If you’re looking to build a website, WordPress is my #1 recommended platform, and I’m not alone. More than half of the websites on the Internet are powered by WordPress.
So, with such popularity, if you’re looking to open a storefront on your website and start selling products, there are a few options but one of them has shown to be far superior than the rest… WooCommerce.
Well, the good folks at Automattic, the makers of WordPress, had a great idea to go ahead and buy this company that makes such a value add onto the WordPress platform.
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, has just acquired WooCommerce. Automattic isn’t disclosing the price of the acquisition, but tells me that it’s by far “the biggest acquisition by Automattic to date.”
Here is was WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg said in a video announcing the acquisition…
“I remember a few years ago I was at [a WordPress conference]. Someone stood up in the Q&A and asked me ‘When are you going to make it as easy to publish stores online as you’ve made it to publish websites?’… and there was spontaneous applause from the audience. People loved this idea.”
I completely agree with that audience. I’ve debated before about using WordPress.com make a blog hosted in WordPress’ cloud as opposed to self-hosting a site using the WordPress.org open source code.
The biggest reason why I could never bring myself to using WordPress.com is because you can’t install plugins. You have to choose from what Automattic gives you. WooCommerce was one of those plugins that was not accessible. Well, I expect that will be changing very soon!
If e-commerce is the next step for WordPress, this acquisition helps them make a massive splash into those waters: WooCommerce already powers roughly WordPress-based 600,000 storefronts.
https://vimeo.com/60440851
Source: Automattic Buys WooCommerce, The Popular Plugin For Turning WordPress Into A Store | TechCrunch
