Free WooCommerce WordPress plugin hits 4 million downloads

WooThemes, which develops themes, plugins and shopping cart functionality for WordPress, announced that its WooCommerce WordPress plugin tool has now surpassed 4 million* downloads. WooCommerce is WooThemes' free flagship product, with official partnerships with companies like Amazon, Mastercard, and PayPal. 

Source: WooThemes website.

WooCommerce allows businesses to power e-commerce sites with WordPress as the underlying content management system. 

WooThemes operates on a freemium model: the basic plugin is free, with some free add-ons, but more complex extensions and themes are only available for a price. Plugins for sale on the WooThemes site include a single site licence for a customer history plugin that tracks how a customer browses and records purchases to date for US$49, whereas barcodes can be generated for every order - to be used with packing labels and other paperwork - for a single site licence cost of US$79.

The plugin is now one of the most popular shopping cart functionality plugins, a distinction recently confirmed by Builtwith, a website profiler and business intelligence tool. WooThemes said that approximately 381,000 e-commerce sites worldwide using WooCommerce, accounting for nearly 18% of all Internet e-commerce sites. 

"WooCommerce growth continues to amaze us. As its catalogue of niche functionality enabling extensions multiplies, we are seeing impressive and creative customer implementations of shops of all sizes - proving the range of scalable e-commerce solutions possible," said Mark Forrester, Co-founder of WooThemes. 

The company is looking ahead to release WooCommerce 2.2 later this quarter and expects e-commerce to reach a new level of innovation as a result. Forrester said the company is "still at the beginning of our rocket ride". 

*At the time of writing the number had reached 4,027,260 downloads.

Parallels has web management tools for WordPress-backed sites

Parallels, the platform provider for cloud service delivery introduced Parallels Plesk 12 last month. The solution features enhanced security, a comprehensive WordPress Toolkit and different editions of the software designed to deliver targeted functionality to different market segments.

The different editions of Plesk 12 simplifies core web management tasks, the company said. Two of the new editions are relatively suited to individuals or SMEs: 

· Parallels Plesk Web Admin Edition – Best for hosting self-managed sites, this edition enables web administrators to easily manage their own server, websites, domains, email and more.

· Parallels Plesk Web Pro Edition – Designed for web professionals and digital agencies managing and hosting WordPress sites, this edition offers mass-management and security tools for WordPress hosting, server, account and WordPress management from any mobile device, and server-to-site security for protection from automated attacks against WordPress sites.

PacHosting, a Hong Kong based hosting services provider, announced in conjunction with the launch that it is rolling out Parallels Plesk 12 on their Cloud Servers, CloudNet, Virtual Private Server and Dedicated Server services, and offering up to 12 months of the Plesk Web Pro Edition free for all new Cloud Servers customers.
PacHosting’s New Plesk 12 Managed Service Solution delivers a complete solution to web professionals and because it is managed by PacHosting experts, web professionals can focus on creating and managing customer websites instead of managing server details. Web professionals that focus on WordPress will now be able to leverage the new WordPress mass-management and security tools built-in to Plesk 12 to save even more time. 

“We are seeing an increased need for simplified and more secure web management solutions,” said Kong. "Our customers realise the value of a solution designed with a complete set of automation, supportability and security tools built in.”