, unrelated to the stay, advertising, conflict of interest. The guest is told why and may change it. The law forbids refusing a review because it is negative.
• The answer of the hotel is shown under the review.
• On the site: on the Rooms page, the average out of 5 with its word (Excellent from 4.5, Very good from 4, Good from 3.5), the distribution of the ratings, and the reviews from the latest with the mention “Verified stay”. The page says how reviews are collected and checked.

The Reviews tab of the settings turns reviews and invitations on or off.

Your team & roles

Give each person of your team their own account, in the Users module of the administration, with the role that fits what they do.

Each person signs in with their own login and password: never share the administrator account. Hotel owners, who manage only their own properties, come with Panda Multi Resorts: see Several properties?

Home page & widgets

The home page is made of widgets you place, order, translate and hide in Content › Widgets, without touching any code.

www.your-site.com/admin/module=widget&view=list

The slides of the slideshow are edited in Content › Slideshow: image or video, title, subtitle, text and button, in each language.

Pages, menus & blog

Pandao CMS manages the rest of the website:

• Pages, each with its model: the Rooms, Activities, Booking and My account pages are installed by Panda Resort, as well as Booking conditions and Privacy policy. Add yours (About us, Offers, Weddings…) with the standard model.
• Articles: the blog, with its tags and comments.
• Menus: the main menu and the footer menus, with their order and languages.
• Medias: the media library, used in the texts through the editor.
• Forms, Messages, Comments, Popup, Social links and Locations complete the website.

Deleted items go to the Trash, from which they can be restored. The editor saves drafts automatically, and an item being edited by someone else is locked for you meanwhile.

Languages & texts

Offer your site in as many languages as you need, right-to-left ones included.

1. A new site opens in English and French, with the language selector in its header. Enable foreign languages, in Settings › General, turns the languages other than the main one off, or on again.
2. In Configuration › Languages, publish or add a language: its name, its code (de), its locale (de_DE), its flag and, for Arabic or Hebrew, right to left. Each content receives a copy to translate, in the main language.
3. Translate the content in each form (a tab per language), then the interface: Configuration › Texts for the texts of the website, and Communication › Emails content for the e-mails.

Panda Resort comes with its texts and e-mails written in English and French; the other languages start from the English ones. The administration is available in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian and Turkish, chosen in Settings › General (Admin panel language).

E-mails

Every e-mail is a template of Communication › Emails content, in each language, with variables such as {firstname}, {reference} or {hotel} replaced when it is sent. Panda Resort installs, among others:

A booking made of activities alone has its own versions (…_ACTIVITY), which speak of dates and places instead of nights and rooms. The e-mails carry the banner of Settings › Appearance, and are sent through the SMTP server of Settings › Email settings when you give one.

Branding & theme

Your logo and your colours, without editing a file: Settings › Appearance.

www.your-site.com/admin/module=settings#appearance

• Visual identity: the site logo, the footer logo (for the dark background), the e-mail banner and the favicon (32 × 32 px), in PNG. Use the template default goes back to the images of the theme.
• Brand colours: the main colour and the highlight colour. Left empty, the colours of the theme apply, shown in grey.

The website uses the default theme of Pandao CMS, chosen in Settings › General › Template. It was designed with Panda Resort: with another theme, everything works, but the search bar shows under the slideshow instead of overlapping it. To change the theme itself, create a child theme (see Customisation).

Maps

The maps use Leaflet and OpenStreetMap, with no key and no account: the map of your hotel on the Rooms page with its Directions link, which opens Google Maps (the app on a phone). A map only loads when it is opened or comes into view, which keeps the pages light and the visitors' address private until then.

Settings › Map turns off the map of the lists, and changes the background of the maps. The servers of OpenStreetMap accept a moderate traffic: for a busy site, take a tile provider such as MapTiler, Stadia Maps or Thunderforest, and paste the address it gives for raster tiles of 256 pixels, with your key, and its credit:

https://api.maptiler.com/maps/streets-v2/256/{z}/{x}/{y}.png?key=YOUR_KEY

In the administration, Find the address of the form of your property searches the address with Nominatim (OpenStreetMap).

Privacy & security

SEO

• Clean addresses in each language (/en/rooms, /fr/chambres), with the Alias, Title tag and Robots fields of each page and activity.
• A sitemap (/sitemap.xml) that lists the pages, articles and activities, and a robots.txt kept up to date by the settings.
• A canonical address for each page, from the Public site URL of the settings.
• The code of Google Analytics in Settings › General: with the cookie banner, it only runs once the visitor accepts the statistics cookies.
• Pages and URLs of a version 8 site are kept by the importer.

Customisation

Keep your changes out of the files of the package, so that every update stays a simple upload.

A child theme

A theme is a folder of templates/. A child theme only holds the files it changes: every file it does not have is taken from the default theme.

1. Create templates/my-theme/ (lowercase letters, digits, hyphens).
2. Add your styles in templates/my-theme/assets/css/custom.css, loaded after the styles of the theme.
3. To change a template, copy it at the same path: from the default theme (views/partials/footer.php), or from Panda Resort, whose views live in extensions/multiresorts/templates/.
4. Choose it in Settings › General › Template.

Texts and e-mails need no code: they are edited in the administration. For developers, the architecture of the extensions (manifest, routes, hooks, modules, migrations) follows the conventions of Pandao CMS.

Command line

From the folder of the site, with the PHP of the site and its user:

php bin/pandao cron                                # runs the automatic tasks that are due
php bin/pandao extension:update multiresorts       # applies an update of Panda Resort
php bin/pandao extension:enable multiresorts       # enables it, as the Extensions page does

In the code, Panda Resort is called multiresorts: its folder, its commands and the names of its texts and e-mails (MR_…) are those of the engine it shares with Panda Multi Resorts.

To display the PHP errors while you investigate a problem, add define('PMS_DEBUG', 1); to config/config.php, then remove it: a live site never shows its errors, it writes them in the PHP log of the server.

Troubleshooting & FAQ

Start with the Diagnostic screen: it checks PHP, the database, the server and the automatic tasks, and says what to ask your host.

The wizard does not open, or every page answers “Not found”

The .htaccess files were not uploaded (they are hidden: show the hidden files in your FTP client), or the server ignores them. Ask your host to turn on mod_rewrite and allow .htaccess files (AllowOverride All). On IIS, URL Rewrite reads the web.config file.

A blank page or an “error 500”

Check the version and the extensions of PHP (see Requirements), then the PHP error log of your hosting panel. define('PMS_DEBUG', 1); in config/config.php shows the error for a while.

The Panda Resort menu is missing after the first login

Open Extensions and click Enable on Panda Resort: the message of the first login tells why it could not be enabled.

Can I add a second hotel?

Panda Resort manages one property, and refuses a second one. To sell several on the same site, add Panda Multi Resorts: your site keeps all its data. See Several properties?

E-mails do not arrive

Give the SMTP server of your mailbox in Settings › Email settings, with a sender address of your own domain, and look in the spam folder. The SPF and DKIM records of your domain, set with your host, help delivery a lot.

An online payment fails, or is not recorded

The site must be served in HTTPS. Stripe keys must both be test keys or both live keys, and the webhook must use the events checkout.session.completed and checkout.session.expired. For PayPal, Sandbox must match the credentials of the application.

Unpaid bookings are not cancelled, calendars are not updated

The automatic tasks are late: see the synchronisation in the Diagnostic screen, and add the cron job.

A platform does not show my availability

Platforms read your calendar every 2 to 3 hours. Check that you gave them the address of the right room, and that your site is reachable in HTTPS.

Prices are not converted into other currencies

Turn on Enable currencies and add the currencies. The Exchange rates screen shows the last reading of the rates of the European Central Bank; if your host blocks it, type your rates.

A booking is on the “To place” line of the planning

No room of its type was free: drag it to a room, or free one.

The photos of the demo look heavy just after the installation

They are written at their sizes by the automatic tasks in the minutes that follow.

Do guests pay in their own currency?

No: like on the booking platforms, the conversion is an indication, and guests pay in the main currency of the site, which the booking page tells them.

Support

We answer through the Support tab of the page of Panda Resort on CodeCanyon.

• Item support comes with your purchase for 6 months, and can be extended to 12 months. It covers questions about the features of the product, the fixing of bugs, and help with the third-party assets it includes, as described by the item support policy of Envato. Installation services and customisation are not included.
• To get a quick answer, describe what you did, what you expected and what happened, give the address of the page, and paste the report of the Diagnostic screen (Copy the report). For an import, add the import report. Never send a password in a message.

Credits & licences

Panda Resort and Pandao CMS are made by Pandao and sold under the licences of Envato Market. They include the following resources, each under its own licence.

Changelog

Version 9.2.0 New

With Pandao CMS 8.2.1. A complete rewrite of Panda Resort, as an extension of Pandao CMS 8 (PHP 8.2 to 8.5), on the booking engine of Panda Multi Resorts 9.2.0. For the owners of Panda Resort 4 to 8, it is installed beside the old site and imports its data: see Upgrading from version 8.

• a Rooms page that shows your hotel and every room with its offers, at the address of Panda Resort 8, and a home page whose stay search leads to it;
• rates calendar, seasons with the copy of a season, guests and children by age, rate plans with their promotion dates;
• booking of several rooms and offers at once, all-inclusive prices, services and activities, promo codes;
• Stripe Checkout and PayPal, deposits, holds and reminders, online cancellation with refunds;
• planning, booking editor for the bookings taken at the desk, requests when full;
• platform calendars (iCal) room by room, with conflicts and alerts;
• verified guest reviews and customer accounts;
• currencies at the rates of the European Central Bank, maps without Google, right-to-left languages;
• a new theme in the colours of Panda Resort, widgets for the home page, a complete demo content;
• the import of a Panda Resort 4 to 8 site, passwords of the customers and addresses of the pages included;
• the Diagnostic screen and the automatic tasks run by the visits when there is no cron job;
• the move up to Panda Multi Resorts, with the files of its add-on, when you sell several properties.