Welcome to the Wix Third Party Developers Guide!

This dev guide provides a practical introduction to developing apps for the Wix platform and documentation about major features. It explores the concepts behind the Wix third party SDK and the tools for developing, testing and deploying apps.

Wix is a free webtop publishing platform for creating Flash and HTML5 websites as well as mobile sites and customized Facebook pages. Users create websites with the help of pre-designed templates and “Drag & Drop” tools. Wix markets itself to users who don’t necessarily have any experience coding websites – no coding knowledge is necessary to create a stunning new website quickly and easily. Almost 23 million websites have been created using the Wix platform and one million new users sign up for Wix each month. Read more about Wix in the About Wix section of this guide.

The Wix third party program allows any developer to seamlessly integrate their HTML5 apps into the popular Wix HTML5 platform. Once integrated, our users can add these third party apps to their personal websites. 

Third party apps can be developed using any known web technology: PHP, Rails, Java, .Net, etc.

Table of Contents

Wix App Market

The Wix App Market is available from within the Wix Editor. In the Wix App Market, users will see all of the third party apps that are published and approved by Wix. The Wix App Market is split up into several categories; an app may appear in more than one category. When a user clicks on an app, a pop-up will open with three tabs of information about the app: an overview, a live demo and an overview of the app's features including information about the Premium version of the app, if applicable.

The Wix App Market within the Wix Editor:

User Introduction to the Wix App Market:

Wix Dev Center

Every app developer will visit the Dev Center before his or her app is made available on the Wix App Market. In the Dev Center, you can register and submit your app to Wix as well as add the marketing information that will appear in the Wix App Market. For registration information, see the Dev Center Registration Guide.

The Wix Developers Center:

Types of Apps

The Wix platform currently supports two types of apps:

Widget App

A Widget App is an element within a page. The user can position and resize the Widget app, and thus fit it into a desired location and space within the page. A Widget app is simply an br which contains your Widget. The app also has an endpoint for an SEO version of the content in your Widget.

Example of a Widget App – Instagram:

Page App 

A Page app is a full-page app that is a mini-site within the users’ web site. When a user adds a Page app, a new page will be created within the user's website. This type of app is useful for you if you are interested in creating an app such as a blog, a forum, a product catalog or any other feature which has internal pages. Each internal page of your app will have its own URL as well as separate content for SEO. 

Example of a Page App – Tumblr Feed:

How This Works

You provide us with br endpoints (Widget or Page) of your app and br endpoints for the app's settings.

Wix users use the HTML5 Editor to add your app to their websites. They customize your app by using the Settings endpoint that you have provided.

The Wix platform generates a new instance for every new site that adds your app. The new instance is sent to your app br endpoints as a set of query parameters. The instance contains a unique instance ID which you should use as an identifier to display your app in this site.

Users publish their websites.

Site visitors view the users' sites and use your app.

What do you need to implement?

1. An br endpoint for the Widget or Page.
2. An br endpoint for the app settings.
3. An app instance for every new site that contains your app (identified by the instance id).
4. (Optional) If it's a Page app, you can use the URL for state.
5. (Optional) SEO endpoints when you register your app, if you are interested in SEO integration.

What do we provide you with?

1. A Dev Center to register your app.
2. A JavaScript SDK to develop your app.
3. Documentation, references, tutorials and support.
4. App distribution through the Wix App Market.
5. The ability to develop and test your app directly within our production environment.

App Registration Checklist

To complete your app registration, you will need to provide us with:

1. A signed Wix partners agreement.
2. Screenshots of your app in several Wix sites (marketing material).
3. Textual description and a list of features.
4. (Recommended) br of a live, and preferably fully operational demo.
5. (Optional) Demo mode: A working demo instance of the app in our templates and app description page.
6. (Optional) A video demo or intro of your app.

Important Points

1. Before you start developing, please review our Technical Product Guide to see that your app meets all of our requirements, including style and marketing.
2. When your app is ready, please review our Testing/QA Guide to see that your app meets all of our requirements and to speed up the approval process.
3. If your app has a Premium package, make sure to comply with our Billing Guide.

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