Table of Contents for
Building E-Commerce Solutions with WooCommerce - Second Edition

Version ebook / Retour

Cover image for bash Cookbook, 2nd Edition Building E-Commerce Solutions with WooCommerce - Second Edition by Robbert Ravensbergen Published by Packt Publishing, 2015
  1. Cover
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Building E-Commerce Solutions with WooCommerce Second Edition
  4. Building E-Commerce Solutions with WooCommerce Second Edition
  5. Credits
  6. About the Author
  7. About the Reviewers
  8. www.PacktPub.com
  9. Preface
  10. What you need for this book
  11. Who this book is for
  12. Conventions
  13. Reader feedback
  14. Customer support
  15. 1. Setting Up WooCommerce
  16. Installing WooCommerce
  17. Setting up WooCommerce
  18. Summary
  19. 2. Creating Your First Products
  20. Creating your first product
  21. Setting the categories, tags, and images for your product
  22. Summary
  23. 3. Using Downloadable Products and Variations
  24. Using attributes
  25. Setting up variable and grouped products
  26. Other product types
  27. Summary
  28. 4. Payments, Shipping, and Coupons
  29. Shipping methods and prices
  30. Using discount coupons
  31. Summary
  32. 5. Working with WooCommerce Themes
  33. Making or buying a theme
  34. Installing a WooCommerce theme
  35. Using the Storefront theme
  36. Summary
  37. 6. Customizing a WooCommerce Theme
  38. WordPress theme basics
  39. Developing WooCommerce themes
  40. Summary
  41. 7. Running Your Online Store
  42. Deploying your WooCommerce store
  43. Working with sales orders
  44. Reporting
  45. Summary
  46. 8. More Possibilities Using Plugins
  47. Popular and useful WooCommerce plugins
  48. A store in multiple languages
  49. Summary
  50. Index

Chapter 8. More Possibilities Using Plugins

As you know, WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress. Even though it might sound strange, it's possible to expand the functionality of WooCommerce with additional plugins. Those are regular WordPress plugins as well, just like any other. The only difference is that these plugins will only work if WooCommerce has been installed.

In this chapter, we'll discuss the following topics:

  • Where to find the right WooCommerce plugins
  • Popular and useful plugins. We'll have a closer look at:
    • WooCommerce and Google Analytics integration
    • WooCommerce and the Yoast SEO plugin
    • Plugins for advanced products
    • Plugins for online marketing
    • Plugins for easier store management
    • A store in multiple languages
    • Free plugins

Where to find the right WooCommerce plugins

We already noticed earlier in this book that we probably need additional plugins to support the Payment Method or Payment Service Provider of our choice. There are a number of websites that we can check to see if the functionality we need is available:

  • WooThemes: http://www.woothemes.com/product-category/woocommerce-extensions/. The extensions offered here are not always developed by the WooCommerce core team, but by third-party programmers. The plugins found here are of a good quality, but sometimes can be pricey. However, note that programmers will have to make some money as well. By charging an amount for their plugins, they will be able to keep supporting them, which is important if your online business is going to rely on it. The commercial WooThemes plugins include one year of support.
  • WordPress: http://www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins. The plugins offered here are free, or have at least a free (limited) version available. We found extensions to support Payment Service Providers and for easier shop management. We'll discuss a few of the free plugins later on in this chapter.
  • A valuable resource for commercial, but affordable plugins is CodeCanyon: http://codecanyon.net/category/wordpress/ecommerce/WooCommerce. In here, you may currently find over 700 (!) extensions for WooCommerce. But pay attention: not all of them will be up to date and ready for 2.4, the newest version of WooCommerce. Just as on ThemeForest, CodeCanyon is a marketplace offering extensions from lots of different developers. Carefully check the given ratings and comments by other users . Not every plugin is supported by the developers. If the support is poor, it's very likely that you can find comments on the support and code quality in the comment section:
    Where to find the right WooCommerce plugins
  • Other smaller vendors worth checking out are as follows:
    • IgniteWoo (http://ignitewoo.com) is a smaller company which offers themes and plugins.
    • SkyVerge (https://www.skyverge.com) is offering a versatile collection of WooCommerce plugins and also offers some free plugins. The premium plugins of Skyverge are sold on the WooThemes website.

Besides these resources, there will be other developers offering their products and services. Not all plugins are mentioned on the websites mentioned above. If you cannot find what you're looking for, give Google a try as well. There are developers delivering WooCommerce plugins directly from their own website. If you're looking for an extension to support your Payment Service Provider or Carrier, don't forget to ask them if they have one available! Sometimes, you might even get it for free in this way.

Whatever plugin you choose to use, there are a couple of best practices that you need to pay attention to when working with plugins:

  • Try to minimize the number of plugins that you're using. Too many plugins can be bad for performance if they are not well-coded. Having too many plugins also makes it difficult to technically manage your shop in the future.
  • Have a look at the latest update date. This is especially important for free plugins and plugins offered on a marketplace like CodeCanyon. Is the plugin brand-new, then it might not be the best solution to use in a production environment. If the plugin is not being actively maintained anymore, then try to look for a better alternative. Even if the plugin is still working at this moment, problems will arise in the future when new versions of WordPress and WooCommerce are being released.
  • Check the reviews of other users, if available.
  • Always make sure that you have a full backup of your website available before you start to add or remove plugins. The backup must include a copy of the WordPress database.

A closer look at plugin prices

When looking closer at the plugin prices, you may notice that some plugins require a yearly renewal, whereas others deliver free updates forever. Vendors change their pricing model sometimes, but, at this moment, you have to take the following into account:

  • At WooThemes, you buy the plugin at the full price. After a year, you may renew your license at 50% of the current sales price. If you do not renew, you will no longer be able to download the updates.
  • At CodeCanyon, you receive free updates as long as the plugin is being maintained by the developers. Six months of support is included in the purchase price. If you need to extend support, you must pay an additional fee. Be aware that to be able to just download the latest version, it isn't necessary to extend the support period.

All other vendors have varying pricing models and their own way of handling support and updates. Always take a close look at the conditions so that you know what you are going to pay in the future. Keeping your store up to date is important, so please do not stop paying for your extensions just to save some money.

Note that all the prices mentioned in the remaining part of this chapter were the actual prices at the moment of writing. The prices of the mentioned extensions are subject to change.