Chapter 1. Setting Up WooCommerce

During the last couple of years, WordPress has outgrown any other Content Management Solution worldwide. Numerous websites are built using WordPress on a daily basis. WordPress is even popular among large companies. Currently about a quarter of all websites worldwide are powered by WordPress.

WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress that turns your website into a complete online store. Practically in minutes, but that doesn't mean that the solution is very limited. This book will show you what you can do with it. WooCommerce is a versatile plugin that gives the possibility for everyone with a little WordPress knowledge to start their own online store.

Originally, WooCommerce was derived from the Jigoshop plugin. The WordPress theme developers of WooThemes quickly brought the solution to a higher level and soon it became the most popular plugin for e-commerce within WordPress. In 2015, Automattic (the company behind WordPress) acquired WooThemes and WooCommerce. So we could almost say that WooCommerce has become the default ecommerce solution for WordPress now. At time of print WooCommerce is even powering 30% of all online stores worldwide.

In case you are not familiar with WordPress at all, this book is not the first one you should read. No worries though, WordPress isn't that hard to learn and there are a lot of online possibilities resources to learn about WordPress solution very quickly. Or just turn to one of the many printed books on WordPress that are available.

The following are the topics covered in this chapter:

• Setting up your test environment
• Installing and activating WooCommerce
• Using all WooCommerce settings
• Setting up Tax
• Adding WooCommerce pages to your WordPress menu