Earlier in the week we released WooCommerce 1.4 baked in to which there are a butt-load of new features and code improvements/optimisations.

But that’s not all, we also improved our support resources dramatically with the addition of two new sections on the WooThemes web site;

1. A Dedicated WooCommerce Documentation
2. A Community Forum

The new documentation suite is a big improvement on the restrictive Codex we had previously. Running on our own Wikeasi theme it’s now much easier to browse/use, and more importantly it is much easier for us (and our third party developers) to update. The user guide is now rich in detail, the snippets library expanded and the core functionality of the plugin better documented. Eventually, all WooCommerce extensions will be documented here also. This is a resource that will grow over time and become a cornerstone for those looking to build WooCommerce stores, or extend WooCommerce itself via plugins & themes.

The community forum is a big one for us, as all our support forums were only accessible to customers. However, with a large number of users using WooCommerce on it’s own, we wanted to give them a platform to discuss the plugin with their peers, showcase their work and generally get in touch with the growing WooCommerce community.

What’s next?

It’s certainly been an exciting week for us, and with 1.4 out the door we will be aiming to increase momentum as we go into February. Indeed we have some awesome extensions coming this month plus a new theme or two. Stay tuned!

Pretty straight-forward, but quite a neat solution I think!

Here’s the end result;

And here’s the CSS to achieve it (don’t forget to add vendor prefixes if you use this);

/* Layered Paper */
.layers {
	text-align: center;
	padding:1.618em;
	margin-bottom:1.618em;
	font-weight: bold;

	background: #eee;
	box-shadow:
		0 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.15), /* The top layer shadow */
		0 10px 0 -5px #eee, /* The second layer */
		0 10px 1px -4px rgba(0,0,0,0.15), /* The second layer shadow */
		0 20px 0 -10px #eee, /* The third layer */
		0 20px 1px -9px rgba(0,0,0,0.15); /* The third layer shadow */
}

Enjoy!

It was an exciting moment for me personally as I designed the theme myself from the ground up. The Markup is valid HTML5 and CSS3 has been used throughout to reduce bandwidth consuption, improve accessibility and achieve some neat little animations.

Best of all Argentum is fully mobile optimised, truly putting your WordPress shop in the hands of your customers.

Take a look at the demo or buy Argentum now.

If you use the coupon ARGENTUM11 you can get an 11% discount off this theme. Woo!

In seven days we’ve seen:

• ~5000 downloads
• 190 support requests relating directly to WooCommerce and it’s associated themes & extensions
• Thousands of positive tweets
• 1 feature on a little known tech blog

There have also been favourable words from some prominent figures in the WordPress community:

“Great stuff from the Woo team here. I’ve code reviewed quite a bit of it and I’m comfortable saying WooCommerce is the best WordPress-native e-commerce solution available. I’m convinced enough that we’re switching to it from another e-commerce solution on a project that’s already months into development.”

Alex King – Crowd Favorite

“Would I recommend WooCommerce to others? Yes I would.”

Ben Townsend – wpcandy.com

“One of the best things about the back-end of WooCommerce is that it blends in seamlessly as if it were part of WordPress all along. They did a great job of using existing elements that are supported within WordPress such as the tabs, file uploader, and my favorite little feature, the calendar. I only referred to the readme file once during configuration…I was able to configure WooCommerce without any issues.”

Jeff Chandler – WPTavern

So by-and-by I would say it has been an extremely satisfying launch. Let’s see what next week holds!

Today, those products have been officially launched. I’m extremely excited and proud of what we’ve achieved in so little time, and can’t wait to carry on the evolution of the WooLabs. So go check it out.

Onwards!

I should have written this post a couple of weeks ago but frankly I’ve been too busy. Here’s why;

During August I was given the incredible opportunity to join WooThemes, a company I’ve admired for years on a permanent basis. I happily accepted the offer and officially started on September 1st.

My role at Woo is to head up their “Labs” division. This will involve pioneering new technologies in app and eCommerce themes as well as managing the direction of the much anticipated WooCommerce plugin alongside my good buddy Mike Jolley.

I’m extremely excited to get back into the challenge of designing products rather than one-off web sites. That creative freedom has always brought the best out of me ever since I dipped my toe into this industry nearly 10 years ago.

Inspiring

We work away on our own projects in our own little bubbles day in day out. We use Twitter, Facebook Google+ and other social networks to interact with our peers online. But nothing compares to that physical contact with others who share your passion. I met so many people as passionate about WordPress as I am, great designers, great developers and great businesspeople. It was a massive inspiration to simply be in that same place, and feed off the positive WordPress vibes.

Humbling

When Mike and I were on the way down we hypothesised how we might react to anyone who had witnessed our work. To my great surprise, almost everyone we talked to were familiar with us in one way or another. Not only that, Jigoshop was even mentioned in some of the speakers keynotes. Wow.

Will I go back next year?

I learnt so much but more importantly I feel as though I made friends. It’s great to get a taste of how many people there are out there, all dedicating time to supporting, enhancing and even earning a living using WordPress. Will I go back next year? Hell yeah!

SupportPress

Following in FaultPress’ footsteps, SupportPress is a theme which creates a help desk / knowledgebase application using WordPress core functionality.

FaultPress is focused on tracking bugs and developing a product as a team by fixing those bugs along the way. SupportPress is different in that it’s priority is creating a knowldegebase for your users. They can refer to this pool of information which will lead to the resolution of  a large number of problems and frequently asked questions. The knowledgebase itself grows organically with the resolution of newly reported issues with your product and as users vote up (or down) helpful (or unhelpful) knowledgebase entries.

In laymans terms, your users can submit problems, incidents and questions in the form of tickets. These are then acted upon by your designated agents who can delegate reported issues as tasks between other team members. They can also interact directly with the user to resolve any issues.

There’s a bunch of other cool features such as internal messaging, a smart dashboard, announcements and full mobile optimisation.

If you’re looking for an affordable and effective way to support your product in a contained environment then I’d definitely encourage you to take a look at SupportPress.

You can also get a cool 11% discount if you use the discount code “SUPPORTPRESS11” so go buy SupportPress now and I’ll be your best friend.