Is WooCommerce plugin compatible with Genesis themes?

[Gordy]

Can somebody who have used or is using WooCommerce plugin please tell me if the plugin is compatible with Genesis themes. I am using the old streamline theme and I would like to use an ecommerce plugin on my site.

I would also appreciate any tips and caution on this.

http://www.afroscandic.com

[Au Coeur]

Yes! I use it on client sites all the time. There is a plugin "Genesis Connect for WooCommerce" which allows you to do things like specify sidebars and layouts, but WooCommerce will function just fine without it.

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Mother. Web & Graphic Designer. Lactation Consultant. Blogging about how it all fits together, most recently from northern Colorado. Visit my blog or my design site.

[Gordy]

Thanks.

But, I read a lot of negative comments about BIG problem people encountered whenever they update the plugin with a new update. The review is here : http://wordpress.org/support/topic/woocommerce-plugin-is-destroying#post-

Please, what can you say on this and advice?

And

Is “Genesis Connect for WooCommerce” a Genesis plugin like other Genesis plugins? or it just bears that name?

[Summer]

First, that support thread was started by someone who actually got themselves blocked by the WP.org mods... that's kinda impressive in my book, and I'd really take it those complaints with a salt lick. Look through some of the other support threads and reviews to compare.

Me, I personally don't use WooCommerce because of the bait & switch price change tactics and for all the add-ons you typically have to buy in order to make WC work as a fully functional ecommerce solution, but there aren't many others here who feel that way. As a tool that works, I haven't heard anything all that bad in that arena (beyond the usual scripting conflicts, anyway); my gripe is with the Woo tactics as a business.

Second, yes, if you want WooCommerce to integrate a little better with a Genesis child theme, then using the Genesis Connect WooCommerce plugin will help ease some of the CSS pain you might otherwise encounter.

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WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After Dark

[Gordy]

Thanks for sharing this.

And finally on making a good choice for an ecommerce plugin.

Being aware of WooCommerce price tactics, but would I still be able to use the free features to make a simple but complete online transaction - product appears on my website, somebody can pick it and add to shopping cart, and pay to complete the process?

Otherwise, may be I should look at "Easy Digital Downloads", where somebody here in the forum said this"Easy Digital Downloads is great if you don’t have a full blown eCommerce site and just want to sell some digital products." - Brad Dalton though in April 2013, which might not be still be true now.

And some people also mention Cart66

What can you say/advise finally on making a good choice. I just need something simple that would be almost free, but that would complete a transacting process.

[Au Coeur]

As I stated, I have used woo commerce on multiple client sites with no problems either at integration or later with updates. These are two recent sites if you want to look at them: http://WWW.danceypantsdisco.com and http://WWW.hydrexphilathropic.org. they are small sites.

Most of my clients use PayPal to accept payments, the Hydrex site uses authorize.net to process payments on site. That did require us to purchase a WC extension. I can see how if you need to do a lot of specialized things it can get expensive to purchase all of the extensions, but if not you might be able to use just the free version. Several of the eCommerce sites I have built using this have required no extensions. When a site does require me to purcashe something then I pass that cost onto the client. Even if they have to spend $200 up front, it is still less expensive than many shopping cart solutions, many of which require monthly payments for the length of use. I can hardly complain about an initial fee up front for a plugin that is so valuable and which is going to make me/my client money.

You can do instant downloads/virtual products with the free version of WC.

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Mother. Web & Graphic Designer. Lactation Consultant. Blogging about how it all fits together, most recently from northern Colorado. Visit my blog or my design site.

[Summer]

@Gordy, what type of products are you intending to sell? Physical goods, digital goods, or a mix of the two? Will these be affiliate sales, or products you are shipping or drop-shipping?

Are you looking for a suggestion on ease of use, performance, support? There are a lot of variables involved in your question that can only be answered by you 🙂

I would look through the features of the different potential solutions, and see which one fits your particular store needs best.

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WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After Dark

[Gordy]

@Summer, you are very right - there are many variables that would determine the best option. And at the same time, as I need to look at the present need, I need to think of the future as well because, it's challenging to change from one plugin to another, most especially for people like me who are not good at coding. But, I would give you a little insight into where we are now and where we might be heading to.

We have a media platform with some readers and we have just released second edition of our print magazine. So primarily, we would like to be able to sell both the print and digital magazine from the website.

And since we also have a plan to use the opportunity to sell physical products to our readers and probably to allow some people who might not want to pay for advertisement both in the print magazine and on the website, to place their products on our website, so that if people buy from our website, we get commission for each sale.

So, I might say that it will be for : Digital - to sell both the digital and the print magazine, and as a media platform, we might be able to place books from other authors for sale, and we might want to sell tickets for events etc

And for Physical products : we might want to sell physical products to our readers, which can attract more readers to the site and vice versa. We intended to place the ecommerce under a menu called "Marketplace"

And it's difficult to answer these : "use, performance, support" because, I would say all 3 are needed, as am not good at coding, I need something easy to configure, we want a relatively good performance, and with good support as well. I would also like a payment processor that can accept credit card for people who might not have a Paypal account.

Somebody suggested WP eStore and when I checked it on their website, it looks good with the one time fees of $50 but, I am not sure how true the features will function.

[Summer]

I have used WP eStore in the past, and I didn't have any problems with it. Haven't used it in a few years (that site is no longer a client of mine), but if the right situation came up, I'd consider using it again.

Cart66 seems to be moving towards a cloud-based solution that integrates into WordPress, and I really want to play with it, see what it's all about, but you have to spring for the $25/month, no trial period or anything.

I've also used MarketPress from WPMU.

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WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After Dark

[Brad Smith]

I've done several B2B customer-specific commerce sites with Genesis & WooCommerce. I used the ClipCart theme from Themedy as I thought that was the only theme which worked with WooCommerce & Genesis.

We do custom work and have a lot of variations. We needed to offer many many options for most every item. Our work is unique from client to client. So yeah, a lot of moving parts.

A commerce site with many options requires a lot of server memory. Server settings were changed to accommodate these memory requirements. Did not have to pay any additional hosting fees just change from the standard settings. WooCommerce has this well documented... if you are willing to follow instructions.

WooCommerce variations allow multiple choices for an item. Example: t-shirt color, t-shirt size and shirt graphic choice. Each variation can display a unique image. As the visitor selects from each choice the image updates. Very nice.

As for WooCommerce pricing the basic cart is free and offers quite a bit. Our requirements meant paying for features to better serve our customers. Some examples:

• Auto-calculate a discount based on variation quantity (blue t-shirt), item quantity (t-shirt) or category quantity (shirts).
• Hide pricing from those not logged in. Our pricing is customer-specific and therefore confidential.
• Auto-pair items. Include element-A with element-B. Pairing can be suggested or mandatory.
• Some items require a text input to specify details. This input can be a file upload, checkboxes, text box or a drop-down. Can be mandatory or optional.

So yeah it does add up. However, these add-ons seem to be priced fairly.

Woo support recently had some turnover which created a measurable response delay for a period. Unfortunately that coincided with a panicky low-point on my end so its unfairly magnified in my mind.

Their support form is brilliant. It forces you to partially walk through your issue. In a few cases it was resolved and I cancelled out of the form submission. For support they request an admin login to look inside your site.

Every support response has been spot on - I think 3 or 4 so far. In no case did I receive, or thought I received, a boilerplate response. Always thorough and easy to follow. I did receive a poor-quality response one time but it was because I did not clearly identify the issue - obviously no fault on their part.

When shopping for a commerce product consider the support reputation as part of the total cost because it matters.

[Gordy]

Thanks. I just checked Easy Digital Downloads plugin and I can see that they have a lot of tutorials to make life easy and I would want to give it a trial.

But, am still checking to confirm if I can also sell light physical product like a print magazine with it.

Does anybody know?

[Gordy]

@Au Coeur, thanks for sharing those beautiful websites. I have now decided finally to go for WooCommerce and I just installed few minutes ago.

I am using the old version of Streamline Version 1.0.1 must it a must that I need to place add_theme_support( 'woocommerce' ); into the functions.php file?

Please advice

[Au Coeur]

You only need to use that if you want to install the genesis connect plugin.

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Mother. Web & Graphic Designer. Lactation Consultant. Blogging about how it all fits together, most recently from northern Colorado. Visit my blog or my design site.

[Gordy]

Ok. But, do you use "genesis connect plugin" for these sites:

http://WWW.danceypantsdisco.com and http://WWW.hydrexphilathropic.org.

And are there many disadvantages not to use it?

[megaking22]

hi experts, i am using mystile from woocommerce, i use it as a store selling clothes, however i am thinking of either buying more wocommerce plugins, such as sliders etc or buying genesis. i want to upgrade so my site will look better and so i can have more control.
i am not certain if genesis will work with mystile, or if i will lose some of my content due to changing themes. i have heard that genesis has got its own ecommerce type plug in called executive pro but am not certain. please can you give me some advise

thanks

[Au Coeur]

@Gordy, Sorry I didn't see your question before. Dancey Pants Disco uses Genesis Connect, Hydrex does not. The main thing that I have noticed the plugin doing is enabling the use of simple sidebars.

@megaking22, executive pro is not a plugin, it is a theme. If you want to use Genesis, then you need to use a genesis child theme.

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Mother. Web & Graphic Designer. Lactation Consultant. Blogging about how it all fits together, most recently from northern Colorado. Visit my blog or my design site.

[Gordy]

@Au Coeur , thank you for getting back.

I have now successfully installed the plugin. And apart from the simple sidebars as you mentioned, it enables me to choose a full width layout on the product page.

But, the only issue now is that, the product image size is too BIG. I have tried everything I can to set it to a thumbnail size but it is not working.

I would be very grateful if you could give me some direction on how to have the product image display in a thumbnail size. The link is : http://afroscandic.com/product/magazine-second-edition/

[Au Coeur]

Have you read through the WooCommerce documentation or posted in the support forums over there? You are starting to drift away from Genesis issues...

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Mother. Web & Graphic Designer. Lactation Consultant. Blogging about how it all fits together, most recently from northern Colorado. Visit my blog or my design site.

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