Hi guys! This is my first full wordpress website, i’m sharing how i did it below to maybe help someone
Used only Free plugins & theme.
**Theme**: Kadence basic theme (created a child theme with the *Child Theme Configurator* plugin to edit CSS and add Javascript)
**Plugins**:
|**Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce**|**Ajax add to cart for WooCommerce** \- Add things to cart without refreshing page|
|:-|:-|
|**Checkout Field Editor for WooCommerce**|**Customer Reviews for WooCommerce**|
|**Jetpack** \- contact forms, etc..|**Kadence Blocks – Gutenberg Blocks for Page Builder Features** \- Page Builder|
|**LiteSpeed Cache -** Cache and CDN |**Rank Math SEO** \- SEO|
|**Site Kit by Google** \- Analytics|**WooCommerce** \- e-commerce|
|**WooCommerce Payments**|**WooCommerce Shipping & Tax**|
|**WPC Fly Cart for WooCommerce** \- best free cart i found||
**Web hosting** \- Namecheap hosting & domain.
**Site speed:**
1- Don’t use cheap namecheap / godaddy hosting. Guys, no matter how good you caching and CDN is, it won’t fix slow hosting. I’m hosting my second WP website on AWS EC2 **(free plan)** and it’s way faster and smoother (youtube “How to Host WordPress on EC2” by Tony Teaches Tech).
2- For caching, CDN , image optimization, etc… i use the LiteSpeed Cache Plugin.
3- Don’t use *Elementor*. I found *Kadence blocks for Gutenberg* and IMO it’s better and doesn’t slow down the site as much.
**More details**
|Video Timestamp ↓|Description ↓|
|:-|:-|
|00:00 – General design / Blocks / Sections|Kadence blocks builder adds extra blocks to the normal WP editor. It’s really good. The theme customizer of Kadence Theme is really good and complete, even for the free version.|
|00:34 – Single product page|I wanted to customize the product page for free and without extra plugins, so i created an actual page manually for each product. Then, the original automatic woocommerce product page was turned into the review page. I’m pretty sure i wouldn’t do it like this in the future because its way more work, but it works :)|
|00:46 – Cart|This was the best free cart i could find. I added some javascript to the functions.php of the child theme to place it in the header navigation. Also customized the CSS a bit. But honestly, it’s not necessary, this cart can look good just with the default dashboard customization.|
|00:54 – Product archive|Made from scratch, like the single product pages. Same story.|
|01:08 – Account|Default woocommerce account page. Does the job so far.|
|01:23 – Checkout|Needed to add VAT number field. I set free shipping because shipping is hard to sync with the pacticular supplier im working with here (cjdropshipping).|
|02:01 – Supplier dashboard|Cjdroshipping seems to be semi-automatic. The order info goes from woocommerce to the cj dashboard, then you just have to select shipping type and pay for the supply/fullfilment. The cj tracking number syncs with the Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce plugin.|
|02:06 – Search|Edited css and php to display only products and blog posts. Otherwise it’s the default.|
|02:17 – Blog|Nothing special, default blog.|
|02:52 – Reviews|As i mentioned, this page was the original single product page. Edited it a bit with css and JS, left only the review part. Customer Reviews for WooCommerce lets you upload images, i made this field mandatory. Works like a comment on WP dashboard (discussion). Just a note: when the customer uploads an image, it takes a while to load and thats not obvious. I wrote javascript so that you can’t submit while it’s loading.|
|03:23 – Contact form|Jetpack plugin contact form block. Goes straight to the “Feedback” section of the WP dashboard. Same thing with the Returns and Complain form.|
|03:28 – Legal stuff|Returns / Business Details / Complaints / Terms and Conditions / Terms of Use / Privacy Policy / Cookie Policy. Inspired by the apple website policies.|
|03:53 – Mobile responsive|Pretty straight forward, a little bit of custom CSS but mostly you can make the site responsive on the block builder and theme customizer.|
Even with some coding experience, this took me 2 months to make and it was very painful, like walking on glass. It would have been 10x harder if the WP community didn’t exist, that’s why i’m sharing. I hope it helps someone.
I used to not like site builders but for solo devs / small teams, i’m convinced WP is very good. I learned alot.
You can ask stuff in the comments.
Cheers guys
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