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Mastering WooCommerce
Mastering WooCommerce

Mastering WooCommerce: Build, customize, and launch a complete e-commerce website with WooCommerce from scratch , Second Edition

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Mastering WooCommerce

Installing WordPress and WooCommerce

WooCommerce was designed as a WordPress plugin from its conception. Everything that WooCommerce has done is done on top of WordPress. So, while this is a book about mastering WooCommerce, we can’t start talking about WooCommerce until we make sure a few basic things are taken care of in your WordPress installation.

We’re going to make sure your WordPress site is set up correctly and then install WooCommerce. To do that, we’re going to look into the following:

  • New features in WooCommerce
  • Why and how you should use test sites
  • Creating an ad-free admin experience
  • How to install WooCommerce
  • Configuring settings through the WooCommerce welcome wizard

Once you’ve done all of the preceding, you’ll have WooCommerce installed on a test site and you can start building your online store. Let’s first look at why and how we should use test sites with any WordPress installation.

Technical requirements

We’ll be installing a few different pieces of software in this chapter:

New features in WooCommerce

The first version of this book came out back in the Spring of 2020. Since then, there have been 30+ major releases of WooCommerce. Let’s look at what they’ve been working on!

WooCommerce Admin

The WooCommerce Admin plugin started with WooComemrce 4.0 and was shipped with WooCommerce 6.5. WooCommerce Admin offers significantly enhanced reporting. It enables filtering and comparisons and provides an overview of your store’s performance in terms of sales and revenue.

Additionally, it offers insights into the most popular and highest-grossing products while also enhancing customer management and analytics capabilities.

WooCommerce Payments

WooCommerce also added WooCommerce Payments in 4.1. This feature brings a new dashboard to your site’s WordPress administration area for handling payments, refunds, disputes, and deposits.

WooCommerce blocks

With WordPress 5.0 they introduced the new block-based editing experience...

Importance of test sites

If you’ve been a WordPress developer for a while, you’re probably familiar with test sites. And while they’re important in developing non-e-commerce WordPress sites, they’re critical in WooCommerce development. The following screenshot shows what the website development process looks like:

Figure 1.1 – Website development process

Figure 1.1 – Website development process

In a typical WordPress development project, you’ll build custom functionality on your local machine. Then, you’ll upload it to a test site where the client usually approves it. Then, you’ll move the test site to the live site, replacing data and files.

And this works great for most WordPress projects. But when it comes to e-commerce, there are two problems:

  • You can never replace the live database: Since an e-commerce site is always on and always accepting new orders and payments, and marking items as shipped, you can’t replace the...

Creating an ad-free experience

Both WooCommerce and Jetpack, a plugin we’ll install later in this chapter, include promotions. And these promotions make it less clear what’s going on. And if you’re developing this site for a client, you want to recommend plugins—you don’t want your plugin doing that for you.

As an example, in the following screenshot, there’s a promotion for premium functionality:

Figure 1.2 – An ad from Jetpack

Figure 1.2 – An ad from Jetpack

Note

Throughout this book, I’ll include several screenshots. To make sure these are valuable to you, I’m going to make sure they’re showing you what I need you to see and I’ll try and get rid of the extra content.

To make this book clearer, I’m going to install two plugins that remove these ads, which lets me share more useful screenshots and will give you and your clients a much cleaner user experience.

Let’s first install something...

Installing WooCommerce

Let’s get started by actually installing WooCommerce on our site. Perform the following steps:

  1. Search for WooCommerce under plugins in your admin menu:
Figure 1.4 – WooCommerce in the plugin installer

Figure 1.4 – WooCommerce in the plugin installer

  1. Click Install Now followed by Activate.
  2. Click WooCommerce in the admin menu. Or if you’re familiar with WooCommerce and want to skip the welcome wizard you can click Start Selling on your Dashboard screen under WooCommerce Setup. See Figure 1.5.
Figure 1.5 – Clicking Start selling will skip the setup wizard

Figure 1.5 – Clicking Start selling will skip the setup wizard

  1. Clicking WooCommerce will take you to the welcome wizard, which will help you configure all of the settings you’ll need to get up and running. Here’s what the first step looks like:
Figure 1.6 – First step of the setup wizard

Figure 1.6 – First step of the setup wizard

Now we can configure the store details in WooCommerce. Click Add...

Summary

In this chapter, we first went through the steps that we needed to take before installing WooCommerce. We had to ensure that our WordPress site was set up correctly and that we could build everything in a properly set-up test site.

Once we had that sorted, we installed a few plugins to keep our admin interface free of ads, which could distract us or our clients.

We then installed WooCommerce and Jetpack and configured a number of basic settings through the welcome wizard. With these steps, you can set up and test as many WooCommerce sites as you want.

Now that we’ve done all of that, we’re ready to create products in our store. In the next chapter, we will learn to build and configure new products.

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Key benefits

  • Harness the power of WooCommerce and its plugins to build fully functional e-commerce websites
  • Optimize your website's speed and performance through image optimization and static information caching
  • Master access control and risk mitigation for WooCommerce store security
  • Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook

Description

Author Patrick Rauland is a WooCommerce expert with a deep-rooted passion for the platform. Drawing from his multifaceted experience as a customer, WooCommerce support team member, core developer, release leader, and conference planner, he presents the latest edition of this guide to help you master every facet of launching and managing a successful WooCommerce store. From initiation to seamless integration of essential components such as payments, shipping, and tax configurations, this book takes you through the entire process of establishing your online store. You’ll then customize your store's visual identity, optimizing for search engines and advanced sales management through Point of Sale (POS) systems, outsourced fulfillment solutions, and external reporting services. You’ll then advance to enhancing the user experience, streamlining reorders, and simplifying the checkout process for your customers. With this new edition, you’ll also gain insights into secure hosting and bug fixing and be prepared for updates. That’s not all; you’ll build a promotional landing page, ensure store safety, contribute to the WooCommerce community, and design custom plugins for your unique needs. By the end of this WooCommerce book, you'll emerge with the skills to run a complete WooCommerce store and customize every aspect of the store on the frontend as well as backend.

Who is this book for?

This book is for web developers, WordPress developers, e-commerce consultants, and anyone familiar with WordPress interested in building an e-commerce website from scratch. Working knowledge of WordPress development and general web development concepts is required.

What you will learn

  • Grasp the fundamentals of e-commerce website development with WordPress and WooCommerce
  • Configure the essential payment, shipping, and tax settings
  • Set up various product types depending on your store
  • Use Gutenberg product blocks to display products across various categories on your website
  • Develop WordPress plugins to customize your website's functionality
  • Use product data syncing for enhanced user experience and store performance tracking
  • Promote your products effectively using search engine optimization (SEO) and landing pages
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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Apr 30, 2024
Length: 352 pages
Edition : 2nd
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781835085288
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Estimated delivery fee Deliver to New Zealand

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NZ$20.95

Premium delivery 5 - 8 business days

NZ$74.95
(Includes tracking information)

Product Details

Publication date : Apr 30, 2024
Length: 352 pages
Edition : 2nd
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781835085288
Concepts :

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Table of Contents

19 Chapters
Part 1: Exploring the essentials of an ECommerce Store Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 1: Installing WordPress and WooCommerce Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 2: All About Configuring Products Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 3: Organizing Products Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 4: Attracting Traffic with Search Engine Optimization Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Part 2: Managing an Online Store Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 5: Managing Sales Through WP Admin Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 6: Syncing Product Data Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 7: Configuring In-Store POS Solutions Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 8: Using Fulfillment Software Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 9: Speeding Up Your Store Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Part 3: Customizing the Appearance and Functionality of Your Store Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 10: Setting Up Your Theme Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 11: Customizing the Product Page Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 12: Building a Landing Page Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 13: Creating Plugins for WooCommerce Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 14: Next Steps with WooCommerce Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Other Books You May Enjoy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
(3 Ratings)
5 star 100%
4 star 0%
3 star 0%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
Mike Z May 05, 2024
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Love this book! It's not just the basics of WooCommerce, either! Goes into fulfillment, syncing product data, and even instore POS systems.I thought I knew everything about WooCommerce but the author, Patrick wrote about using social proof to create FOMO and thats when I knew this was a must read for all WordPress professionals!
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Stefani Koorey Jul 10, 2024
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
I have been following Patrick Rauland for a while now, watching and learning from him in his LinkedIn Learning courses on Ecommerce fundamentals, WordPress, SEO, and WooCommerce. Patrick used to work for WooCommerce so he is passionate about teaching the ins and outs of the plugin and the power of its application in the real world.This book, Mastering WooCommerice, is a go-to reference on the subject. It teaches us both the basics and the advanced features, guiding us through building (from scratch), customizing, and launching a complete Ecommerce website using WooCommerce.The book is brimming with illustrations, which enhances the learning experience. If you are a visual learner, like me, you will be especially happy with the way the book is designed and laid out.The only thing missing is information on how to test or implement WooCommerce if you are building a website locally before going live. A statement or two about this topic would have rounded out the book in a way that made it perfect for everyone building websites.Regardless, Mastering WooCommerce is a great addition to my web design/web creation library. I highly recommend it.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Bek Jun 28, 2024
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Since WooCommerce is a plugin that integrates with the broader WordPress ecosystem, it can be challenging for new builders to understand how to use it, how it fits into the broader WordPress site, and how plugins can be used to extend the site. I love that the book covers both helpful Woo plugins as well as broader WordPress plugins and features that can be leveraged to create a Woo site. There are actionable tips and tool recommendations for builders to start creating Woo sites — and even if you've built one before, you'll probably find a new trick or two. The only thing it doesn't cover much is advanced design, favoring details on how to use an existing theme.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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