These are some of the smaller internal tools and extensions I created while working at SedationKit. Rather than being standalone projects, they were generally created to solve specific workflow or functionality issues we encountered. I’ve grouped them together because each was relatively small, but collectively they represent a significant portion of my day-to-day work on the website.
Admin Payment Link
This plugin added a custom meta-box to the order edit page that allowed the admin to check out for a manual order. This plugin made use of the third-party user switching plugin to allow the admin to check out as the customer on the WooCommerce-generated pay-order page. It would also display admin order notes on the pay-order page if the user was an admin who was switching to a customer, and not the customer themselves.
Post Extensions
A plugin that collected extensions to WordPress and WooCommerce post types.
- Added a “Partially Shipped” custom order status and set it to be sortable in the orders table.
- An admin or manual order extension that updated the WooCommerce JSON search for products to include additional information such as price and inventory counts in the returned results. It also overrode the AJAX product search to allow for searching both products and variations by name or SKU. Previously, there were issues finding specific product variations using the default search.
- Extended the products table to include a column for the last purchased date and made it sortable. Then created a
batch tool to search through all historical orders and find the date each product was last purchased. Future
orders would mark each product’s last purchased date when the order was placed. The last purchased date
can be seen on both the product edit page and the products table. Also added a simple dropdown filter to sort for featured products on the products table. - Extended the Users table to include sortable columns for the registration date and the user’s last order date. Then also adds this information to the edit user page.
Role-Based Discount
Some users on our site were granted a special role, which received a 10% discount on all products. This plugin created the role and gave the additive permission for users. It would then update what the user saw on product pages, the cart, checkout, and invoices. A standard customer would see the normal price, whereas a discounted user would see each product as if it were on sale, showing “Base Price” and “Your Price” sections. It also checked against an item’s sale price, offering the discounted price or the sale price, whichever was the best deal for the customer.
Shipping Extensions
Created custom shipping methods for special products that needed to be shipped separately from standard products. It added new shipping classes, which were used to determine the shipping method for those products. We needed separate shipping methods for IV fluids, which were shipped at a flat rate per case; Crash Cart shipping, which shipped at a flat rate per order; and Pharmaceutical shipping, which offered its own set of shipping options (Next Day, 2 Day, Ground, etc.) that could be modified with an additional fee if cold shipping was required.
The shipping methods worked by making use of WooCommerce’s order packages, moving items for each shipping class into their own package, and then applying the appropriate shipping method to each package. This allowed us to ship products that needed to be shipped separately from standard products without having to create separate orders for each type of product.
What This Work Taught Me
Working on these small plugins taught me a lot about extending existing software rather than building everything from scratch. WordPress and WooCommerce have extensive hook systems that allow for customization without needing to rewrite an entire system of the e-commerce platform. These tools allowed me to create business-specific functionality within the constraints of the platform. That experience has helped to guide how I approach my own tooling projects, where I try to solve the workflow problem without introducing unnecessary complexity.