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General Discussion

Posted by Danny Lee
Danny Lee
660 Points

Wordpress

Hi, I already built my own website using wordpress and I bought a theme from online vendor so my site looks great. I know how to modify css code using firebug. My site is ready to sell products.

I still need some more functionality for my site such as color swatches, payment gateways, site secure,etc. I understand that the best way to get those on my site, just buy the plugins or get some free plugins.

So my question is " is there any way that I can build those kinds of functionality?" Currently, I am learning the basic website from scratch. To get my site set up like what I have right now, I feel like it's gonna take too long. Can I jump to the main part that I need?

I don't know how to start. Please guide me!

Any help is appreciated!

3 Answers

Colin Marshall
Colin Marshall
32,861 Points
Colin Marshall
Colin Marshall
32,861 Points

You certainly could build those things into the site yourself scratch, but at your experience level it would take quite awhile to learn all the things you need. The quickest solution I would recommend is using the WooCommerce store plugin for WordPress. It's free and has tons of great extensions for payment gateways and additional store features. Your store will be up and running within a matter of minutes if your theme is setup to be compatible with WooCommerce. If the theme isn't setup for WooCommerce, it sounds like you could handle the custom CSS it would take to get your store looking proper with your theme.

WooCommerce

Treehouse Workshops - How To Build An Ecommerce Site Using Wordpress & WooCommerce

If you really want to learn how to make a custom store website then you could follow the Become A PHP Developer Learning Adventure here on Treehouse.

You would have to start the site over from scratch though since this is not for WordPress, it is a custom PHP application, so your theme is not going to work. In order to build WordPress plugins you need to know PHP so this Learning Adventure would get you prepared to do custom WordPress work, but you still need to take your knowledge a step further and learn how to manipulate WordPress using custom PHP and javascript.

Are you trying to be a web designer/developer or just trying to build an online store for your business? If you're just trying to build a store, just use WooCommerce. If you're looking to be a developer, there are no shortcuts you can take so you just gotta learn it all.

Danny Lee
Danny Lee
660 Points
Danny Lee
Danny Lee
660 Points

Thank you so much for the useful information. I really appreciate that. Now I'm sure how to start.

Regards, Danny

missgeekbunny
missgeekbunny
37,033 Points
missgeekbunny
missgeekbunny
37,033 Points

I'd actually advise to also follow the learn wordpress learning adventure maybe even doing that first. Wordpress has some special things that don't exist outside of it. I couldn't understand it fully until I came here but I did build a whole website through php before joining.