What this is

The Field Guide for WooCommerce is an open, community-maintained operational playbook — the book that should ship with WooCommerce but doesn’t.

It covers what you actually run into when you run a store: every product type and how it handles inventory; the invisible layer beneath payments; the specifics of tax in the US and the EU; the protocols for when something breaks; and the code-level patterns for when you outgrow extensions.

Who it’s for

Three audiences, same pages. Every section opens with the shape of the thing — what it is, how it actually works, where it gets interesting. Deeper mechanics and code live in a For developers zone later on the same page. Read until it’s useful, then move on.

• Merchants running a Woo store — product types, tax scenarios, payment gateways, and the decisions that shape how your store works.
• Agencies and builders shipping client sites — pre-launch checklists, staging workflows, handoff practices, and how to evaluate extensions before you commit to one.
• Developers extending WooCommerce with custom code — hook patterns, the REST API, HPOS-safe queries, and keeping custom code alive across Woo updates.

How to read it

Browse the full index, or start with the first section of each part (see the homepage). Every section stands alone — you don’t have to read in order. Search covers the whole book.

For agencies handing off to clients

The whole guide is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. That means you can fork it, rewrite sections in your own voice, strip it down to the ten things your client actually needs, and hand it off — as long as you credit the source.

The whole book is plain Markdown in a public GitHub repo. Clone it, edit in your editor of choice, build a client-branded version. Every page also has a “Print” button for a quick PDF handoff.

How it’s maintained

Written and maintained by Nami Okuzono. It’s a living document, and open to contributions — corrections, new sections, better examples, stories from the field. Open an issue or a pull request on GitHub, or see the contributing guide for the style.

Attribution

If you adapt this guide — rewriting in your voice, stripping to what your clients need, publishing under your own domain — CC BY 4.0 asks for credit. Something like this works:

Based on the Field Guide for WooCommerce by Nami Okuzono (wcfield.guide), licensed under CC BY 4.0.

A link back is plenty. No permission request needed.

Colophon

Written by Nami Okuzono. Built with Astro and plain Markdown. Search by Pagefind. Typography: Newsreader (serif), Archivo (sans), Commit Mono. Source on GitHub.