Installing WooCommerce plugins

WooCommerce is open source and free, which means that any developer can add extra functionality to WooCommerce. Some developers may add this extra functionality with a WordPress plugin and then release the plugin either for free or as a premium plugin.

There are three likely places to get a WooCommerce plugin: from WooThemes, from WordPress.org, or from a third-party website. In this recipe, we'll be installing a plugin obtained from a third-party site. Installing a WooCommerce plugin from WordPress.org is similar to installing WooCommerce. We will have a look at how to install official WooThemes plugins in the next recipe.

Getting ready

Make sure you have the necessary permissions to install plugins on your WordPress site and that you have WooCommerce installed.

How to do it…

We're going to be downloading a plugin I created as an example of how to create an extra WooCommerce settings page, by performing the following steps:

1. Go to https://gist.github.com/BFTrick/b5e3afa6f4f83ba2e54a/.
2. Click on Download Gist.
   
3. Make sure your plugin is in the .zip format. By looking at the downloaded file, we can see that our file ends in .tar.gz, which is not the right format:
   

   We need to convert this to the .zip format. Here's what you need to do on a Mac operating system:

   1. Double-click on the .tar.gz file, which will create a new folder.
   2. Right-click on the new folder and click on Compress gistb5e3afa6f4f83ba2...9.

      And this is what you need to do on a Windows operating system:

   3. Windows cannot extract a .tar.gz file natively. You'll have to install a software to do so. A free tool is 7-Zip, which can be found at http://www.7-zip.org/.
   4. In your WordPress admin, click on the Plugins menu and then on Add New:
      
   5. Click on Upload Plugin:
      
   6. On the new screen, choose the zipped file to be uploaded and click on Install Now.
   7. Once the plugin has finished installing, click on the Activate Plugin link. The following screen should appear:
   

You now have a WooCommerce plugin installed on your site. If you want to see what this plugin does, you can navigate to the WooCommerce settings page and click on Settings Demo Tab.

How it works…

WordPress can import any ZIP file. As long as the plugin was created correctly, WordPress shouldn't have any problems running the plugin. If there is a problem, WordPress will let you know that the plugin has invalid code.