Server Requirements ↑ Back to Top
The first step in setting up your WooCommerce powered online store is of course installing the plugin itself. But before you do so, please check the minimum server requirements:
- PHP 5.2.4 or greater
- MySQL 5.0 or greater
- The mod_rewrite Apache module (for permalinks)
- fsockopen support (for payment gateway IPN access)
- (optional) An SSL certificate if you choose to install any direct payment gateways
- (optional) Some plugins for WooCommerce require CURL
- (optional) Some plugins for WooCommerce require SOAP
You should also check WordPress’ minimum requirements.
Installation ↑ Back to Top
Upon activation, WooCommerce will install several things that it requires to function correctly:
- Several new pages (for handling things like the shop, cart, and checkout)
- Custom post types and taxonomies for orders and products
- Several new widgets and shortcodes
- User roles for shop managers and customers
There are two WooCommerce installation options: Automatic or Manual.
Automatic installation
Automatic installation is the easiest option as WordPress handles the file transfers itself and you don’t even need to leave your web browser. To do an automatic install of WooCommerce log in to your WordPress admin panel and go to: Plugins > Add New.
In the search field type “WooCommerce” and click Search Plugins. Once you’ve found the plugin you can view details about it such as the the point release, rating and description. Most importantly of course, you can install it by simply clicking Install Now. After clicking that link you will be asked if you’re sure you want to install the plugin. Click “yes” and WordPress will automatically complete the installation.
It’s possible at this stage that you will be taken to a page requesting the FTP details of your webserver. This will be the case if you’ve not installed a plugin on this particular installation of WordPress before. If so, simply fill in your details to complete the installation.
Manual installation
The manual installation involves downloading the plugin and uploading it to your webserver via your favourite FTP application.
- Download the plugin to your computer.
- Unzip the file.
- Using an FTP program, or your hosting control panel, upload the unzipped plugin folder to your WordPress installation’s wp-content/plugins directory.
- Activate the plugin from the Plugins menu within the WordPress admin.
After you’ve installed and activated the plugin, be sure to select ‘Install WooCommerce Pages‘ to get started.
Upgrade Instructions ↑ Back to Top
As with installation you can choose to upgrade WooCommerce automatically or manually.
Please see our post here on how to best prepare your site before you upgrade to WooCommerce 2.0.
There are changes in WC 2.0 that may effect your custom CSS styling. After updating you may need to review your custom CSS classes to ensure those have not changed in 2.0.
Automatic Upgrade
After you backup your site go to Plugins > Installed Plugins within WordPress to view a list of plugins you’ve previously installed. If an upgrade to WooCommerce is available you will see a yellow notice beneath the plugin listing which states the point release which is now available as well as links to view the details of that version and to upgrade automatically.
To upgrade simply click the ‘Upgrade Automatically’ link. You may be asked for your webservers FTP details, if that’s the case fill them in to complete the upgrade.
Manual Upgrade
To manually upgrade WooCommerce: First, backup your site then download the latest version of the plugin from our WordPress plugin page and uploade it to the wp-content/plugins directory on your web server overwriting the old files.
WooCommerce Dashboard Modules ↑ Back to Top
The WordPress dashboard is usually the first thing you see when logging in. Upon activation, WooCommerce will install several dashboard widgets giving you an easy to access overview of your store.
To customise the displayed widgets, or adjust the number of widget columns, click “Screen Options” at the top right of the screen.
Right Now Widget
The default Right Now widget has been enhanced by WooCommerce to contain a statistical overview of your store. This is a also useful to view a count of orders with a certain status – this is handy since, for example, its likely you’ll want to take action on processing orders.
Monthly Sales Widget
The monthly sales widget shows sale quantities and amounts per month letting you monitor your stores performance at a glance.
The number of sales is plotted as a purple line, whereas the sales amount (the order totals) is green. If you hover over a point on the chart the exact amont will be revealed.
You can also go backwards in time by clicking on the month links at the top of the widget, and see how your sales improve over time. The current month is shown by default.
Recent Orders Widget
Shows a list of your most recent orders, as well as their order total and status.
Clicking on an order will take you to the view order page in admin.
Recent Reviews Widget
Show a list of recent customer reviews, as well as their star rating and which product was reviewed.
Clicking on a review will take you to the review on the frontend.
WooCommerce Menu Items ↑ Back to Top
Orders Section
The orders section is used for viewing and managing orders. You can also manually add orders from here.
For more information, see Managing Orders
Reports Section
From the reports section you can view sales, customer, and stock reports.
For more information, see Reports
Coupons Section
From the coupons section you can view and add coupons. Coupons can be used by customers on the cart/checkout for discounts.
For more information, see Coupon Management
Settings
Contains all the settings used to configure WooCommerce – this includes page setup, catalog setup, tax, shipping and payment gateways.
For more information, see Setting up WooCommerce below.
System Status
The System Status page is a useful reference when contacting support you can conveniently download the System Status Report and attach this to your support ticket. This will enable us to get an all-in-one glimpse at your setup should we need to assist with troubleshooting.
Products Section
Here you can view and add products, set up product categories and tags, add and configure shipping classes, and manage product attributes.
You can read more about this here: Managing Products
Configuring WooCommerce Settings ↑ Back to Top
Welcome to the WooCommerce command center. Inside this panel you’ll find all the core WooCommerce settings such as catalog settings, pages, payment gateways, shipping methods and tax rates accessible via the tabs at the top of the screen.
To configure your shop go to WooCommerce > Settings. Then browse through the tabs below to get more information on the WooCommerce Options.
Base Country/Region
This defines your shops base country (i.e. the country you are based in as a seller). It determines default tax rates and customer locations.
Currency
Choose the currency of the store
Allowed Countries
Here you can select whether you want to sell/ship to too countries, or a select few – useful if only trading within your own country for instance. Customers outside your allowed countries will not be able to checkout.
Specific Countries
Define the countries you’re willing to sell/ship to. You must set the “Allowed Countries” option to “Specific Countries“.
Store Notice
Enable site-wide store notice text by selecting the checkbox then editing your message below. This message will show up across the top of your site and can be stylized by adding the following class to your custom CSS: p.demo_store {background: white;} (for example)
Cart, Checkout and Accounts
Enable a coupon field or a comments field at the checkout and enable guest checkout (no account/registration required) or force secure checkout. If you select the option to force SSL/HTTPS an SSL Certificate is required.
SSL is a cryptographic protocol which provides communication security over the Internet. Shopping carts use this protocol to protect sensitive data typically gathered during the checkout process.
It goes without saying that if you’re using a direct payment gateway (such as PayPal Pro, which transfers credit card details) you must be using SSL and should be looking at PCI compliance.
Fortunately, SSL certificates are inexpensive and your host will be able to install one for you providing your server meets other security requirements.
Registration
Here you can allow registration on the checkout page or ‘My Account’ page and enable the option to register using the email address as the user name.
Customer Accounts
Choose whether to:
- Prevent customers from accessing WordPress admin
- Clear cart when logging out
- Allow customers to repurchase orders from their Account Page
Styling
Here you can enable/disable the default WooCommerce stylesheet or edit the styles colors.
Scripts
Choose whether to enable/disable the lightbox (enables on product images only). You can also enable the ‘enhanced country select boxes’ which will allow the country fields to be searchable.
Downloadable Products
Specify the method of delivering digital products. Forcing downloads will keep URLs hidden, but some servers may serve large files unreliably. If supported, X-Accel-Redirect/ X-Sendfile can be used to serve downloads instead (server requires mod_xsendfile). Redirect only
Catalog Options
The Catalog options allow you to adjust many settings for your shop pages. Here you can determine the ‘Default Product Sorting’ for your products by: custom ordering + name, popularity, average rating, or ascending/descending price.
Define ‘Shop Page Display’ to show products, sub categories or both as well as the ‘Default Category Display’. For example, if you have a t-shirts category, when a customer visits that page, do you want them to see the t-shirts category or subcategories or both.
Add to cart options include the ability to enable a redirect to the cart page after a product is added or whether or now you want to display the ‘Add to Cart’ buttons on the archive product pages.
Product Data
Here you can chose to enable product SKU / weight / dimension fields on the backend and whether to display that meta information on the frontend in the ‘Additional Information’ tab. You can also set the weight and dimension units of measure.
Product Ratings
Determine whether you would like to enable ratings on reviews, whether or not they are required when leaving a review and whether you’d like to show “verified owner” labels for customer reviews.
Pricing Options
Define where the currency symbol should be placed and other options such as the decimal separator and whether to remove the zeros or not.
Image Options
The image options define the size of your product images and thumbnails. Learn more about product image sizes here: Image dimension settings
After you have adjusted the settings, be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page to Save Changes.
Page Setup
Specify the base page for your shop, choose a title for it and specify your terms page (optional).
Shop Pages
Here you specify your WooCommerce specific pages. These will be populated by default once the plugin is activated should you choose to use the automatic set up option. You can change these pages to better suit your store.
Don’t forget to Save Changes!
Manage Stock
The main option on this tab is to declare whether your store should manage stock or not.
Hold Stock
New in WC 2.0! – You can now manage how long you hold stock for unpaid orders. When the customer adds a product to the cart, the stock is reduced and held for x amount of minutes before the item will be released from the cart and the item stock replenished. If you do not want this option, you can leave this field blank.
Notifications, Stock Threshold and Visibility
If Stock Management is enabled you can then define stock notifications for low / out of stock, set the thresholds and whether to hide products on the storefront if they are out of stock.
Finally, set the format for the stock status displayed on your shop.
Save Changes!
Tax Options
The tax tab lets you define the tax rates for your store and set up how tax should work. The tax rules system in WooCommerce has been built to be as flexible as possible to work with any country. Tax rates are applied based on the customer’s shipping address.
To learn more please go here: Setting up Taxes in WooCommerce.
Shipping Options
Here you can enable shipping sitewide. If you’re selling digital products, you may want to turn shipping off entirely. You can also enable the shipping calculator on the cart page or choose to hide the shipping costs until an address is entered.
Shipping Method Display
When a customer selects their Shipping Method Display you can chose to show a radio button or select box.
Shipping Destination
Next, define whether you will only ship to the users billing address (shipping address fields will be hidden at checkout), and whether you want to ship to the billing address by default (‘ship to same address’ box will be checked at checkout) or you can choose to collect a shipping address even when not required.
Shipping Method
Here you can also choose the default shipping method and drag and drop the preference of order you have for the various options to be displayed. To setup the shipping methods themselves please go see the mini menu just beneath the tabs:
Don’t forget to Save Changes!
Payment Options
WooCommerce comes bundled with PayPal standard and three offline methods (Cheque, BACS, Cash on Delivery & Mijireh Checkout). It can also easily be extended to integrate with dozens of other payment providers.
On the Payment Gateways section you can specify a default payment gateway (this will be highlighted first during checkout) and drag-and-drop to modify the order in which the payment methods appear on the front end.
Each gateway is configured separately, click on its name in the menu below the WC setting tabs to bring up each of the specific options.
Email Options
New in WC 2.0! – Now you will find many more options to customize your shop emails. Including sender ‘from’ name and email address, email template customizations, and response customization.
Email Template
Here you can add a custom header graphic to your store emails. A good width to make this image would be 600px. Upload your image via the Media Uploader, then copy the URL of the image. If you have any store specific information such as phone numbers or additional contact details these can be added to your email footer.
Best of all you can make the WooCommerce emails match your brand identity by modifying colours of certain elements. The background colour of these inputs matches your selection (in hex).
Order Status Emails
For each order status you will find additional options just below the WC settings tabs:
Each of these options allows you to enable notifications for the order status, manage who receives the notification, and to customize the message.
HTML Templates
WC 2.0 makes it even easier to customize your email templates by providing a quick link to copy the template file to your theme or view the template for customization! To edit the template go to the Order Status you wish you edit (New Order, Processing Order, etc) scroll to the bottom of the page to Copy File to Theme or to View Template.
Integration Settings
The integration tab is where you configure integrations with third party services (not including payment gateways / shipping methods) such as ShareThis, Google Analytics and ShareYourCart.
Google Analytics ID
If you want to use WooCommerce’s in-built support for Google Analytics enter your ID here. You can then enable standard tracking and eCommerce tracking.
ShareThis Publisher ID
In the mini menu beneath the WC Tabs you will see the ShareThis options. ShareThis will add social sharing buttons to the widget on the products page. To enable simply enter your ShareThis publisher ID.
ShareYourCart
To learn more about ShareYourCart please see the documentation linked within that tab.
Permalinks ↑ Back to Top
The Permalink settings in WC 2.0 can now be found in your Settings > Permalink menu. From here you can configure the URL structure for your shop and product pages.
- Whether to prepend shop categories/tags with shop base page (eg yourdomain.com/shop/product or yourdomain.com/product)
- The product category base slug (default is /product-category/)
- The product tag base slug (default is /product-tag/)
- Product attribute base slug will optionally use a custom base before /attribute-name/attribute/
Product Permalink Base
These settings control the permalinks used for products. These settings will only apply when not using ‘default’ permalinks above.
Installed Database tables ↑ Back to Top
WooCommerce installs a few custom tables during installation to store data.
- woocommerce_attribute_taxonomies - Stores user defined attributes which are used to create taxonomies.
- woocommerce_downloadable_product_permissions - Stores which users have permission to download products.
- woocommerce_termmeta - Stores termmeta and is used for the custom ordering of categories.
Tables will be removed when uninstalling WooCommerce only (not during de-activation).
Roles and Capabilities ↑ Back to Top
WooCommerce registers two user roles once activated, and grants additional capabilities to the admin:
- manage_woocommerce
- manage_woocommerce_orders
- manage_woocommerce_coupons
- manage_woocommerce_products
- view_woocommerce_reports
Customer Roles
A customer has read access only and is used if a user registers via the checkout process. They are equivalent to a normal blog subscriber.
Shop Manager Role (shop_manager)
Shop Manager is a role you can give to someone you want to manage the shop (if you don’t want to make them admin). They are granted the following capabilities:
- read
- read_private_pages
- read_private_posts
- edit_posts
- edit_pages
- edit_published_posts
- edit_published_pages
- edit_private_pages
- edit_private_posts
- edit_others_posts
- edit_others_pages
- publish_posts
- publish_pages
- delete_posts
- delete_pages
- delete_private_pages
- delete_private_posts
- delete_published_pages
- delete_published_posts
- delete_others_posts
- delete_others_pages
- manage_categories
- manage_links
- moderate_comments
- unfiltered_html
- upload_files
- export
- import
- manage_woocommerce
- manage_woocommerce_orders
- manage_woocommerce_coupons
- manage_woocommerce_products
- view_woocommerce_reports
Tweaking Capabilities
If you wish to modify roles and capabilities you should use a third party plugin such as Capability manager.
Installed Taxonomies and Post Types ↑ Back to Top
WooCommerce installs the following post types and taxonomies:
- Product (product)
- product_cat
- product_tag
- Product variation (product_variation – these are hidden from the UI)
- Shop order (shop_order)
- shop_order_status
- Shop coupon (shop_coupon)
