WordPress tutorial – WooComerce – Add a simple product (basics)

WordPress tutorial – WooComerce – Add a simple product (basics)

In today’s tutorial we will be adding a product to our WordPress website with WooCommerce.

First things first.  WooCommerce is a great e-commerce plugin for WordPress.  This article will assume you’ve already installed and set it up.

All of the steps are not technically needed, but I highly recommend you complete all of them for every article as this aids with usability, SEO, appearance and sharing to other platforms.

For more in depth training you can have a look at WooCommerce’ own documentation at: https://docs.woocommerce.com/

Let us get started:

Step 1 – Log into the admin module

Go to http://yourdomain.com/admin

Provide your username and password and click on log in.
You should now see the your dashboard

Step 2 Click on Products – Add New

Step 3 – Give your product a title

This is usually is the product name and can include the brand and model of your product or service.

Step 4 – Add the main content

This can be text, video, images, etc.  The interface works much the same as your basic word processing programs with a toolbar at the top that can be used to format text or insert content.  Here you can add anything from videos to full technical details

Step 5 – Choose your category

There can be more than one. This is especially useful if your website displays certain categories on different pages.  It is important to add a product to category. Depending on how your site is set up, your product might not display at all if it is not assigned to a category.

Step 6 – Add Tags to your product

This is comes in handy when a visitor searches for keywords.  Search engines also use this to categorize your products.post-tags

Step 7 – Set a featured image

Featured images is used when you share an article to social media like Facebook to give your post a better look.  It is the image that is displayed in search results and the first image on any page.

Step 8 – e-Commerce details

product-dataNow you can navigate to the “Product Data” just below the description.  This section contains multiple subsections that can be accessed by clicking on the tabs.

General:
Set the price and the sale price. If you add a sale price the product will automatically be displayed as a sale product. You can also schedule the sale. When the sale dates are set your site will automatically display the product as “on sale” between the selected dates.
Inventory:
WooCommerce is great at managing stock levels. You can also combine it with point of sale plugins that allows you to use your online shop as an in-store point of sale system.
Shipping
Add your product dimensions and weight information used for shipping purposes.
Linked Products
This is where you can add other products that the user might be interested in. Products in the same category will automatically be displayed as “related products”
Attributes
This can be very handy. You can add standard attributes like Manufacturer, size, technical specifications, etc. Depending on your theme this is usually displayed in a grid format.

Step 9 – Short description.

The short description is the description that is shown in the search results. Try to keep it to a single paragraph stating the most crucial information.

Step 10 – Publish.

wp-post-publish-01Publish your product by clicking on the publish button top right.

If you want to, you can post date or predate by clicking on “edit” next to “Publish immediately” and changing the date
When post dating, your article will only become visible at the chosen date and time.
After this step your article will be visible on your website.

WordPress tutorial – Add Portfolio Items

WordPress tutorial – Add Portfolio Items

Most premium WordPress themes includes a special post type called a Portfolio item.  This is useful for showcasing your services or previous projects e.g. Courses, building projects, software examples, etc.

The portfolio items is not displayed with other news articles in the news feed, but rather on a designated page set up by your website developer.

Step 1 – Log into the admin module

Go to http://yourdomain.com/admin

Provide your username and password and click on log in.
You should now see the your dashboard

Step 2 – Click on Portfolio – Add New

Step 3 – Give your Portfolio item a title

Your title should be descriptive enough to let a visitor know what to expect from the article

Step 4 – Add the content.

This can be text, video, images, etc.  The interface works much the same as your basic word processing programs with a toolbar at the top that can be used to format text or insert content.

Step 5 – Choose your category.

There can be more than one. This is especially useful if your website displays certain categories on different pages.post-categories

Step 6 – Add Tags to your Portfolio item.

This is comes in handy when a visitor searches for keywords.  Search engines also use this to categorize your posts.post-tags

Step 7 – Set a featured image.

Featured images is used when you share an article to social media like Facebook to give your post a better look.  It is also used in most themes when displaying a list of your Portfolio items.

Step 8 – Publish.

wp-post-publish-01Publish your item by clicking on the publish button top right.

After this step your Portfolio item will be visible on your website on the page designated for Portfolio.

Sharing your WordPress article to Facebook

Sharing your WordPress article to Facebook

The aim of sharing something from your own website to your Facebook page is two fold.

  1. Driving traffic to your website using social media.  When someone on Facebook clicks on your shared article they will be taken to your website.  This is great because since they are now on your website you can introduce them to other products and services you offer that they might not have been aware of.
  2. Reducing duplication of work. You don’t need to retype or copy and paste your news article, product information, announcement, etc. to another destination.

Facebook is very clever in making it very easy for you to share your article and automatically make it look good if you have set your article up correctly.

Hint: Always add a featured image to your news article, product, page, etc. in WordPress.  This will make your post look good.  Facebook will recognize that you have an image and include it in the post.  It will also include your title and an extract of the article.

There are 2 ways to achieve this

Option 1: Posting to Facebook from your website:

Most WordPress developers already include links in your website to share to social media.  They usually appear under your article or product and looks something like this (circled in purple).  This is an example of a news article.

sharing

When you click on the Facebook button, your browser will automatically go to Facebook and add the article to a new post.  It uses the Facebook account that you are currently logged into, so make sure you are posting as your page and not in your private capacity (unless that is what you want to do).

You have an opportunity to add some text or tag people like a normal Facebook post before finally completing your post.

After clicking on “Post” your item is available on Facebook.

Option 2: Posting in Facebook

The important part here is to find the url of your WordPress article (product, news, portfolio).
I used Google Chrome for demonstration, but you can use any browser you are comfortable with. They all work the same.

Navigate to the page/item you want to share and make sure it displays in the web page. This is what you want to open when a user clicks on your post. This works on any web page so you are not limited to only your own site.

Right click on the address at the top of the page and choose copy (make sure that the entire address is highlighted. This is your url that you will paste into Facebook.

share-url

In the image above the highlighted part is the url.

When you are logged into your Facebook page –

  • click in the Status window to start a new post
  • Type any text you want to add
  • Tag any people you want to tag
  • Right click at the point where you want to insert the url and select Paste.  On most browsers it will take a second or two and then give you a preview of your post including your featured image.
  • Click post

Your post is now visible on Facebook.

WordPress tutorial – Add events using The Events Calendar (plugin)

WordPress tutorial – Add events using The Events Calendar (plugin)

The Events Calendar is a WordPress Plugin that adds events to your WordPress site. To find more detailed tutorials from the authors click here

I will assume that your site already has the plugin installed and configured on certain pages.  This article will only deal with adding new events.  Adding an event is very similar to adding a new post.  In fact an event is just a very specialized post type.  It has added features that are specific to events.

Step 1 – Log into the admin module

Go to http://yourdomain.com/admin

Provide your username and password and click on log in.
You should now see the your dashboard

Step 2 Click on Events – Add New

Step 3 – Give your Event a title

Your title should be descriptive enough to let a visitor know what to expect from the Event.  It is the text that will be shown in all places where you share it.

Step 4 – Add the content.

This can be text, video, images, etc.  The interface works much the same as your basic word processing programs with a toolbar at the top that can be used to format text or insert content.

Step 5 – Choose your Event Category.

This will be set up by your website administrator, but you can also add to them.  Just keep in mind that there might be specific pages set up for each category.  In that case your new event might not display if you add your own category. There can be more than one. This is especially useful if your website displays certain categories on different pages.

post-categories

Step 6 – Add Tags to your Event.

This is comes in handy when a visitor searches for keywords.  Search engines also use this to categorize your events.post-tags

Step 7 – Set a featured image.

Featured images is used when you share an event to social media like Facebook to give your post a better look.  It is also used in most themes when displaying a list of your articles.

Step 8 – Set the event specific features

event-settings

The event details are fairly self explanatory, but I will focus on some key areas.

Location

Locations can be predefined or edited from the “Edit venue” link to the right of the location drop-down.  If you add all the information and enable the google map option, visitors can see exactly where the event will be held.  Be sure to check after publishing the event that the map indicates the correct position as the address is not necessary on Google Maps

Event Website

This can be any url.  If you do not have the Pro version of this plugin that connects to Facebook events, you could for instance add your Facebook event url here.  If this is a recurring event and you have a description of this event under another web page, you might also use this url to direct to the event.

Step 9 – Publish.

wp-post-publish-01Publish your Event by clicking on the publish button top right.

After this step your Event will be visible on your website on the page designated for events.

WordPress tutorial – Add a news post (basics)

WordPress tutorial – Add a news post (basics)

In today’s tutorial we will be adding a news article/post to our WordPress website.

Since almost anything in WordPress is technically called a Post, it may seem a bit ambiguous.  This stems from many years ago when WordPress was mainly a blogging platform.  Today WordPress is much more than that.  When I refer to a post, the news article or blog post is implied.  There are more than one way to do this, but for the sake of clarity and simplicity I will follow a procedure that, in my opinion is simple and standard.

All of the steps are not technically needed, but I highly recommend you complete all of them for every article as this aids with usability, SEO, appearance and sharing to other platforms.

Let us get started:

Step 1 – Log into the admin module

Go to http://yourdomain.com/admin

Provide your username and password and click on log in.
You should now see the your dashboard

Step 2 Click on Posts – Add New
wp-start-post-01

Step 3 – Give your post a title

Your title should be descriptive enough to let a visitor know what to expect from the article

Step 4 – Add the content.

This can be text, video, images, etc.  The interface works much the same as your basic word processing programs with a toolbar at the top that can be used to format text or insert content.

Step 5 – Choose your post type

If you are using a premium theme chances are that you have options like: standard, image, gallery, etc.  These types often have custom functionality that will be available once you have selected a type.

format-post

In the case above you will see a “Create Gallery” button after choosing the Gallery post type.  Click on this button and follow the screen prompts to complete the action.

Step 6 – Choose your category.

There can be more than one. This is especially useful if your website displays certain categories on different pages.post-categories

Step 7 – Add Tags to your post.

This is comes in handy when a visitor searches for keywords.  Search engines also use this to categorize your posts.post-tags

Step 8 – Set a featured image.

Featured images are used when you share your articles to social media like Facebook to give your post a better look.  It is also used in most themes when displaying a list of your articles.

Step 9 – Publish.

wp-post-publish-01Publish your article by clicking on the publish button top right.

If you want to, you can post date or predate by clicking on “edit” next to “Publish immediately” and changing the date

When post dating, your article will only become visible at the chosen date and time.

After this step your article will be visible on your website.

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