Migrate yoast.com’s online store from EDD to WOOCOMMERCE

In Yoast, we optimize all aspects of website performance. Our goal is to make the network better by making the website more easy to use, more easy to browse, faster and more reliable.

In September 2017, we migrated our online store from Easy Digital (EDD) to Woocommerce -this is where we sell all the tools, products and content on our sales of Yoast.com. In this article, I will explain why we do this, what we build, and what are the benefits of us and our users in the future. Woocommerce provides us with a technical foundation for the next few years.

Why change?

Yoast.com is experiencing incredible growth, which is mainly due to the two main factors -the popularity of our plug -in, and the expanding audience of our SEO blog. However, the combination of these two elements makes YOAST.com a challenging management website.

From historical, the site evolved from simple WordPress installation. Yoast founder Joost de Valk added Easy Digital (EDD) to promote sales of high -end plug -in. We also use EDD to provide updates for all advanced installations in the world.

Over the years, we have made more and more adjustments to ensure that EDD still meets our needs. For example, allowing our customers to pay with euro or dollar is a huge effort. Since we want to add other currencies in the future, we need to find different solutions.

When we study other options, we considered several needs:

Able to support multi -currency purchases.

• Can support regular payment.
• Build an integrated cost and maintenance of the platform.
• Can support user accounts.
• Create a SEO platform.
• Considering future compatibility, because we hope to have a website that can still run within 5 to 10 years.

In order to achieve all the above itemsObject, we must make a plan.

Concept

In January 2017, we arranged for our architects Team meeting: Joost, Omar, JIP and myself. We discussed what our needs and how we can best meet these needs.

Our first conclusion is that we don’t want to leave WordPress. Although we now have other platform plugins, we are fans of WordPress and are very concerned about its mission. WordPress is our foundation, and it is very effective for us as CMS.

Why choose woocommerce?

Then we consider the e -commerce platform we want to use. We ask our best WordPress e -commerce solution, and the conclusion is that it is Woocommerce. However, like EDD, WooCommerce does not support a variety of currencies. So we need a solution.

I really like everything is the idea of \u200b\u200bmixing. We were inspired by the idea of \u200b\u200busing different sites for each language, and the MultilingualPress plug -in performed this idea well. So we re -mix it: In order to avoid writing a large number of custom code, we decided to use multi -site installation.

Therefore, Wooocommerce does not need to manage different currencies. On the US dollar website, Woocommerce does everything in the US dollar. On the euro website, Woocommerce uses the euro to do everything. This also makes it relatively easy to add new currency. We only need to add a new site and copy the settings. Combining with MultilingualPress, this will also enable us to support different languages \u200b\u200bin the future.

Yoast.com provides users with the choice between the US dollar and the euro through the switch.

A good data model. A huge ecosystem.

Built -in REST API and Webhook support.

The possibility of combining our plug -in with WooCommerce.

Woocommerce solves the field of e -commerce. We don’t want to spend too much time in the field of e -commerce. SEO is our expertise, so we must focus on SEO.

Woocommerce has a dynamic community that we can participate in it.

• E -commerce: SKU, historical records and refund
• I want to focus on the field of e -commerce. One aspect to consider here is SKU. Each product has a SKU -a unique identifier. SKU may sound like extra things. Why do I need SKU when I have ID in the database? But then you realize that each company’s financial department already has this system. SKU is not automatically increasing -you need a method of tracking products in a clear way. The name is not suitable for this. Therefore, on Yoast.com, SKU is now the same as our financial department to track the number of products.

Another requirement is to have a historical record for each purchase. WooCommerce performs this operation by default. Once the order is completed, that’s it. All data is immutable. If the customer changes its name, address, or email, the new information is only used for new orders. This may sound strange for developers, but it is actually an advantage. You don’t want your bank to change the transaction afterwards -once they are completed, they are completed. Any mutation is a new transaction. In terms of refund, it is the biggest difference in historical records. In the old settings, the refund order will disappear from our exit, which will change the monthly income. In Woocommerce, each refund has its own date and amount. So it is really completed once a month.

In woocommerce, each refund has its own date and amount. So it is really completed once a month.

Migrate yoast.com to the technical detail 123] Immigration We have a lot of historical data, which means that we must move a lot of orders.We chose a tool called Pandas, which aims to handle large data sets, which is a good choice for migrating all data sets. If we plan to move another migration, we may move in different directions -we will slowly format historical data in a few months. This will greatly reduce the amount of data to be migrated on the day of actual movement.

There is a major pain point that makes this process more complicated than what it needs. Since all data is stored in a meta -value in the database, it needs to be derived. Python has no effective and correct way to perform PHP derivatives, so we finally use PHP to discern these data.

Polymerization data

You may have noticed that we now have two sites. But we still want to have an overview of all data in a position. This is one of the reasons we build myyoast. All the orders we have received will be synchronized to myyoast. This means that myyoast knows everything.

WooCommerce has a system that synchronizes all orders: webhooks. The biggest disadvantage of webhook, in general, if the receiving system is down, webhook will not be received. When viewing the code of Webhooks, you will find the following code segment:

\”` / * * Let other plug -in intercept some message queue transmission, such as Rabbit /Zeromq */ Return to Apply_filters (\u0026#39; WooCommerce_webhook_Should_deliver \u0026#39;, $ should_deliver, $ this, $ arg);

We consider using the message queue recommended in the comments. , But we adopted a simpler way.

The Ruby On Rails community has a delay_job project. We found a PHP port suitable for our needs. Delayed homework is as implied by its name: it arranges a job that is executed later. This means never losing work. If the homework fails, it will try again four more times. After that, the operation can be used to debug the error. This provides us with a very powerful setting.

123]

We configure WOOCOMMERCE to try to send Webhook to our custom virtual URL: `http: // my- yoast-job.url`. This ensures that we can capture these requests from the code. We have a category responsible for dispatching homework. It captures Webhook requests and converts it into homework.

We have several categories of processing work, one for each basic construction block for yoast.com. Then these homework is handled by the staff in the background. This process is very fast, so customers will immediately see their products in myyoast. WordPress as an application

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