The Products block represents stage one of a project we’re affectionately referring to as “Wootenberg”—the preparation of WooCommerce for the arrival of the Gutenberg editor.

Gutenberg?

If you’ve missed it, Gutenberg is a brand-new, visually-driven content editor being built for WordPress and scheduled for inclusion in the 5.0 release. Read all about it and download the latest version of the Gutenberg feature plugin.

What is the Products block?

Essentially, the Products block is a modern version of the Products shortcode, built for the Gutenberg world we’re all soon to move in to.

The Products block provides an intuitive user interface for inserting products from a variety of sources, then delivers an accurate preview of how that selection will look when published. You’ll also be able to fine-tune the appearance of those products by adjusting the layout and ordering.

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Dedicated WordPress users have probably heard about Gutenberg, the revolutionary new editor currently in development as a feature plugin and scheduled for inclusion in WordPress version 5.0. It transforms the way we edit content of our WordPress websites by providing a richer “block”-based experience.

Put simply, a block is any single element of content – an image, a paragraph or a YouTube video – and blocks can be quickly configured and built into immersive page layouts and designs. This is a comprehensive maturation of the visual editor as we know it and creates a truer WYSIWYG experience.

Gutenberg will transform the way we edit the content of our WordPress websites by providing a richer “block”-based experience.

One thing that isn’t yet 100% clear is how complex plugins like WooCommerce will work with Gutenberg.

Our design team has explored and experimented with adding product Blocks (recent products, featured products, etc.) to posts and pages. But as you’re well aware, publishing products should be a very different experience to authoring a blog post.

As a release candidate approaches, Gutenberg will enable us to mimic that rich blog authoring experience for products. How might that look?

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If you’re using our Storefront theme for WooCommerce, you’ll be excited to learn that version 2.0 has just become available for download. If you’re not using Storefront already, now would be a great time to take a look at our flagship WooCommerce theme!

Storefront 2.0 is a major release and brings various new features including a greatly improved handheld experience, a refreshed design, a new product section on the homepage, full compatibility with the upcoming WooCommerce 2.6 and more!

Here’s a closer look at what we’ve added to this update.

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The last major release of Storefront saw us add many accessibility improvements and achieve the “accessibility ready” tag on wordpress.org.

That release went a long way towards making Storefront a more rounded solution for store owners looking to make their online shops accessible to the widest audience possible. Storefront 1.5 carries on that theme of enabling, and achieves another coveted tag on wordpress.org.

Here’s a look at some of the biggest chances in Storefront 1.5.

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We recently released our first premium Storefront child themes, Galleria and ProShop. These, coupled with the two child themes already available for free on wordpress.org (Boutique and Deli) takes our total up to four, a number we hope will grow rapidly in the coming months.

But you may have questions about this. What is a child theme and why should you use one? How do they change the look of a WordPress site? And how should you go about modifying a child theme to preserve all your changes even when there’s an update?

We think we can help. Here’s a little more about how child themes work, why you should use them, and what you should keep in mind when modifying them.

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The search algorithm update that Google began rolling out on April 21, 2015 was dubbed “Mobilegeddon” due to its focus on delivering better results to visitors using the service on smartphones and other mobile devices.

Sites that are deemed mobile friendly get favorable search engine rankings in comparison to those that are not. Given how abundant mobile traffic is these days, this is significant, especially if:

• Your website offers services or products that people are likely to search for on their phones, and/or
• You have a significant volume of mobile traffic already.

It’s worth ensuring that your store is mobile-friendly, including your theme

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The ‘accessibility-ready‘ tag on the theme directory at wordpress.org is still quite young, but it’s still a shame to see that in a catalog of thousands of themes, only a handful are considered accessibility ready.

It’s probably not the first feature developers consider adding to their theme – we’re guilty of it ourselves. But when you think about it, it’s probably one of the most important features of all. Consider the purpose of your web site. If your design doesn’t meet certain accessibility standards then it’s never going to fulfil it’s purpose at maximum efficiency. Perhaps worst of all, if your web site is your business (IE an online shop), then you’re potentially losing business. Nobody wants to lose business, right?

Enter Storefront 1.4

We’re proud to announce that Storefront 1.4 meets the criteria required to be assigned the accessibility-ready tag on wordpress.org. If you’re using Storefront, hit that update button (remember to test first) then pat yourself on the back, you just made your site that bit more accessible.

So what did we actually do? Truth be told, Storefront itself was already doing a good job on the accessibility front, there are several significant improvements though.

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If you pay close attention to the new themes released over at wordpress.org you may have already noticed that earlier today the first official Storefront child theme “Boutique” went live and is available for download.

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In the Storefront lookbook we explore different aesthetics you can create using Storefront core and the optional extensions available for purchase.

The following designs can be created without touching a single line of code and help demonstrate the creative power that Storefront and it’s suite of extensions provides. In volume 1 we’re looking at the shop page in particular.

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We don’t plan to do this every week but thought it would be nice to roundup what’s happened in the seven days since we launched Storefront, our free WooCommerce theme. Overall reception has been really positive, in the comments on WooThemes.com, the reviews on WordPress.org and in the larger community.

We’ve racked up almost 10,000 downloads and 13 five star reviews (yeah ok, some of them were us) and Storefront has been mentioned on:

• WP Tavern
• SellWithWP
• WPMusketeer
• WPDailyThemes

As of today we were just 300 downloads away from being featured in the ‘Popular Themes’ list on wordpress.org/themes. For now we’ll have to make do with being at the top of page 2. Not bad after one week!

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Today we’re proud to announce Storefront, a brand new theme that marks the start of an exciting chapter in the WooThemes adventure! Storefront is a lightweight, flexible, free WooCommerce theme and is available for download right now on WordPress.org.

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Many of our themes include a “Business” or custom homepage template that allows you to create a traditionally laid out landing page giving visitors and overview of your business. This is a good starting point however sometimes you might want some more flexibility to create truly unique layouts.

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Late last year we announced the launch of the WooCommerce developer blog which has grown in to a fantastic resource for WooCommerce developers.

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You’ve probably already noticed that our product strategy has deviated to separating features & code wherever possible, shifting our functionality into plugins, rather than bundling into each theme. Keeping everything lean makes managing the different components that make up a web site much easier for you, and for us as well. It also ensures your data is portable, which aligns with a core WordPress philosophy. Win/win/win. The release of Projects, our portfolio plugin is another big step in this direction.

Projects allows you to add simple and versatile portfolio functionality to any website. Inspired by the success of WooCommerce, Projects features a similar templating engine, high level of flexibility and extensibility whilst remaining lean and easy to use. Publishing and managing your projects online is a breeze.

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This week we’re launching 4 new WooCommerce extensions (including a FREE Amazon payment gateway!). We’ve also got some significant updates to 3 payment gateways. First up is Amazon Pay, the first free payment gateway, brought to you by WooThemes and Amazon.

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Summer has arrived! Over here in the UK we’re experiencing a phenomenon of a heat wave, so, what better way to celebrate than with BBQs, cold beers, and new WooCommerce extensions, right?!

Hot off the presses this week we’re releasing some exciting extensions which offer;

• RMA management (Manage, Sell, Facilitate Easy Returns and Warranties)
• Automatic PDF invoice creation
• Authorize.net reports (direct to you inbox)

Take a look and remember to let us know your favourite:

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