WooCommerce has arrived

This is just a quick overview of the new WooCommerce plug-in recently released by WooThemes.

Over a year ago, the guys over at WooThemes came up with an idea to create an e-commerce (EC) based plugin for WordPress (WP). There was immediately interest in a good EC plug-in for WP.

There are a few other recognised WordPress EC plug-ins on the market, with WP Commerce being the current market favourite.

When WooThemes announced that they were looking into releasing am EC plug-in their local theme community went nuts (I know I did!!). They have a great reputation within the WP community for their graphical & feature rich themes. I feel that anything these guys put their mind and passion behind is going to be nothing but brilliant!!

WooCommerce was launch this week and it’s a GREAT plug-in… and best of all IT’S FREE!!! I couldn’t believe that they were realeasing it as a free plug-in.

Here is their promotional video:

Customisation:

One of the great things that makes this plug-in so great is the amount of customisation (which we’ve come to expect from anything WooThemes do).

As you can see from the image above, you have full control over the Pages add by the plug-in, Catalog, Inventory (stock management), Shipping, Tax, Shipping Methods and Payment Gateways.

This customisation trend also extends to the creation of products:

Here you can see where you can add additional Product Catalogues, Tags and Attributes for your products in a dedicated products area of the Admin Dashboard.

Additions:

So, why did WooThemes release this as a free plug-in? I know that a lot of existing WooTheme clients (including myself) were more than willing to pay for an EC plug-in of this calibre . These guys aren’t stupid and when it came to releasing  WooCommerce, once again… there was a great thought behind it. – Release the major functionality for free and then have add-ons to enhance the plug-in. 

This is where the WooCommerce extensions come into play. Here they have additional functionality to extend the existing (free) functions of WooCommerce including additional payment gateways, shipping modules & others all individually priced.

In my mind, this was a great way to grow the WooCommerce foot print and allowing WooThemes to recoup some of the R&D costs that have gone into WooCommerce.

Summary:

OK, so what do I think of the latest WP e-Commerce plug-in release by WooThemes? In case you haven’t gathered my point of view so far… here’s a hint.

I think, as a 1.0 release, it’s amazingly good. It’s only going to grow and, in my opinion, become the top EC plug-in for WP.

This is a huge and personal thanks to all the Ninja’s at WooThemes for producing an amazing and free plug-in that I can’t WAIT to use!!