WordPress Tutorial: Building and Managing Your Online Store

Posted on May 6, 2024 in Design and Engineering

UNIT 4: WORDPRESS

Adding Products to Your Online Store

  1. Install and activate the WooCommerce plugin.
  2. Navigate to the “Products” section under the “WooCommerce” menu in your dashboard. Here, you can view existing products, add new ones, and manage categories, tags, and attributes.
  3. Click “Add New” to create a new product. Provide a title, description, and product data, including price, inventory, and shipping details. You can also set product categories and upload images.
  4. Use the “Publish” button to make your product live on your e-commerce site.

Testing Your Online Store

To ensure your e-commerce functionality is working correctly, add a product to your cart, proceed to checkout, and complete a test purchase using the “Test mode” payment method.

Creating a Navigation Menu

  1. Go to “Appearance” – “Menus” in your dashboard and click “Create new menu”. Name your menu and click “Create Menu”.
  2. Select the pages or sections you want to include in your menu from the left panel. Click “Add to Menu” to confirm.
  3. Set your newly created menu as the main navigation by going to “Menu Settings” and selecting “Top Navigation”. Save your changes.

Working with WordPress Templates

  1. View available templates by navigating to “Appearance” – “Themes” in your dashboard. The active theme, “Twenty Twenty-Two”, includes pre-designed block patterns for easy website building.
  2. Customize pre-defined block templates using the block editor to create unique page layouts.
  3. Access and modify the template for your homepage by going to “Appearance” and selecting “Home/page”. You can also edit the header and footer from here.
  4. Browse all available templates by clicking “Browse all templates” or navigating to “Templates” in the left sidebar. These templates can be customized to fit your needs.
  5. Under “Template parts”, you can find and modify individual template components, such as headers and footers.

Creating Buttons

  1. Add a new block and select the “/button” option.
  2. Customize the button’s settings, including text, color, and style, in the “Block” section of the left panel.
  3. Link the button to another page by clicking the link icon in the bottom menu and entering the desired URL. You can also choose whether the link opens in a new tab or the same window.

Adding Social Media Icons

  1. In the footer section, add a new block and select “/social media icons”. Choose the desired social media icons.
  2. Add links to your social media accounts by clicking the “+” button within the block and entering the URLs for each platform.
  3. Ensure that links to external websites, including your social media accounts, open in a new tab. This can be set in the “Link settings” section of the left panel.
  4. Consider saving your social media block as a reusable block for future use.

Creating a Scrolling Anchor

Note: The provided instructions for creating a scrolling anchor are incorrect. Here’s the correct method:

  1. Identify the section you want to link to and assign it a unique ID. For example, add “id=”tips”” to the section’s HTML tag.
  2. Create a link or button and set its href attribute to “#tips”. This will create a link that, when clicked, will scroll the page to the section with the corresponding ID.

Creating an Interactive Map

  1. Add a new block and select the “/map” option.
  2. Enter the desired address in the “Address” field within the block settings on the right panel.

Creating a Slideshow

  1. Add a new block and select the “/slideshow” option.
  2. Upload or link the images you want to include in your slideshow.

Embedding a Figma Prototype

  1. Obtain the embed code from your Figma prototype.
  2. Add an HTML block to your webpage and paste the embed code into the block.

Creating a Privacy Notice in the Footer

  1. Create a new page for your privacy notice by going to “Pages” – “Add New” in your dashboard.
  2. Add the content of your privacy notice to the page and customize it as needed. Do not include this page in your navigation menu.
  3. Copy the URL of your privacy notice page.
  4. Go to “Template parts” and edit the footer. Add a new text block with the text “Privacy Notice”.
  5. Link the text to your privacy notice page by clicking the link icon in the block settings and pasting the URL.

Creating a Form

  1. Install the WPForms plugin.
  2. Add a new block and select the “/WPForms” option.
  3. Use the settings panel to customize the form’s design and functionality.