You could absolutely build WooCommerce sites with Bricks, but getting all the shop, product, cart, checkout and account templates configured properly meant a fair amount of manual setup.
Bricks 2.4 makes site setup faster in several areas, and this is a great example.
The new Woo Setup Wizard takes care of much of the tedious groundwork and gives you properly configured Bricks templates that you can then customise to suit your design. For additional workflow improvements when customising those templates, Mortar for Bricks includes useful utility features for Bricks Builder.
And that could make WooCommerce inside Bricks a lot more appealing.
Important: This was tested using the Bricks 2.4 beta. Do not use beta software on a live production website. Before launching a WooCommerce store, work through this pre-launch checklist for Bricks websites.
A New WooCommerce Setup Wizard
With WooCommerce installed, Bricks now adds a dedicated Woo Setup Wizard covering the main parts of the store:
- Shop
- Single product
- Cart
- Checkout
- My Account
You can configure each area individually or use the one-click setup to let Bricks handle the initial configuration.
This does not magically design your store for you.
Instead, Bricks creates the templates, adds the relevant native WooCommerce elements and configures the conditions that determine where those templates are used.
That means the boring setup work is largely taken care of, and you can focus on the part that actually matters: designing the store.
A Much Better Starting Point
For something like the product archive, the wizard creates the Bricks template, adds the appropriate conditions and builds out a basic structure containing elements such as the title, breadcrumbs, archive description and product listing.
The same applies to single products and the various cart and checkout templates. Once created, everything remains editable inside Bricks.
If you already have your CSS framework, variables and design system in place, you can jump straight into applying your own classes and styling rather than spending time building all the underlying templates first.
That is where I think this becomes genuinely useful.
Checkout Gets More Flexible
The checkout also receives some extra attention.
Alongside the standard setup, Bricks 2.4 includes advanced checkout options, including a multi-step version when the experimental modular WooCommerce elements are enabled.
There are also additional elements for things like checkout coupons and login functionality.
It is still beta functionality, so I would not be building a production store around the experimental features just yet, but it shows where Bricks is heading with its WooCommerce support.
Small Change, Big Workflow Improvement
None of this fundamentally changes how WooCommerce itself works. What it changes is the amount of repetitive setup required before you can actually start designing.
Templates are created, conditions are configured, and the relevant WooCommerce elements are already in place. For me, that is exactly the kind of improvement Bricks needed. It removes friction without taking away the flexibility that makes Bricks useful in the first place.
What About Fluent Cart?
I would love to see the same kind of workflow extended beyond WooCommerce. In particular, Fluent Cart would be an obvious candidate.
Whether that comes directly from Bricks or through an integration from the Fluent team, having the same kind of automated template setup would make building ecommerce sites with Bricks considerably easier.
Final Thoughts
The new WooCommerce Setup Wizard in Bricks 2.4 is not a flashy feature, but it solves a genuine workflow problem.
Instead of manually creating and configuring every WooCommerce template, Bricks can now give you the foundations in a few clicks and leave you to concentrate on the design.
If WooCommerce integration has previously put you off using Bricks for ecommerce projects, this update could make it worth taking another look.
