After introductions among a dozen folks we learned we had a mix of developers, users, and those curious about WooCommerce.
WooCommerce
David Long is talking about his experience with WooCommerce and WordPress. WooCommerce (WC) is the rare, really solid WordPress plugin that is used to create online stores using WordPress. David had a client with an existing website with static pages and lots of tables. His task was to convert the site into a catalog/shopping site. The client didn’t want financial transactions, so WC was used a customer ‘request for quote’ system. No prices! The products required an interaction between the client and customers before a sale. David had to customize WC a lot to turn off checkout, shipping but that’s what is great about WC. He used TablePress for converting grids of data into product lists. Excel data was transformed into tables and then integrated into WooCommerce. David went over the administrative backend of WooCommerce looking at settings, products, orders. The customer had a lot of requests and customizations which lead to 41 active plugins, a very high number, yikes. David was very happy with the plugin that does rollbacks (WP-Rollback). The combination of the complexity of WC and all the plugins can lead to incompatibilities when there is an update. Rolling back is a great tool for that situation.
Amanda Giles was up next to show up some code used with WooCommerce. Amanda likes all the customizable templates in WC. Amanda is not afraid to roll up her sleeves and get into the code. We went over all the action hooks and filters (100+) in the templates that allow a programmer to change what’s output, and how the data looks in the existing templates. Figuring out what template is being used by WC is half the challenge before making a change. WC is solid product and will be around for a while. It was just purchased by WordPress.com and WordPress team members are taking rotations through WooCommerce learning the code.
Next month the group will return and hear a talk about the WordPress JSON REST API done by yours truly.