Quick Start in WooCommerce with CodeLobster IDE

Quick Start in WooCommerce with CodeLobster IDE

Even a small business can now stand out from the competitors, look authoritative and earn loyalty by creating its own marketplace.

E-commerce sites are the most dynamic resources. After the launch of the site, development does not stop and elaboration is ongoing. Many businesses just can’t sell their products without the help of programmers.

In this article, we will look at the popular WooCommerce plugin and show you how to work effectively with it in CodeLobster IDE. With this extension, you can build your WEB store from scratch or turn an existing WordPress blog into an e-commerce site.

If you already have PHP programming skills and an understanding of WordPress principles, but have not worked with WooCommerce yet, this article will give you a quick start.

Using WordPress and WooCommerce for an Online Store

Probably, you have already read a lot of cases about the successful creation of online stores on WordPress. You can safely choose it as a platform for online trading. This is a fairly secure system for building resources of this type.

Every modern IDE primarily implements good WordPress support and CodeLobster makes it easy to deploy a new project on WP.

You can use an existing code or install the CMS using the wizard. You only need to enter the administrator data and the server address to connect to MySQL.

WordPress is very popular among programmers. The main code of the system is a good code, it is logical and clear. And unlike site users, it is important for the developer on what code the backend runs on.

In addition, there is a full and convenient admin panel, it feels thoughtful and complete, here are some of its advantages:

• Easy intuitive content management - a great interface for the site administrator and owner is created;
• Integrated search and quick installation of additional plugins or themes;
• Automated update of the system core and all installed extensions.

WooCommerce is delivered as a plug-in, it is an add-on to the main system and its functionality can be extended with other plug-ins.

WC instantly adds all the components that turn a regular site into an online store: product pages, a shopping cart and payment methods.

With WordPress, your opportunities are unlimited - continue to develop your corporate blog, publish reviews of new products, announce promotions and other events. Content management features will help you run effective marketing campaigns.

In addition, WooCommerce helps you to avoid common difficulties when selling over the Internet:

• There are plug-ins to speed up and simplify the purchase process, for example, the ability to pay without leaving the product page, this will help get rid of the problem of abandoned carts;
• It makes it easier to search for products and quickly offers alternatives if the product is not in store;
• There is a lot of payment methods, the store owner can easily set up and offer their customers a simple and fast checkout process.

WooCommerce allows you to sell physical or digital products and engage in any type of commerce, regardless of your target audience. You can also accept payments and provide subscription-based services.

Using WooCommerce Functions and Hooks

A developer who is familiar with the concept of WordPress will quickly figure out how to customize WooCommerce, since the plugin is easy to configure and its code is fully extensible.

A PHP programmer can use WooCommerce functions and classes. Thanks to them, you will get access to global variables, settings and all other resources that the WC interacts with.

Use the autocomplete when working with these functions, press Ctrl + Space when entering the function name, or Shift + Ctrl + Space to get a hint about parameters.

For example, we have demonstrated the following code:

//Get WC_Order object by order ID
$order_id = 55;
$order = wc_get_order( $order_id );
//Get customer ID
$customer_id = $order->get_user_id();

wc_get_order() is used to get the order object “WC_Order”, from which you can extract any data of the order, for example, find out the buyer’s ID.

You can instantly move to the function definition if you click on its name while holding down the Ctrl key. This approach will help you understand in detail how functions work in WC.

When you only need to quickly refresh in memory the purpose of any method and find out which parameters to pass to it, pay attention to the tooltips that appear when you hover the cursor over an element in the code.

Hooks, such as Actions and Filters, are widely used in WC. Interception points have already been added to the plugin’s source code.

If you select “do_action” or “apply_filters” in the file, the editor will highlight all matches, these are the hooks that developers everywhere used in their code.

Actions and Filters save us from having to directly edit the base code, so that you can safely update the extension after completing your work.

You can use Actions to display additional markup. You just need to find out their location in the files that are responsible for displaying the frontend. Filters are used for processing or analyzing data, for example, when you need to change an array or object before using it.

Creating your own plugin is the best way to customize WooCommerce. This can be done in just a couple of minutes, for example, using the convenient extension “Pluginception”.

Write your own function and register it using the add_action() method:

In the same way, we can add the necessary functionality to the file “functions.php” in our theme.

You will save a lot of time if you use the dynamic help system when working with WordPress and WooCommerce in the CodeLobster IDE.

As soon as you start entering your code, the IDE automatically selects links to official documentation for all functions and objects.

Go to the “Dynamic Help” tab on the right panel of the program and click on the appropriate link to start studying the documentation in the browser.

Overwriting Template Files in WooCommerce

WC has its own template system - many of the files we need are located in the “wp-content/plugins/woocommerce/templates/” folder.

To start working with templates, create a “woocommerce” folder in the folder with your theme. Now you can place templates in it, while maintaining the “templates” directory structure from the original module.

You can directly insert HTML, plain text or PHP code into template files by enclosing it in “<?php? >” tags.

In this example, we took a file “wp-content/plugins/woocommerce/templates/cart/cart.php” and placed it in the theme we plan to work with. The path is “wp-content/themes/storefront-business/woocommerce/cart/cart.php”.

Now the standard template for displaying the Cart page has been rewritten and all the changes we made will be taken into account.

Let’s Summarize

To quickly implement new digital solutions with WordPress, you need a reliable and functional IDE. Codelobster comprehensively supports this system and other popular CMS for all business tasks: Joomla, Drupal and Magento.

We have all seen the challenges faced by entrepreneurs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The main problems were associated with a sharp change in demand for various categories of goods, as well as with flaws in logistics.

Those who were prepared for a sudden increase in the number of online orders received unexpectedly high profits. And now all site owners are well aware that their online business will continue to work successfully even after the end of the quarantine.

Businesses will rush to strengthen online sales, automate routine processes, maximize the use of cloud technologies and change the model of interaction not only with customers, but also with their own employees.

WEB developers will have to solve most of the upcoming tasks, so be prepared for serious work and for the appearance of many interesting projects soon.