Monthly Tech-Tip | No tracking! No ads! |
WooCommerce running on the Wordpress platform is a common way to create an online store, it is more technical than some other options but it is also more flexibile. I want to be able to do something in my online store that no one else needs or wants to do. Let me explain.
Each mug description, as shown in the foreground page image, is complex having many links into digitalfire.com that explain details of how it was made (e.g. glaze and body recipes, techniques, firing schedules, etc). The description on all 200 of them is formatted exactly the same. Each has a link to the permanent registration page, at digitalfire.com, for that specific mug. Each has four Amazon-style product photos. Yet I did not enter any of these into the WooCommerce product dashboard - the complexity of doing that would have been impossible. There are two secrets to how I did this.
1. Notice the background image, that is a custom code database where I enter many details about every mug. A photographer, who has a separate login, takes the photos and uploads them to each mug. The search and bulk-edit tools in the database enable me to create consistency and accuracy.
2. Wordpress and WooCommerce both have an API. That means I can write code on the server hosting my database that talks to them through a back door. That code thus reads the data from my system and creates products on the WooCommerce site. It can also update products. It is remarkable to see it work!
Note: Don't buy any mugs yet, for now this is just a gallery. For some strange reason WooCommerce does not even have a setting for people like me that don't want to always sell!
URLs |
https://tonyhansen.com/pottery
Tony Hansen pottery mugs gallery/store (but don't buy yet) |
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