We’ve been in-undated with emails, tweets and blog comments on the expected release date of our much anticipated e-commerce WordPress WooThemes. This post sheds some light on the progress we are making, to keep our community of users in the loop, and not create any false expectations of a unrealistic delivery date.
Nearly there
We’ve been working on the e-commerce themes for a good few months now and made solid progress, BUT not without hiccups along the way! We’ve worked with some great developers on the e-commerce framework, but the sobering news for our eager early adopters is that the project has been larger than we originally anticipated – given our very high standards, and us not wanting to put our names behind something that is only half baked.
We now have the super-talented Melburnian Anthony Cole and his team of code wranglers tying up the loose ends, as we speak. We hope to have delivery of the framework by the end of next week, after which we’ll be entering into the stringent beta testing phase.
We already have 4 pixel perfect e-commerce themes designed by Chris Rowe, Jonno Riekwel, James McDonald and our very own Magnus “The Magatron” Jepson in html/css format – eagerly awaiting their transformation into WooThemes. Please note I’ve specifically linked to their Dribbble pages as you might find some hints of the designs there.
In other good news
The good news is that a few of these e-commerce themes have been sent off to other pixel mechanics to port to other platforms too. Behind the scenes there has been a lot of action. If all goes according to plan one of these platforms we are hugely excited about will be announced next week. The other will follow suite a *few* weeks later…
We hope this blog post serves the community a realistic time frame you can expect the WordPress WooThemes in, and helps answer some of those tweets/emails and blog comments.
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Thanks for the update.
I may have missed this previously: Are you planning on supporting subscriptions as a feature?
Most probably not in the first version.
Huge expectation from you, I am sure you guys comes up with a gem and start ruling in this niche as well.
Holy crap. This is gonna be awesome.
It looks amazing guys!
This looks great. Can you say how the payment aspect will work with a WordPress theme, I mean how will you be able to link the shopping cart / checkout to an actual payment process such as PayPal?
That’s all taken care of by the e-commerce framework/engine.
Impressed I am 🙂
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but what exactly will this (these) themes do ?
As in, do they have their own e-commerce ‘engine’ or are they themes designed to work with existing WP e-commerce plugins ?
TIA, Dave
Hi Dave,
They’ll have their own e-commerce engine, no third party plugins required.
Thanks for the update everybody. I’ve been eagerly waiting as I have a number of sites that need e-commerce. Any chance you could include one more in the stringent beta testing phase? It would be nice to get a head start on the holiday season by getting an early feel for the framework.
Really appreciate the updates!
I’m really curious about what the other platforms might be!
I guess Magento!
Let’s say a guy has an existing website using the Headlines theme. Will there be a plugin that would allow this person to add a little ecommerce to the existing site?
Great question. If so, I can get going now knowing that I’ll be able to plug in woocommerce in the future.
Really good question. I’d like to know too.
It is a plugin, so yes this will be possible, although maybe not in v1 of the plugin 🙂
Thanks for the update, can we cross the fingers for Santa Claus?
Definitely!
This a great news and the design hints looks super slick!
Will the e-commerce framework delete product images from the server whenever a product is deleted?
The upload functions offered in the WooFramework don’t currently do this (but has been recently taken under consideration) so I’m really curious if this fundamental clean up function will make it into the e-commerce framework.
That will depend on if we get Foxinni to develop some new functionality in the framework, so hopefully we can have this in place too.
My fingers are crossed so tight that I can hardly type this reply 😀
Thanks Magnus!
I have a project in urgent need of updating that’s screaming for this! Really looking forward to it…
@Dave: Ein Gruß nach Ausgsburg!!!
@Thomas: Hopefully you’ll be able to purchase some FCA fan shirts via a WooThemes ecommerce store soon! (via Australia!)
@Dave: via Austalia? We are in Italy!
@Thomas: I’m in Australia, generations before me from Augsburg!
Question or two…
1. As you mentioned this is a plugin, is this going to be some offer like Obox was or is it a Woothemes product that members will be able to get and not have to buy from a third party?
2. Why start from scratch and not go with a proven plugin thats already available? There are several on the market already that are highly usable and can be expanded upon with added features.
3. What level do you expect this plugin to be at in the initial release ie. will it handle numerous payment processors, will it do coupons, wholesale pricing and so on and so forth.
thanks for clearing these things up and thanks for all you do 🙂
1. The plugin will be a Woo plugin and most likely integrated with theme at launch and later made available for purchase seperately.
2. Because we wanted to author the plugin ourselves so we have complete control. Support is the main issue, and supporting 3rd party plugins is not fun.
3. It should handle some/all of that, although I haven’t seen all of the functionality. But the key here is that we can improve on that from version 1.0 with feedback from our users, something that wouldn’t be as easy with a 3rd party plugin.
No doubt you guys picked the solution that was right for you. I’m just a little surprised you didn’t opt to collaborate with one of the already established eCommerce solutions for WordPress out there, seeing as outsorced / decentralized collaborations seems to be almost like a field of expertise for the WooThemes crew.
We did look at this, but we wanted to build something in-house as this was the best overall solution for us.
WOWOO just keeps getting better…<3
写的真好，我收è—了。谢谢啊~~
As someone who is itching to join your Templates Club but is considering other options, can you tell me if the price of club membership will go up after the release of this new plug-in and associated templates? Basically, should I buy now?
No the club membership price will stay the same, so you can buy when you want to join 🙂
So is all of this e-commerce magic available through the club dev subscription? Or just upcoming themes?
The e-commerce themes will be available in the club subscription. The functionality is only available in the specific e-commerce themes, not all our themes.
Now I can do everything on WP platform thanks to WOOThemes, other plugins and themes are not good like WOO.
I think it’s a great strategy to have total control over your e-commerce plugin and be able to integrate it into your own themes.
I’ve tried virtually every plugin ie; Shopp, Wp-ecommerce, Market Theme, E-Junkie, Ecwid and more.
All of these have their pros and cons and some much more difficult to utilize and customize for us non-programers. Not to mention update issues being a constant. If your new e-commerce themes/plugins are as intuitive and innovative as your current back end, they’ll be a wave of users surfing for joy!
Hey guys this upcoming feature set looks like its coming on.
As a subsciberI have been waiting for a decent theme from you for it seems an age. I check daily waiting for something of use and value for my USD.
For my money things have slowed down and your competition is kicking your ASS! New theme providers are coming and they have better designs, more short codes, more functionality and more creativity.
You have some cool additions like the side bar, woo menu, clean code and flexible framework* but lets be honest your themes are over priced and getting vanilla. I plan to download the themes i have access to zip them up on my maching and save the $15 USD a month because its adding up and I feel i have had no value from you in months.
Lots of teasers and upcoming features and buzz but it all seems like hot air to me.
A year ago you where killing it – now your putting me to SLEEP!
I’m sure we won’t disappoint with some of the upcoming themes 🙂
I wanted to add that the only reason i didn’t pull the plug $80 a go was that i was hoping for a turn of events because if i leave and you bring out a killer then i either pay the whopping single license fee or have to sign up for the club again.
I’ve read some good stuff here. Definitely worth bookmarking for revisiting.
How does the theme handle taxes? Is it possible to show prices including taxes or are they added to the price? In Europe there is a legal requirement to show prices including taxes. Will this be possible?
What is rough estimate until the theme is ready 😀
Any idea on a time frame for the first release? 1-2 weeks 3+ weeks, longer???
It’s going to a bit of a wait still unfortunately and will be released “when it’s ready” 🙂