WooCommerce 3.0 “Bionic Butterfly” was released today with significant improvements to the product gallery and developer tools. This version, which was previously going to be 2.7, is the first major release since the plugin switched to semantic versioning. It was released after more than three months in beta and an extended RC testing period that…
Last week Automattic published its annual “Year in Review” stats, including WooCommerce stats for the first time since the company acquired Woo in 2015. As of December, there are 1,594,894 active stores using WooCommerce and roughly 1/3 of those (530,000) are new in 2016. One of the most exciting areas of growth is WooCommerce’s global…
In Rainmaker.fm’s recent interview with Matt Mullenweg, StudioPress founder Brian Gardner confirmed that the company has put WooCommerce compatibility on the roadmap for its themes, starting with new products first. The “unofficial announcement” was not a secret, as Gardner has been hinting at it on social media and also posted a sneak peak on Dribbble…
WooCommerce, which powers more than 37% of all online stores, announced today that the plugin now integrates with the millions of offline stores that use Square for payment processing. The new Square for WooCommerce extension tracks and syncs payments and inventory for products sold via online and offline stores. Before agreeing to work with Square…
When Adii Pienaar, Magnus Jepson, and Mark Forrester created WooThemes in 2008, they never envisioned a future where the lion’s share of the company’s revenue would be derived from e-commerce. After establishing WooThemes as a major player in the WordPress themes marketplace, the company’s founders launched WooCommerce with the goal of increasing revenue by selling…
Jason Coleman, creator of the popular Paid Memberships Pro plugin, published a post today, warning users that many payment gateways will soon require TLS 1.2. The encryption protocol secures communication between the server and customers’ browsers so that things like credit card numbers and addresses can be transferred safely. Coleman outlined the requirements that a…
After five months in development and 1700 commits from 25 contributors, WooCommerce 2.6 “Zipping Zebra” is now available. This release introduces a new feature called Shipping Zones, which allows store owners to have more flexibility in pricing shipping based on location. It is now possible to create zones that group continents, countries, states, and zip…
Storefront, the official WooCommerce theme built to work seamlessly with the plugin, has just passed the 2.0 milestone. This release introduces a new “best sellers” section to the homepage and adds compatibility with the upcoming WooCommerce 2.6’s tabbed “My Account” section and the average rating widget. The most important update in Storefront 2.0 is the…
WooCommerce is the current leader in e-commerce software, capturing 31% of the market, thanks to its relatively user-friendly interface and connection to WordPress. However, setting up a WooCommerce site, or any e-commerce site for that matter, is not for the faint of heart, no matter how user-friendly the software. It requires knowledge of hosting, PCI…
Shopify announced today that the company is jumping into the WordPress market with a new official plugin and three WordPress themes. The Canadian company captures just 8% of the e-commerce technology market share, trailing WooCommerce (31%), Magento (19%), OpenCart (11%), Prestashop (10%), and others (13%). The new Shopify Buy Button plugin is intended for users…
Bob Dunn, a WordPress educator better known on the web as BobWP, is launching a podcast for WooCommerce store owners. “Do the Woo” will air weekly on Wednesdays with tips and tricks to help store owners attract more customers. Dunn plans to host guests involved in WooCommerce development, as well as store owners who will…
Last week WooCommerce announced on Twitter that its Stripe payment gateway is now a free product. Prior to this decision, it was priced at $79 for a single license, $99 for up to five sites, and $199 for up to 25 sites. Exciting product announcement from @stripe (which is also now free for WooCommerce, woo!)…
WooCommerce is currently the most popular way to add a store to WordPress. Its usage is on the rise and seems to be growing in tandem with global WordPress usage. Wappalyzer estimates a 31% marketshare in the e-commerce category and BuiltWith has WooCommerce at roughly 29% among other shopping cart technologies. Either way you slice…
WooConf 2016, a conference devoted entirely to WooCoomerce, will be held in Austin, Texas on April 6-8th. Recaps from those who attended in 2014 are all agreed that this is one conference you don’t want to miss if you work with WooCommerce. The event attracts a healthy mix of entrepreneurs, developers, designers and consultants. The…
StackExchange community members have proposed a new Q&A site for users and developers of WooCommerce. The proposal is currently in the “Definition” phase, which means that participants are working to design the community by proposing hypothetical questions that embody the topic’s scope. So far for WooCommerce, popular hypothetical questions include: How do I handle the…