Glossary

Auction- and platform-specific terminology used throughout this documentation.

A

Absentee bid — A pre-bid placed before the auction starts. When the auction goes live, the absentee bid converts to a proxy bid and competes automatically. See Bidding Engine → Absentee.

Action Scheduler — WooCommerce's background job system. The plugin uses it for emails, lifecycle workers, payouts, and CSV exports. Manage at WC → Tools → Scheduled Actions.

Adapter (multi-vendor) — A class that translates between the plugin's vendor concepts and a specific multi-vendor plugin (WCFM, Dokan, WC Vendors, YITH). Multi-Vendor →

Anti-snipe (also: soft close) — Auto-extension of an auction when a bid lands in the final N seconds. Prevents last-second sniping. Anti-Sniping →

Anonymous bidding — A bid placed with the user's display name masked. Privacy feature. See wkafw_masked_names.

Auction-of-the-day — A featured auction shown prominently on the homepage / shop. Manual or auto-rotated. Smart Features →

Audit chain — Tamper-evident hash-chained ledger of every bid. Used for compliance / fraud investigation. Audit Log →

B

Bid increment — The minimum amount a new bid must beat the current price by. Three modes: fixed, variable, percentage. Bid Increments →

Bid pack — Bundle of pre-paid bid tokens for penny auctions. Customers buy packs upfront, spend tokens per bid.

Bid queue — Asynchronous bid processing for high-traffic auctions. Bids queue, a worker drains them serially to avoid lock contention. Bidding Engine → Bid queue.

Bid retraction — Ability for a bidder to pull their bid within a configured time window. Disabled by default.

Bid stream — Real-time scrolling feed of recent bids site-wide. UI psychology trigger.

Buy It Now (BIN) — A fixed price that lets a buyer skip the auction and purchase immediately. Optional per-auction. Reserve & Buy Now →

Buyer's premium — A percentage / flat fee added to the winning bid at checkout. Industry-standard in art / antiques. Monetization →

C

Card-on-file — A saved payment method (typically Stripe-tokenized) that can be auto-charged on auction win. Alternative to wallet auto-charge. Stripe Connect →

Charity auction — A standard auction with tax-receipt issuance + donor wall. Charity →

Cooldown — Min seconds between consecutive bids by the same user. Prevents bid-spamming. wkafw_bid_cooldown.

Conversion funnel — Auctions → Bidders → Winners → Paid. Used in Reports to identify drop-off points.

D

Dispute — Buyer-filed complaint after winning an auction. Tracked through resolution. Disputes →

Donor wall — Public list of recent charity-auction buyers. Privacy opt-out available.

Dutch auction — Descending-price auction. First bidder to accept the current price wins. Dutch →

E

Endpoint (My Account) — A WP rewrite endpoint added to /my-account/ — the plugin adds three: my-auctions, my_wallet, wkwc_withdrawal.

Escrow — Third-party fund-holding service used for very-high-value auctions (cars, real estate).

Event — A container that groups multiple auctions (lots) into a themed event with a landing page, registration, and schedule. Events →

F

Featured boost — Optional fee a seller pays to make their auction more prominent on shop pages. Monetization →

Flash auction — Short-burst auction (typically 1 hour) with heightened urgency UI. Smart Features →

Fraud signal — Event recorded by Fraud Detection when a bid matches a rule. Severity: info / low / medium / high / critical.

G

Gamification — Points, badges, leaderboards. Drives engagement. Gamification →

GDPR — EU data privacy regulation. Plugin includes export / delete hooks for compliance. Compliance → GDPR

H

Hash chain — Cryptographic linking of audit events such that tampering with any past event breaks all subsequent hashes. Audit Log →

HPOS — High-Performance Order Storage. WooCommerce's modern order schema. The plugin is fully HPOS-compatible.

Hot auction — An auction with bid velocity exceeding wkafw_hot_auction_threshold in the last hour. Auto-flagged with a "Hot" badge.

K

KYC — Know Your Customer. Identity verification required for high-value bidders. Compliance → KYC

L

Late penalty — Fee added to overdue payments. Monetization →

Leaderboard — Public ranking by points / wins / spend. Configurable reset cadence.

Listing fee — Per-auction creation fee charged to sellers. Monetization →

Lot — An individual auction within an event, typically numbered (Lot 1, Lot 2, …).

Lot review — Admin moderation queue for vendor-created auctions. Optional. Pending Review →

M

Masked names — Bidder display names obfuscated to a pattern (e.g. B***r). Privacy / anti-collusion.

Monetization — Six fee types (listing, featured, bid, premium, late, commission). Monetization →

Multi-vendor — Multiple sellers on one platform. Supported plugins: WCFM, Dokan, WC Vendors, YITH. Multi-Vendor →

O

OG tags (Open Graph) — HTML meta tags for rich link previews on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Auto-injected on auction pages.

Outbid — Status when another bid beats yours. Triggers email / push / SMS notifications.

P

Paddle / seat — Bidder identifier in seated auctions. One paddle per registered bidder per event.

Payment deadline — Hours after auction win during which the buyer must pay. Default 48. Configurable per wkafw_payment_deadline.

Penny auction — Pay-per-bid format. Each bid costs a token, raises the price ¢, and resets a short timer. Penny →

Polling — Front-end periodically fetching auction state to update UI. Adaptive: 30s normal, 3s in last 2 min, off when dormant.

Proxy bidding — User sets a max; system auto-bids on their behalf in increments. eBay-style. Proxy →

Q

Quick-bid — Pre-defined increment buttons (+5%, +10%, +25%) on the bid form. One-click bidding.

R

Reserve price — Hidden minimum the seller will accept. Auction fails if not met. Reserve →

Reserve indicator — UI signal showing whether the reserve has been met (without revealing the amount).

Retraction window — Time after bid placement during which the bidder can pull the bid. Configurable.

Reverse auction — Lowest bid wins. Procurement / contractor format. Reverse →

S

Sealed bid — Bid hidden from other bidders until auction close. Sealed →

Seated auction — Live event format with paddle assignments. Seated →

Shilling — When a seller bids on their own auction to inflate the price. Auto-detected by Fraud Detection.

Silent auction — Bids hidden during the auction except at admin-controlled reveal windows. Silent →

Smart features — Algorithmic surfaces: hot detection, recommendations, auction-of-the-day, flash auctions. Smart Features →

Soft close — Synonym for anti-snipe.

Stripe Connect — Stripe's marketplace product. Used for vendor payouts and card-on-file auto-charge. Stripe Connect →

T

Top-up — Adding money to a customer wallet. Customer pays via standard checkout; wallet credits on order completion.

Two-factor (2FA) — Second-step authentication via SMS / email / TOTP. Optional for admin and / or bidding. Two-Factor →

U

Unique-bid auction — Bidders submit secret bids; the lowest unique amount wins. Unique-Bid →

Urgency window — Final stretch when "ending soon" UI / notifications fire. wkafw_urgency_window.

V

Vendor — A seller in a multi-vendor marketplace. Onboarding, dashboards, payouts handled by your multi-vendor plugin; auction-specific UI by this plugin.

W

Wallet — Customer-held balance. Top-up, transfer, withdraw, partial-pay at checkout. Wallet System →

Wallet bridge — The internal layer that connects auction concepts (auto-charge, fees) to the bundled wallet system.

Watchlist — User's saved list of auctions to track. Receives activity emails. Watchlist →

Withdrawal — Customer requesting payout from their wallet. Admin-approved, manually executed. Withdrawal →

WP-Cron — WordPress's pseudo-cron — runs scheduled tasks on incoming requests. The plugin uses Action Scheduler on top of WP-Cron for reliability.