Launching an Extension in the WooCommerce Marketplace

By Devin Price

I launched an extension in the WooCommerce Marketplace! It’s been three years since I came up with the initial idea and it’s exciting to see it being sold on WooCommerce.com.

For anyone interested in selling WooCommerce products, I wanted to share some thoughts on the process.

Coming Up With A Product

The extension idea originally came out of a client project. A company I worked with acquired a lot of their new customers through Facebook advertising, and they wanted a way to offer those new customers a big discount on their first purchase.

The first version of the extension took a couple days to build. It simply added a checkbox to the coupon editor for marking coupons as “new customer only” and validation on checkout. From that basic idea, I then started to add other restriction options I thought would be useful.

WooCommerce client work is great source of extension ideas because it requires solving a real need for a customer (and is something they’re willing to pay for).

To get the extension idea accepted to the WooCommerce Marketplace, I also had to prove that others wanted this functionality. Luckily, a number of people had also requested this on the WooCommerce idea board as well.

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WordPress is a Copy-Cat Business

By Tung Do

I know what you’re thinking. He doesn’t have the decency to save his rant until the weekends. How rude! On top of that, it’s a rant without images and links. I’m testing your patience. I know. On with the rant…

Now that WordPress copied Tumblr’s way of publishing with the addition of post format UI in the upcoming 3.6 release, we can all breathe a sigh of relief and kick originality out the freakin’ door. I’m not saying this is the beginning of a trend. It’s more like the last straw for innovative thinkers in the WordPress market.

Since the beginning of the WordPress economy back in… 2008-ish, WordPress and its community have been absorbing the best ideas from each other, other CMS, markets, and what have you into their own projects and into WordPress core. If your plugin is any good, it’ll show up in core and you can kiss your business goodbye. If your theme design is any good, a bigger theme company will copy and sell it to their own customers. It’s the nature of GPL. Continue reading →

The Trouble With No Grandparents in the WordPress Community

By Tung Do

Grandparents love us because they see an opportunity to correct their parenting mistakes. Unfortunately for you, you’re a WordPress child and when parents fight, there’s no one to run to. WordPress lacks grandparents, entities that have your best interests in mind and regardless of your behaviors.

WordPress.org Guidelines and Policies

There are pros and cons to the way WordPress.org and WordCamp (extension of WordPress.org) are run. I’m here to argue for neither. WordPress.org has the right to do whatever it feels as a website and organization. I deserve the same freedom on DevPress.com.

What’s troubling for me personally is how a massive site like WordPress.org continues to make decisions against the interests of the community without consequence. Every couple of years, something new gets established at WordPress.org. We’d argue about it at the expense of someone’s blog for about 100 to 200 comments and then learn to live with it without compromise.

Surprisingly, we have no influence on the hub we contribute to. It’s like an immune system trying to a keep a person alive, but he/she can’t stop getting sick. Even if it’s for a good cause like running for a healthier body, you shouldn’t run 20 miles on the first day. Maybe , you (WordPress.org) should learn to listen to your body (community).

Compromise and Take Care of Your Kids

That’s what parents do for the good of the family. Some suggests Automattic should create a 100% GPL compliant market to replace ThemeForest. That’s a no-no. When parents fight based on personal interests, they need to compromise, not win. When one side wins, you get even less freedom.

Create Grandparents

The WordPress community needs a new WordPress centric place to simply exist without strict guidelines.

  • a place to act as a hub for communication
  • an unbiased source where we can read the news, learn, and exist without the filters that are WordPress.org and Themeforest.net
  • a place to meet up for online events
  • and maybe a free market will grow from it without affecting the .org side of your WordPress life

Why do we, one of the biggest communities online, spread ourselves too thin across Twitter, Facebook, WordPress.org, Google Plus, etc.?