…like trying to enter a jungle with a penknife

So let me get this straight.

You’ve tried 3 themes which say they are compatible with Woo, and were unable to get them to work with Woo, and therefore it’s Woo’s fault.

You weren’t successful in following Woo’s documentation to adapt a theme to Woo, and therefore it’s Woo’s fault.

Wow.

If you had searched, for example, for “free woocommerce theme”, you would have found all sorts of them – some even from woo themselves, and much more likely to actually be compatible with woocommerce…

I said two themes – two standard WP themes one being Twentyten which I used for a year perfectly well but ended up dropping because I wanted to make Woocommerce work for all its promised potential.

The only documentation on the issue of theme conflicts was here:
https://docs.woothemes.com/document/third-party-custom-theme-compatibility/ If you believe that this thin sheet of instructions is adequate for anyone starting to configure WC then you are clearly a developer that’s out of touch with the people that most free plugins are set up to serve.

This is a rating system, not a fault attribution system, and I think my first comment gave an adequate explanation of why I rate this very low – in particular as a non-developer – and thus why it’s not all it’s cracked to be. And it’s my opinion.

So pick your Woocommerce pom-poms up off the floor and get over the emotional shock that someone doesn’t share your perspective.

*Reads, looks for coffee and finds none. That’s a pity…*

That was a good reply but next time as a favor can you please leave off that last bit of snark? It’s fine to leave 1 star reviews as well are reply to them as you’ve done.

That doesn’t really move any conversation forward when you do that.

Hmmmm…. If you’re a non-developer, why attempt a developer’s task?

It seems that the root of your unhappiness, is that woo hasn’t made, in your opinion, sufficient effort to fully explain the highly complex task of adapting a theme to Woo.

If you look at the 3 leading ecommerce plugins in WP (woo, wpec and jigo), the task of adapting a theme to any of them is daunting at best.

If someone is not a developer, it seems only logical to seek a theme substrate which will provide good compatibility with the chosen ecommmerce package, rather than try to create a compatible theme oneself…

@jan Dembowski
No one’s going to sit back if the person has come after them especially if a person doesn’t take the time to understand what’s been said and then retorts with a faked incredulity verging on sarcasm (if feigned).

My credentials of 10 years in the Web domain are modest as far as coding is concerned but I have a Web marketing background and frequently work with developers as well as having led three teams (in the realms of Design, Display and Emailing). I have had to deal with databases and associated code bugs as well as mediating with clients to cover bad work. As brilliant as some developers actually are it’s not unusual that in their task to take command of the detail they can temporarily lose the big picture.

Notwithstanding this I don’t think it’s helpful for the end-user (of a plugin or any software) that fails to work correctly to receive a response that’s rather binary (focussed on fault attribution) and “isn’t it obvious, keep looking”.

Like trying to manually respond to comment spam bots, it’s impossible to moderate self-appointed experts with empty profiles, but don’t go hard on people that suffer these sorts of poor quality replies.

@jehosophat
If it’s a plugin, shouldn’t this by definition be developer-free and user-intuitive/friendly?

If it’s not a decently universal plugin and requires a developer or has compatibility issues in certain domains should it not be upfront about this in it’s description. But then I guess it can’t – part of the business model by default seems to be to sell support. I have just searched again the WP description of the plugin again https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/woocommerce/ and the only hint of troubles is the euphemistic “WooCommerce will work with any theme, but may require some styling to make it match nicely”. From the admin of your WP zone you won’t see this.

As to your final point – again it still all seems rather obvious to you. Seriously, if you really can’t be of help and you just want to look down on me, I’d rather you didn’t.

For further info on the actual challenge: In a last ditch attempt to get assistance (believing it to be a probable CSS conflict but not sure), I posted in the WP support forum to seek assistance and clarification here:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/woocommerce-product-view-broken

…however after 4 days configuring 80% the Woocommerce back office, looking for solutions and uploading multiple products without any satisfying solution on the theme conflict, the pressure was on. It’s my selling season in a matter of weeks – up til now I have been selling with standard Paypal single product sales. So I had to pull the plug-in and close the support request on the forum.

What also added weight to my negative opinion on products Woo Themes authored was WPML. Again in my review and low rating I try to state my experience fairly:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/corrupted-index-page-and-plugins-page

I do also rate plugins positively, but these latest problems are the reason I set up an account.

Once again, I think you’re conflating separate things.

You seem to feel that ‘ease of use’ should equal ‘ease of plugin adaptation in theme development’, when these are two entirely different, if related, areas. The first is a user-level attribute, the other is coder-level.

In your decision-chain back 4 days ago, you decided to undertake a serious developer task, which was overly challenging (due to documentation, skills or whatever). My point was not to say ‘nyah nyah’, but to point out that this decision was the immediate reason for your lost time …

Also, you seem to lump the WPML plugin authors with the authors of WOO… If you look at the list, you’ll see that they are entirely different groups of people.

All in all, the point I’m making is that while Woo could absolutely devote more energy to its documentation, it seems that on balance you could recover your task and move forward by using a theme which tests out as compatible with woo, and apply your design skills to spiffing up that theme.

I think it’s clear this discussion won’t go anywhere further, so I’m closing it.