After being several weeks into developing a WordPress website for a new client I’m finding out the hard way that the WooCommerce shopping cart is NOT compatible with the drag-and-drop Headway theme.
The Result of Trying to Integrate WooCommerce with Headway
I’ve tried posting to both the Headway support forum and to WooCommerce support for help, and so far the result is this:
- The folks at Headway apparently have ill feelings towards the WooThemes team as to how they went about forking Jigoshop…there is a post in the Headway support forums from one of the principals of Headway stating their ill feelings and why they won’t support WooThemes/WooCommerce.
- At this time it seems Headway has no intent to put any development effort towards WooCommerce integration, and they are totally leaving it up to Woo if they want to integrate with Headway. From what I’ve read it seems Headway is very stern on their stance against Woo. So likely any integration (creating a ‘Headway Block’) would have to come from Woo.
- Headway’s stance was made clear again when they replied to my support request today with: “We recommend Jigoshop since they built a Headway specific block to use with JigoShop and Headway.”
- WooThemes quickly responded to my support request via email with “we don’t support 3rd party themes”, then they pointed me to a knowledgebase article. But the article doesn’t go into specific enough detail for me to be able to get the WooCommerce/Headway integration working. I tried various alterations to the code they suggested for the functions.php file, but nothing worked. Woo replied further with some suggestions for editing functions.php, but then resolved in a final reply that just editing functions.php won’t be enough due to the Headway environment, they would have to create an extension (or plugin or block or something). And that “this has been brought up within our team“, I believe in large part because of this post and my prompting.
- Woo uses ‘UserVoice’ to track new feature requests, and Headway integration is not getting many votes at all (about 26 votes as of this writing), so it doesn’t look promising for any Headway integration from Woo any time soon…you can help by ‘voting it up’ here.
- It’s important to me to try to remain neutral on this since I value both of these vendors (Woo and Headway). But I do strongly favor WooCommerce over other ecommerce solutions out there for WordPress. And I’m fairly sure that since Headway released version 3 with some major new features that they are picking up more customers. So I think it would benefit Woo to put this (Headway integration) on the near-future roadmap.
- I posted some enquiries onto the community forums today (July 16, 2012) to see if anyone else has successfully integrated WooCommerce with Headway 3 (no response yet). I’ll try to update this post with any useful replies I receive.
- Update 7/18: Headway says they are open to dialoguing with Woo: “If the guys at Woo would like to work with us on it, happy to discuss it with them.” That’s great news…so I passed that info on to Woo in hopes they reach out to begin the dialogue.
- If you have any insight or experience on how to integrate WooCommerce with Headway (good or bad), or any other relative info please post your comments below.
I’ve spent several hundred dollars so far on WooCommerce extensions. So with no Headway/WooCommerce integration, unless Woo comes up with their own integration with Headway I’m forced to either use Jigoshop or Cart66 if I want to develop with Headway (that’s the direction I’ll have to go for my current project anyway). Both decent shopping carts (with their own pros/cons), but I don’t want to have too many shopping carts to have to learn and deal with and maintain, and especially to have to buy extensions for! So for me and my situation it makes Headway very limiting unless there is a solution for WooCommerce integration. That wasn’t something I expected, but that’s where things are at right now. I’m sure many other web developers are in the same situation, so this post may help to track progress towards a solution. I’m hoping this post will drive the issue up the flagpole for more visibility and attention, and there is some evidence that it may be doing so to some degree. Comments welcome…
[adv_headway300]
Read about my experience as a new Headway user…
Update 7/19: Changed title and some text from ‘Headway theme is not compatible with WooCommerce‘ to ‘WooCommerce is not compatible with Headway theme‘.
Update 2/20/2013:
This issue is resolved. Woo says it is a resolved issue now that Headway has released the “Storefront: Woocommerce“: https://headwaythemes.com/extend/addon/storefront-woocommerce/
“Headway Storefront is included with all licenses of Headway.”
The Woo UserVoice thread is here: https://ideas.woothemes.com/forums/133476-woocommerce/suggestions/2762478-headway?tracking_code=e89a6ce94f5372515332cc87060bce73
Unfortunately our hands are tied. If a theme vendor doesn’t want to support WooCommerce, then there’s not much we can do about it. 🙂
Hi Adii,
Its good news to hear that Grant will be happy to work with Woocommerce to make it work.
I am talking to my developers about making one of those blocks to connect to headway like jigoshop did.
Have a great day!
@Adii:
Based on recent comments from Headway it sounds like their position has softened and they would consider working with you guys if Woo initiated contact. Would you please consider starting the discussion?
I fully support this however the HW guys (Grant) don’t seem to really care about Customer Service too much
We also support this and are long time headways user and would like to use woocommerce because it has so manny more features then jigoshop. So please headways and woo don’t hassle together but help both your users that love your products.
I struck this problem around the time that HW 3 was about to release. Needed an ecommerce system that would integrate easily. Tried almost every turn to try and find something that would work for my current set up. Being based in New Zealand our shipping and postage represent the biggest problem, the API’s didn’t exist from the companies here like they do in the States. So shipping modules and considerations were the biggest make or break. Woocommerce being a new product was undergoing rapid development.
I totally understand the argument that Woocommerce is essentially a bastardised version of Jigocart and that there was a nasty public debate about the antics surrounding it. Those things are all out of my hands, I’m a developer and am limited to the tools available to me. We work with small businesses who don’t have a huge turnover and can’t afford to pay for some of the paid service options.
I ended up using HW 2 and modifying Woocommerce heavily to work with it. I did manage to make it all work but only by directly modifying some of the php files within the Woocommerce plugin. It was a long and painful process for a self-confessed non-coder, but in a small business like this you aren’t left with too many options. This was the best option all things considered.
The hard part is now that WC has moved on and I need to update my sites I face re-working the websites into HW3 and using an updated version of WC which has re-worked its file organisation and code (to its credit). I’m currently treading the same path and much like you have hit the same issues.
Some of the other options suggested like Jigocart don’t have some of the options or 3rd party developer support that are necessary for places like NZ.
Because I have to re-work the website right now I’m going to document my process. If I get it working hopefully I can return and give you the benefit of my work.
Ultimately if there is a clever coder out there who wants to make money – build a Woocommerce Headway Block and cash in NOW! I’m surprised that no one has tackled this already it immediately limits HW for ecommerce for me and I’m sure others.
@Matt:
Editing plugin or theme core files will definitely make it hard for you to maintain later as thing upgrade…not recommended (I’m sure you already know that and felt forced to do that).
Have you looked into Cart66 Pro? They seem to support a good array of shipping methods, and support HW3. I wonder if Cart66 Pro supports what you need?
That’s the route I ended up taking with my last site.
Thanks for the input. Let us know how it goes.
Yes I tried hard to avoid editing the files directly, it was a last resort to put something in place for a fixed deadline.
I did a big comparison and dry runs of so many of the ecommerce packages it did my head in! There are lots of good ones that cover all but one deal-breaking function. For me it mostly turned out to be the shipping, because we couldn’t integrate an automated system like UPS or FedEx we had to have an extensive table. Our clients typically ship internally in the country and also overseas. For Woocommerce we used their extension which enabled us to do it manually. I think Jigocart had a similar module.
As time went by I actually picked up a Shipping module that links into the NZ Post API written over at CodeCanyon. That’s made things much much easier.
Am back wrestling with those php templates today to try and bring this under control.
What I can’t understand is why everything works so well with the shortcodes but as soon as you rely on Woocommerce templates for the archive-products and single-product pages everything turns to rubbish. Give me a shortcode option and my problems would be solved.
I know for one of the websites I did I ended up just inserting the product manually into a page and putting it alongside a manual View Cart button. Not possible for a large inventory but ok for one or two products.
The other consideration for us is working with a Payment Gateway in local currency to avoid multiple conversion charges. There are limited suitable services here for that also. Combine those two alongside small businesses and it starts becoming a pretty fine balancing act.
BTW, it’s Jigoshop (not Jigocart). Well, my hope is some folks will be reading this and the difficulty at hand, and step up to create the necessary block to integrate WooCommerce with HW3. I’m wondering if the easier solution for you though would be just to switch to another theme?
Yea my bad on the name, no disrespect to Jigoshop just laziness for me.
I’d switch to a different theme but I see Headway as a framework more than a theme. Most other themes are just a set of options you turn on and off, Headway I can make do just about anything I want it though plugins, widgets and the block system. That customisation is more flexible than other themes and too much to give up.
UPDATE: Thought I should come back and let readers know where I got to with my attempts to make this work.
I failed in my attempt to integrate HW3 & Woocommerce. I had managed to integrate HW2 & WC but I wasn’t able to succeed with version 3. I’m not sure where the fault lies as I mentioned in theory it should be possible if I knew more.
I ended up looking for an alternative and Jigoshop was the first port of call due to the block integration with HW3. Thankfully it has a new NZ Post shipping module and supports both DPS payment gateway and Paypal. All big ticks for me and after a few days of wrestling with WC I got Jigoshop working in a matter of minutes. Am grateful for the Jigoshop developers in continuing to develop their product.
Hi I tried to push the subject with Woocommerce but they hide behind headways.
the answer is following:
“If Headway wants to support WC, they will do so.
Other themes shops, plugins, developers have decided that they want their users to have the option to use WC and have made their products WC friendly.
This is a Headway issue.
Thanks!”
This means that still both headways and woocommerce are not willing to budge.
There are manny people like me that are interested to pay for the extention but somehow nobody cares.
Woocommerce let me know that Genesis made a way to work with woocommerce see https://www.studiopress.com/plugins/genesis-connect-woocommerce
so it is still the questions why headways and woocommerce can’t work together to make the extension. Othere themes like Genesis also see the value of woocommerce.
Lets just do what users ask for instead of pointing fingers who has to do what.
A developper that is happy with headways and woocommerce.
Paul
Why are you guys so stuck on Headway, even with the latest 3.3 launched today, there is no evidence leading to the fact that they might support some of the more interested parties that would like to use WooCommerce. I have now switched to a far superior true functional drag and drop theme that has 100% support for WooCommerce. You can see it in action here https://five15pm.com.au/unlimited-drag-n-drop and also here https://five15pm.com.au/framework-unleashed
I see this theme engine now received the highest awarded points for drag and drop theme engine.
Have a great day.
Ciaran
I actually bought the developer’s license for the Ultimatum drag-and-drop theme several months ago but I haven’t tried it yet.
Another really good theme option is Catalyst, or I’ve been using the Dynamik child theme for Genesis…very powerful. Catalyst is also about to launch a plugin called Genesis Extender that works just like Dynamik but as a design tool plugin that works with Genesis child themes. I’m trying out the pre-release version and love it so far since I typically build sites with Genesis.
On Nov 22 WooThemes posted that “Just to confirm, we are in correspondence with Headway Themes in this regard”.
It looks like this is not yet solved!
Anyone have latest status?
My opinion is that HD has an obligation to work with all types of Commerce plugins. This is really turning my emotions negatively against HD!
Just saw this on headway site
https://headwaythemes.com/extend/addon/storefront-woocommerce/
Anyone try it yet? Results?
Woo says it is a resolved issue now that Headway has released the “Storefront: Woocommerce”: https://headwaythemes.com/extend/addon/storefront-woocommerce/
“Headway Storefront is included with all licenses of Headway.”
The Woo UserVoice thread is here: https://ideas.woothemes.com/forums/133476-woocommerce/suggestions/2762478-headway?tracking_code=e89a6ce94f5372515332cc87060bce73