GMC Booking – Documentation (Joomla & WordPress)
GMC Booking — Documentation
Everything you need to install, license and populate GMC Booking, the direct-booking engine for properties and accommodation on Joomla 5/6 and WordPress. This page is the practical companion to the product overview.
What GMC Booking is
GMC Booking is a self-hosted property and accommodation booking engine. Its unit of inventory is a property with bookable units, priced per night, on an availability calendar — an apartment, a room, a holiday home. Guests book directly on your own site, with no per-booking commission.
The same engine ships for two platforms:
- Joomla 5/6 — the native component
com_gmcbooking, plus its companion plugins. - WordPress — the plugin
wp-gmcbooking, which mirrors the same data model and features.
The booking engine is built to prevent overbooking even under simultaneous requests, and you keep full control of your data.
Installation & activation
Joomla 5/6
- Download the single package file
pkg_gmcbooking-x.y.z.zip. - In the Joomla administrator, go to System → Install → Extensions.
- Upload the package zip. Joomla installs the component and its companion plugins, and creates all database tables in one step.
- Open Components → GMC Booking and you are ready to add hosts, properties and units.
WordPress
- Download the plugin file
wp-gmcbooking-x.y.z.zip. - In wp-admin, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
- Choose the zip and click Install Now.
- Click Activate. Activation creates the tables and registers the admin screens and shortcodes.
Licensing & tiers
GMC Booking runs on a published-listing cap enforced from the GMC Licenses gateway. There are two tiers:
Personal
Up to 3 published listings. Ideal for an owner running a small set of properties.
Portal
Unlimited published listings. For multi-host portals and marketplaces.
What the cap does — and does not — affect:
- The cap only blocks the transition to published. If you are on Personal and already have three published properties, publishing a fourth is refused with a clear message.
- Drafts are always allowed. You can create, save and keep as many draft listings as you like.
- Importing is always allowed — imported listings arrive as drafts, so an import never hits the cap.
- Editing an already-published listing is never blocked. Re-saving a live property always succeeds.
- The check is fail-open: if the licensing server is unreachable, saving and publishing are never blocked. A network blip can never lock you out, and the last known entitlement is cached.
To switch tiers, paste your Portal licence key into the component / plugin configuration. Leaving the key empty keeps you on the free Personal tier.
Import & export (vokira JSON)
You can bulk-load properties from vokira JSON seeds instead of typing each one by hand. In Joomla this is the component's Import view; in WordPress it is the plugin's Import / Export admin screen.
Supported inputs
- A single property seed.
- An
experiences[]catalog (many listings in one file). - A suppliers-only catalog (hosts only, no listings).
- A bare JSON array of items.
- A server folder, or an uploaded
.zip, containing several.jsonfiles.
How import behaves
- Imports are created as drafts (not published), so nothing is sellable until an admin reviews, completes and publishes it. This is also why an import never touches the listing cap.
- Re-importing the same seed is idempotent. Records are matched by their
alias, so a second import updates the existing listing in place rather than creating duplicates. - Export is a lossless round-trip. The export re-emits the exact vokira shape, so an export followed by an import reproduces your data faithfully.
Imported listings are drafts on purpose. Review the rate plans, set the units and availability, then publish — that is the moment the Personal cap is checked.
In short
Install in one step on Joomla or WordPress, start on the free Personal tier with up to three published properties, build your catalog as drafts (by hand or by vokira import), and publish when ready. Upgrade to Portal whenever you outgrow three live listings.
