Keeping up with trends is important for a variety of reasons. In this case, we were forced to update our website. WooCommerce decided to no longer support our theme. WooCommerce is a plugin we use to describe our products. It helps you display the product in an attractive way. A theme is the framework used to construct the website. Choosing a theme is challenging. And, when you choose a theme, it won’t necessarily be with you forever. Read on to learn more about our latest update.
Keeping Up With Trends
This is the fifth time we’ve updated the website. And, we’ve been in business a little over five years. You might think you establish a website, and it’s good to go forever. Wrong!
We found out first hand how fickle popular plugins can be. When we re-designed the website three years ago, we used a popular WooCommerce theme as the framework. It was an actual company offering, so we thought we were safe. Wrong again!
A year ago, we received word that the theme would no longer be supported by WooCommerce. We could spend the money and redesign the website at that point. Or, we could wait and see how long it survived.
The death knell sounded with the last major update to WooCommerce.
Something’s Happening Here
Something’s happening here, and what it is ain’t exactly clear. That’s how it started with the theme demise. Our product photos had a header suddenly appearing in the middle of the photo. We talked with our programmer. Hmmmm. Probably a conflict between the old (and outdated) theme and the plugin. Keeping up with trends was suddenly becoming important.
So, we started with a cost estimate from our developer. And, we needed to pick a new theme.
What we do is create custom metal art and signs. We don’t have a vast knowledge of themes. So, we asked our developer to suggest a theme.
Keep It Simple
We get good feedback from our customers about how simple our website is to use. So, we wanted to keep it simple. Could we re-design the website using the current structure? The answer (it turned out) was yes. So, our developer went to work keeping the same simple structure we currently use.
With very few changes, our website is back in production. Mostly cosmetic, we think it’s still easy to use.
Our Home Page
Our search bar at the top of the Home Page now includes the word “search” instead of the icon used for search. Makes more sense to us, actually.
Our Product Page
The Product Page looks the same as before. The main change is the display of Product Tags on the right side of the page. We like the way the old theme displayed Tags. But, we can live with this theme’s display.
Product Tags allow you to look at all products for each topic. If you click on the Tag “Bikes”, you’ll see all of our products that are related to bikes. Simple enough!
It’s Only Money
So, we’re back in business after a week of no updates. That just means we haven’t been able to blog or update new products. We’re still busy working with customers on new projects though. Just means that our developer will be receiving a check for time spent on giving us a new theme. Which, we hope will last for a few more years. Keeping up with trends isn’t always about “trends” per se!
So Contact Us if you have a project you’ve been thinking of. We’re here to help with our updated website!