How to Install WooCommerce on a WordPress Website @ TwentySixForty

Tutorial Overview.

This tutorial will explain what WooCommerce is, what kind of things you can sell with WooCommerce, how to install it with WordPress and how to set up the navigation menu.

Quickies.

What is WooCommerce?
What Type of Products Can I Sell with WooCommerce?
How to Install WooCommerce.
How Do I Add WooCommerce Pages to the Website Navigation Menu?

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is a free, open-source, eCommerce plugin that integrates easily with WordPress giving your website a fully functional eCommerce store. It is by far the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress and some sources say that over 40% of all online stores use WooCommerce.

What Type of Products Can I Sell with WooCommerce?

WooCommerce can sell these types of products out of the box:

Simple Products
Grouped Products
Virtual Products
Downloadable Products
External Products
Variable Products

WooCommerce has a very powerful payment engine allowing it to do much more than sell physical products. With just a couple of additional plugins, WooCommerce can do memberships, subscriptions, bookings, auctions, drop-shipping, and many other things. You can even use it to integrate your website with Amazon Store and Facebook Store.

For detailed information about the different product types, check this out: How to Make WooCommerce Products.

How to Install WooCommerce on a WordPress Website?

This tutorial is for WordPress.org websites not WordPress.com websites.

Go to your WordPress website and log in to the Admin area.
In the Admin area, click on Plugins > Add New in the left side menu.
Use the search box in the upper right corner to find the WooCommerce plugin.

Click on Install Now.

woocommerce plugin install now

Click on Activate.

woocommerce plugin install now

Go through the setup wizard and follow the instructions.

woocommerce store setup

woocommerce payments setup screenshot

All of these settings can be changed later so don’t worry if you need to skip something.

woocommerce setup shipping screenshot

woocommerce recommended plugins screenshot

You should really consider installing Jetpack on your website. Some of its features include security scanning, spam filtering, site statistics, automated sharing on social media networks, SEO tools, a CDN for images and many other benefits.

jetpack woocommerce screenshot

Now that you have WooCommerce set up on your website, you can start making products now or come back to that in a while.

woocommerce start selling screenshot

Now you will have two new menu items in the Admin area of your website: WooCommerce and Products.

You will also have some new pages that WooCommerce automatically creates for you. If you click on Pages in your admin menu you will be able to see the new pages. These pages may or may not automagically show up in the navigation menu on the front end of your website but I will show you how to set that up below if needed.

woocommerce default pages screenshot

Depending on your WordPress settings, you may or may not see the new WooCommerce page links on your website’s front end navigation menu. If you don’t see them, continue below.

I usually add the Shop and Cart pages to the main navigation menu on my website. I also usually put the My Account page in the footer or somewhere other than the main navigation but this is completely up to you.

How Do I Add WooCommerce Pages to the Website Navigation Menu?

Login to the Admin area of your website.
In the Admin area go to Appearance > Menus.

If your website has multiple menus be sure to select the correct one.

In the Pages panel select the pages you want to add to your navigation menu.
Click Add to Menu.
Now your pages have been added to the Menu Structure panel on the right.

You can drag and drop them into the order you want.
Click on Save Menu.
Next to Display Location select Primary and you will see your new menu items in the main navigation on the front end of your website.

The next step is to make some products and you are much closer to selling stuff on your new online store. Check this tutorial How to Make WooCommerce Products.