Originally from our series, Do the Woo.

Building a WordPress site that keeps community members updated on breaking news while also offering deeper insights on the happenings around WordPress was Brian Krogsgard’s goal when he launched PostStatus.com. Listen in as he shares how WooCommerce powers his site and whether he used it out-of-the-box or had to do some customizations. We also talk about the importance of building a community with a subscription/membership. Lastly, Brian shares with us what he would like to see in the future in the WooCommerce core.

Our Sponsor: Conversio (formerly Receiptful)

Transcript Available

You can download it: Do the Woo Transcript July 20 2016

Bob Dunn: Hey, everyone, and welcome to episode twenty-two of Do the Woo, a podcast for WooCommerce shop owners. Bob Dunn here, also known as Bob WP on the web. Today we are talking with one of the prominent figures in the WordPress community. One of the main reasons is he keeps those WordPressers who design, develop—and do whatever else they choose to do— informed and updated on the nitty gritty of WordPress and the community. In fact, if you know these names, we might even call our guests the Woodward and Bernstein of WordPress. If you work with WordPress, you need to know Brian Krogsgard, publisher of Post Status. Hey Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian Krogsgard: Hey Bob. Thanks for having me. You’re too kind with your intro.

Bob Dunn: Are you the Woodward and Bernstein of WordPress? What do you think?

Brian Krogsgard: That’s about as high a compliment as someone could pay. I think I have a lot to do before I could live up to something like that.

Bob Dunn: Okay, well I may tweak that. You never know.

Brian Krogsgard: No Watergate.

Bob Dunn: No Watergate. Not yet, right? Well, before I get chatting with Brian, I want to thank our sponsor of today’s show. Receiptful.com, a product that started with a very simple question: Could store owners use their email receipts as a marketing opportunity? Two years ago, the team at Receiptful, led by Adii Pienaar, who co-founded WooThemes, built a product that has since allowed store owners to send almost twenty million receipts and generate almost thirty million in revenue. Since then, the product has evolved to help you supercharge all of your other customer interactions as well. I’ll be telling you more about what they can do for you later in the show and also how you can get 20% off your first three months of Receiptful Premium. Now, back to our guest.

I want to break this intro up into a couple of parts. First, I know that Brian has been immersed in WooCommerce in one way or another over time, and I’d love to hear about your background with WooCommerce.

Brian Krogsgard: Sure. I just actually looked up the date, because I’ve been paying attention to WooCommerce since it started and I see now that was almost exactly five years ago. I have been using WooCommerce in some form or fashion, really since just a couple of weeks after they announced the plugin. I was actually actively working on a client website. It was one of my first real websites I built for someone else that was an eCommerce website and I’d started it on Jigoshop. When the WooCommerce came out that they were forking Jigoshop and, more importantly, that Mike and Jay were moving over to the WooThemes team (they were the primary Jigoshop developers), I decided that I was going convert that build that I was working on to Woo Commerce. I had one of the earliest WooCommerce stores,