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Product short versus long descriptions

Man at a desk wearing a button shirt showing his hand writing in a journal in front of a laptop that has what could be a product title, subtitle, and description on the screen

I see clients get this wrong all the time. It sounds so simple, but apparently it isn’t! As I work to figure this out, I’ll post my observations. Here’s examples I’ve come across in client product catalogs: Missing short descriptions Long descriptions placed in the short description area Duplicate descriptions, merging short and long content […]

WooCommerce Subscriptions for rentals

For Rent sign in a store window

We recently launched a project that utilizes WooCommerce Subscriptions, in particular variable subscriptions, to achieve rental management. This makes for an interesting use case of the official Subscriptions add-on. WooCommerce Subscriptions is a large application. It’s quite popular, reasonably well documented, affordable, and critical for businesses that rely upon recurring revenue and automation. Using this […]

WooCommerce Action Scheduler bloat

Hand with old fashioned stopwatch timer

Action Scheduler is an open-source library for WordPress in use by premium plugins that perform sometimes heavy, time based operations. Here’s some things to be aware of, especially for WooCommerce sites.

Dealing with Elementor bloat

Screenshot fo Elementor Builder

There is a performance cost to operating a page builder, Elementor being no exception. This effect can be mitigated by paying careful attention to the following.

Browser-safe fonts and page performance

Comparison chart of font styles between browser synthesis and actual font styles between weights 300-800 and italic versus normal

Fonts are one of the more critical web page performance items. Some sites load unnecessary fonts, font styles, font formats, failing to set them to load in display:swap mode, or failing to declare the unicode-range to load. Any of these can deteriorate performance. Twenty fonts most devices already have There’s no need to load the […]

Hello Elementor and goodbye bloated themes

Hello Elementor theme screenshot showing placeholder contents in a mock web page layout

My favorite WordPress and WooCommerce theme nowadays is Hello Elementor. It’s more of a theme placeholder than a traditional theme really. Haven’t you heard? Themes are dying!

Importing customer and order histories into WooCommerce

Abstract image of color cut outs partially overlapping

I recently imported over 100,000 orders for a client who was migrating into WooCommerce. This is a complex process as disparate systems are never easy to get in sync, even when doing a one time export/import operation. Here’s some findings that may help you with your next big data import project.

WordPress as a component system

Kenwood component stereo system with record player, tuner, amplifier, equalizer, casette tape, compact disc, and speaker components

Remember component stereo systems? WordPress is a component system too. Or it’s supposed to be if you’re using it optimally. From sites I’ve inherited I’ve observed developers breaking this by: Replacing the entire front end through decoupled architectures rather than installing clean optimal components Building an entire custom theme or developing a bloated child theme […]