December 4, 2014

Upgrade Your Contact Form With Ninja Forms

This is post 11 of 31 in the series “Blogging for Hippo”

A month long blogging contest leading up to the release of WooCommerce 2.3 Handsome Hippo.

If you've been in the WordPress space for a while it's pretty likely you've run into Contact Form 7 at some point. It's pretty much the go-to form for new users and honestly for what it does – it isn't bad. The UI isn't amazing but it's a good starting point and it's totally free. If you're like me and you want to keep your costs low and you're just getting into WordPress it definitely isn't a bad choice. But there are better alternatives out there and some of them are totally free. The one I'll be talking about today is Ninja Forms.

December 3, 2014

How to Export WooCommerce Subscriptions

This is post 10 of 31 in the series “Blogging for Hippo”

A month long blogging contest leading up to the release of WooCommerce 2.3 Handsome Hippo.

To date I've written 160 posts and in all of those posts I can't remember recommending a product on Code Canyon or ThemeForest. It's not because they don't have good products but because it's the wild west of programming. When you walk into town you don't know if you're going to walk out with supplies or a bullet in your gut. There's a plugin on Code Canyon I've been meaning to look into for over a year and I finally bit the bullet and gave it a go. All in all – it's actually pretty good.

December 2, 2014

Adding Social Media Icons to WooCommerce Product Pages

This is post 9 of 31 in the series “Blogging for Hippo”

A month long blogging contest leading up to the release of WooCommerce 2.3 Handsome Hippo.

You can find a gazillion social media sharing plugins for WordPress. Unfortunately not all of them work very well with WooCommerce. Some of them don't work at all, others put the icons in the wrong part of the page, or they put them on the page multiple times. As a store owner this can be a bit frustrating. Luckily one of my favorite plugins, Jetpack, has some pretty great social media sharing built it and with a little tweak we can make it look beautiful on product pages.

December 1, 2014

How Hard Can Membership Be?

This is post 8 of 31 in the series “Blogging for Hippo”

A month long blogging contest leading up to the release of WooCommerce 2.3 Handsome Hippo.

Normally I say great things about WooCommerce, not because I have to but because it's really awesome. Today though I found something that wasn't very awesome. Actually that's too nice – it sucks. Have you ever tried to create a membership site with WooCommerce? It doesn't seem like it would be that hard right?

November 30, 2014

Build Resources From Support

This is post 7 of 31 in the series “Blogging for Hippo”

A month long blogging contest leading up to the release of WooCommerce 2.3 Handsome Hippo.

Some people think that support is this giant black hole where you throw money to make sure customers don't hate you. That belief is why so many companies have such crappy support. They do the bare minimum to make sure their customers don't leave. I guess I understand this line of thinking but it rubs me the wrong way. While you can put in the bare minimum you could invest in your support and build resources and useful assets for future projects. With our upcoming WooCommerce 2.3 release we did just that.

November 29, 2014

Give Yourself Space

This is post 6 of 31 in the series “Blogging for Hippo”

A month long blogging contest leading up to the release of WooCommerce 2.3 Handsome Hippo.

One of the points that I keep coming back to over and over again is to give yourself space. You need space to think and process new information. If you're so busy with day to day work for 8 hours a day you're going to miss opportunities. Being a remote worker have given me a lot of freedom to create the schedule that works for me and today I thought I'd share it with you.

November 28, 2014

Be Thankful for the People Who Inspire You

This is post 5 of 31 in the series “Blogging for Hippo”

A month long blogging contest leading up to the release of WooCommerce 2.3 Handsome Hippo.

It's the day after Thanksgiving but I haven't quite finished thanking people yet. Yesterday I talked quite a bit about the awesome financial base my parents provided me today I want to focus on the people that inspire me. It took an army of people to get me fired up about life and simply put: without these people I wouldn't be where I am now.

November 27, 2014

Give Thanks

This is post 4 of 31 in the series “Blogging for Hippo”

A month long blogging contest leading up to the release of WooCommerce 2.3 Handsome Hippo.

At various points in my life I've felt like I'm on a conveyor belt.

And I think I've felt this because my life has been so… easy. It's weird to say that. It kind of makes it sound like I haven't done anything with my life. For most of your life you're in school. College is a thing people are doing now-a-days so I might as well go do that, and then after college I applied for a job and the manager graduated from the exact program several years earlier. Boom – first adult job just like that. It almost happened automatically. It feels like all I had to do was keep my arms and legs on the conveyor belt and I would have eventually wound up there.

A few years later I'm the product manager for WooCommerce, the most prolific e-commerce platform, holy shit – how did that happen!?

November 26, 2014

The Problem with Focus

This is post 3 of 31 in the series “Blogging for Hippo”

A month long blogging contest leading up to the release of WooCommerce 2.3 Handsome Hippo.

In the past year WooThemes has grown significantly. We've scaled up to the point where team members can focus on one aspect of the business and not have to pay attention to everything else going on. This brings some pretty huge advantages with a dedicated person pushing through projects that someone who's spread out on multiple projects could never do. But with it comes hyper-focus where someone will focus on their aspect of the business without knowing (or caring) how it affects other aspects of the business.

November 25, 2014

Schedule Sales with WooCommerce

This is post 2 of 31 in the series “Blogging for Hippo”

A month long blogging contest leading up to the release of WooCommerce 2.3 Handsome Hippo.

It's Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving and three days before Black Friday when stores all over the US both online and brick and mortar stores have massive sales. If you're a store owner you've most likely been planning promotions for weeks. One of the logistical issues that a new store owner might run into is how you're going to schedule sales ahead of time so that you don't have to wake up at 4am to change all of your prices.

Here it is Black Friday and Cyber Monday approaching. I want to run a sale. But I can't do it in advance without starting the sale the day I set it up. So instead of a 3 day sale, I have to run a week or a two week sale (I'm going to be gone over Thanksgiving!) which basically defeats the whole idea of a Black Friday Cyber Monday sale.

I received this feedback from a customer and thought it was worth highlighting one of those little features in WooCommerce that make it truly awesome.

Patrick's Programming Blog

Build cool stuff. Share cool stuff. Repeat.

Archives

Upgrade Your Contact Form With Ninja Forms

How to Export WooCommerce Subscriptions

How Hard Can Membership Be?

Build Resources From Support

Give Yourself Space

Be Thankful for the People Who Inspire You

Give Thanks

The Problem with Focus

Schedule Sales with WooCommerce