Hi everyone,

Short value proposition

SemiAuto Invoicing is a complete WooCommerce billing, document automation and global e-invoicing compliance assistant plugin for online merchants and businesses operating across multiple jurisdictions. It automates legally structured invoices/credit, thermal receipts, kitchen copies, packaging, and other business accounting documents while keeping WooCommerce as the single source of truth, giving merchants the flexibility, visibility and accounting control they need without managing multiple plugins or manually monitoring every order.

The story behind SemiAuto

I'm the developer behind SemiAuto Invoicing, a WordPress plugin I've been working on for WooCommerce.

The project started with a practical problem I faced while developing an eCommerce store for a restaurant client who wanted to avoid high recurring operating costs for the usual invoices. WooCommerce invoicing quickly became complicated beyond basic PDF generation no actual plugin supporting fully automated and thermal ready pdf, especially with incomplete legal requirements and the need to manually cross-check every order. I initially built a custom plugin to solve that problem, which eventually evolved over eight months into a complete billing and global e-invoicing solution.

I realised that different businesses needed different document types, receipt formats, invoice adjustments and compliance requirements depending on their industry and where they operate. I wanted to build something that could handle the entire workflow without merchants having to piece together multiple plugins or constantly monitor incoming orders.

Automation is at the core of SemiAuto. The idea is simple: configure it once, let WooCommerce remain the single source of truth, and let the plugin handle document generation and e-invoicing with notifications for anything requiring attention. At the same time, I understand how important it is for merchants to retain control. Every order therefore has its own document control centre through the WooCommerce order metabox, allowing administrators to view, generate, regenerate or email enabled documents, even after order changes. Document statuses and quick actions are also accessible directly from the order list.

The system was built around the performance requirements of my original restaurant project, including handling concurrent orders without disrupting the order pipeline. Beyond generating good-looking PDFs, the objective was to provide structured documents that follow the relevant official requirements across supported jurisdictions.

SemiAuto works natively with WooCommerce to identify existing tax rates and classes, map them to the relevant e-invoicing categories, banking and payment gateways, delivery and pickup plugins like chwazi, product variation plugins like yith product add-ons or food menu pro, Conditional Custom fee that is taxable, ISO/IEC 18004 QR, ISO/IEC 15417 Code 128 & EAN-13 barcodes and QR codes and notify merchants whenever additional configuration is required if an order requires their attention. Merchants can also manually map custom tax categories and configure multiple jurisdictions for their businesses operating through legal entities in different countries along with the primary profile they choose for their store. The adaptive checkout adjusts its fields according to the selected e-invoicing requirements, allowing customers to opt-in how(they get to choose which e-invoicing profile they prefer export, own country or both, or whether, they want to receive a pdf only.

Features

Some of the things it currently supports:

• PDF invoices and customer receipts.
• Thermal receipts for POS setups, with different paper widths.
• Packing slips, credit notes, advance invoices and final invoices.
• Country-specific e-invoicing profiles.
• Server-Side Structured e-invoice generation and hybrid PDF/A-3 documents for 14 Sovereign nations. (Peppol BIS 3.0, PINT EU/AE/OM/SG/JP/ANZ/MY, FatturaPA, Facturae, KSeF, XRechnung, Factur-X (Chorus Pro Ready))
• Customer document downloads and email attachments.
• Connected transmission workflows through StoreCove and A-Cube with BYOK (bring your own key) model.
• WooCommerce HPOS compatibility.

There's plugin is available in the WordPress plugin directory: https://wordpress.org/plugins/semiauto-invoicing/

I'm sharing it here because I'd genuinely like feedback from people who work with WooCommerce.

I'm particularly interested in whether the feature set makes sense, whether the setup is straightforward, and what you'd expect from an invoicing plugin that also handles international e-invoicing. If you expect more integrations with common peppol AP providers.

I'm the person building it, so I'm happy to answer technical questions and hear criticism. I'd rather know what needs improving than assume I've got everything right.

Thanks!

I took on this project for my mom... Trying to build a website for her HOA. I really love the "HOAT" template, but I cannot make the content go full screen. I had deleted the parts I didn't need, but now it just won't go full screen. How can I fix this?

My current method is by using register_block_style(). I believe it's future-proof, but I hate seeing a lot of options in the WP Button Style tab. Also, I do not like registring new style just for the icon. For example, the client asks to add a Download icon. I have to edit the theme code, ask the client to test on staging, and deploy to production. It's a small addition, but takes a lot of effort to do so.

I am wondering if you guys have any method for adding icons in WP Buttons block you can share.

Hello everyone,

I own a website but unfortunately am clueless when it comes to web things and programming, so please be nice. I still have a lot to learn. Also please excuse the other language. the pink button on the last few slides say "add to order".

I had no interest in variable products previously until now but had a few problems now that I have to use them. I have created attributes (only one is needed) and made a variation tab. I have enabled it, added prices and stock, yet it still won't work.

When I enter the page, it makes all options available with no pricing indicated anywhere on the page where it should be. When I click on one option it greys out the button and makes it unclickable as well as doing the same thing to any other option, and change them or click on them at all.

Am I missing something due to my inexperience? is there anything I need to add or a problem? please let me know.

I believe I had added everything that is needed to show you guys the problem, but let me know if you need to know anything else.

My normal page load time per query monitor is 40-70 seconds. This makes it hard to do anything and its been like this for days. At first I thought it was bot traffic but with all bots blocked and under attack mode on its still like this.

I used site health troubleshooting (so everything turned off). With the theme reset and all plugins deactivated it still has a 10 second load time.

When I updated a plugin it seems to clear the processes and works again for 5-10 minutes at less than a second load time.

I downloaded w3 total cache and turned on object and page cacheing but that did nothing

Site health says critical issue

The REST API is one way that WordPress and other applications communicate with the server. For example, the block editor screen relies on the REST API to display and save your posts and pages. When testing the REST API, an error was encountered: REST API Endpoint: https://awesomefreebie.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/post?context=edit
REST API Response: (http_request_failed) cURL error 28: Operation timed out after 10000 milliseconds with 0 bytes received

QM also shows a ton of duplicate and slow queries

It also shows in red an api call

GET

Certificate verification disabled (sslverify=false)

https://awesomefreebie.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/post?context=edit

Error: cURL error 28: Operation timed out after 10000 milliseconds with 0 bytes received

WP_Site_Health->get_test_rest_availability()

wp-admin/includes/class-wp-site-health.php:2233

WP_Site_Health->perform_test()

wp-admin/includes/class-wp-site-health.php:204

WP_Site_Health->enqueue_scripts()

wp-admin/includes/class-wp-site-health.php:139

do_action('admin_enqueue_scripts')

wp-admin/admin-header.php:123

Host support said its due to high cpu usage so everything gets slowed down and processes can't run but didn't say how to fix it unless I paid for a full support plan.

How do I fix the above?

Hello Everyone,

Hos do you deal with the undesired plugin updates, when you want to have full control over when is an update instaled, but still you get an E-Mail, that some plugins were updated already?

Thanks and wishing you a great day!

Hi all, I have been browsing through this sub for quite a bit regarding advice to building a shop. But I did not find what I was looking for.

I‘d like to open a high-end accessorie shop using preferably Woocommerce. Reason being that I don‘t want to be bound to shopify‘s ongoing costs and being locked into that environment.

I have a tiny bit of experience editing wordpress sites, I understand the basic functionality, security and plugins.

My main question is: Even if I manage to set up my shop to my liking using a good theme with a template: How hard is it to manage the security side of things for a shop?

And if I hire a developer, what are things to look out for when trying to chose someone reliable and knowledgeable? Many ads I have seen for web agencies/ developers don‘t look reputable, the design is off, their websites often look like its been done with AI. And these are not budget ads. This is the only reason I am thinking about doing this myself and learning it, because so far nobody seems reputable and I have seen many people getting screwed over by web agencies in the past.

Thank you so much.

New user of WordPress here. I know nothing about websites, code, and such things and I am willing to learn. I have a question about the Robots.txt for a website based on WordPress:

Disallow: /wp-includes/

Disallow: /*?utm_*

Disallow: /*?ver=

Do all these rules damage the website generally, or it depends how a website is actually built?

it's a woo US kids toy brand i work with, we launched a referral program where the friend gets $30 off and the person who referred them gets $30 on their next purchase. same offer since early september, the offer didn't change and referral sales more than doubled.

im sharing because i think it says something about when to set this stuff up before bfcm

so the referral share actually went up while the whole store doubled, and my read is that referrals mostly scale with how many people are buying, every new customer is a potential referrer later, so the program gets busier right when the store does. which is the argument for having it live and tested before black friday instead of setting it up in the middle of it

anyone else trying referrals before bfcm?

Hi r/Wordpress. I built KipDesk, an AI chat assistant for small business sites. The WordPress plugin is submitted to wordpress.org and waiting for review. Until it's approved, you can download it from the dashboard and upload it yourself.

The problem I'm trying to fix: most AI chatbots will make up an answer. On a plumber's or salon's site, that means quoting a price the owner never set. Visitors also leave at 9pm when nobody answers, and the enquiry is lost.

How it works:

- It reads your site and drafts your facts: services, prices, hours and areas. You approve each one, and it only answers from those, showing the source under each answer.

- When it doesn't know, it says so, shows a short form for the visitor's name and number, and emails you the lead.

- Visitors can ask for a real person at any time.

Two ways to add it:

- The plugin: install it, click "Connect to KipDesk", and you're done. No code. You can hide it on certain pages or switch it off from the plugin settings.

- The script: one line of code, if you'd rather not add another plugin. It works on any site, not just WordPress.

Either way, it loads after your page has finished, so it doesn't slow the site down.

I'd love feedback from people who build WordPress sites. What would make you put this on a client's site, and what would stop you? And is anything in the plugin settings missing that you'd expect?

I'm hoping this is a simple fix and I'm only confused because I'm new to WordPress. Please help!

I installed a theme called Wedding Photographer Nook because I liked the layout, however I'm having trouble with the way it's set up for the home page and posts page.

I want new posts to go to a seperate page which operates like a blog, but doing this by going to the page I want to set it as the posts page instead removes all the formatting and reformats it to the theme's homepage, which does not display latest posts. In Settings > Reading I try switching the settings around and it doesn't do anything at all.

Basically I just want to remove whatever it is that causes the posts page to reformat into this homepage template the theme has set up so that I can set posts to go to the page I designate.

https://preview.redd.it/qbncrs858hzh1.png?width=736&format=png&auto=webp&s=6b973620a67171a870df96ad332e89b4d5c5fac4

These buttons show up on all my pages. I only started building the site a couple hours ago so go easy on me please lol

Hi everyone!

I'm building a website for my first paying client, a home-based beauty technician who offers nail, eyelash and eyebrow services.

I'm looking for a free WordPress booking plugin that can handle a specific booking workflow.

Here's how I'd like it to work:

1. My client sets her available days and time slots from her WordPress dashboard.
2. When someone visits the website, they can see the available time slots and choose one.
3. The customer selects the services they want (nails, eyelashes, eyebrows, etc.) and submits a booking request.
4. My client receives a notification and can manually accept or reject the request before it becomes a confirmed appointment.

There's one important detail: appointment durations are not always the same.

For example, a simple nail appointment might take 30 minutes, while a more elaborate design or a combination of services could take 3–4 hours.

Ideally, I'd like a plugin that can handle different appointment durations depending on the selected services, while still allowing my client to manually approve each booking.

My main requirements are:

• Display available time slots to customers.
• Allow customers to select one or multiple services.
• Support variable appointment durations.
• Keep booking requests pending until manually approved.
• Allow my client to manage availability and appointments easily from her phone or WordPress dashboard.

I've looked into Simply Schedule Appointments and a few other plugins, but I'm not sure which one supports all these features in its free version.

I'm currently developing the website locally using WordPress and XAMPP, and I'd prefer to avoid paid plugins if possible.

Does anyone have experience with a plugin that can handle this workflow? I'd really appreciate any recommendations or advice!

Thanks!

Hi! I am putting a article on snowsites wordpress and the embeds are not centering. I use the centered button and paste using the embed links in the generic embed button. Im working with instgram links. How can I get them to center on the site when they keep going to the side. Thank you!

I made WPGraft. You give it a website address and it clones that page into your page builder as fully editable elements.

It works with Elementor, Webflow, Instatic, Bricks, Breakdance, Divi 5, Gutenberg, Oxygen (6 and Classic) and Beaver Builder.

The part I care about is what happens after the copy. You get elements you can move, restyle and delete like anything else in the builder.

It launched on Oct. 30. 45 sales so far and 1 review, 5 out of 5.

A question for the people here who build client sites: when you take over a site from another builder, do you rebuild the layout by hand or start from a clone?

I run a managed IT business in South Africa and look after a fair number of client WordPress sites. Over the past while I've been building a Python script to check those sites from the outside, and it's caught enough real problems for our clients that I figured it was worth sharing.

It's called WordPress Exposure Audit.

What it does
You point it at a site and it writes a self-contained HTML report you can hand to whoever owns it. It looks for things like:
Backup archives, database dumps, .env, .git and old wp-config copies left lying around
Author names leaking through REST, ?author=N, sitemaps and oEmbed (not just the one route everyone closes)
Plugin, theme, core and PHP versions checked against known CVEs, plus plugins that have been quietly pulled from the directory
Old uploads still downloadable but invisible in the Media screen
Security headers, TLS, XML-RPC, open registration, SPF/DMARC

Why I built it
Most "is my site safe" checkers just list paths that returned a 200, which is wrong on loads of sites. A site that redirects unknown paths to the homepage looks like it's serving /backup.sql. An early version of mine reported five critical findings on a tidy site, all false. So most of the effort goes into calibrating how each site answers a missing path, and the report tells you when it couldn't check something rather than giving you a green tick.

The safety bit
It's GET and HEAD only. No logins, no form posts, no password guessing, no payloads. It's not a pen test and the report says so. Single Python file, standard library only, Python 3.9+:

python3 wp_audit.py --site https://www.yoursite.com

Where I'd love your help
It's been tuned against the sites I manage, so it's seen a limited range of hosts, caches and WAFs. If you'd run it against sites you own or look after, I'd really appreciate hearing about:

False positives (anything it flagged that wasn't real)
Anything it obviously missed
Odd hosting setups where calibration fell over
Please only run it on sites you own or have permission to test. Issues and PRs are welcome on GitHub, and there's a --selftest if you want to add a case for a response shape it doesn't handle yet.

Apache 2.0, free to use. Hopefully it helps a few of you lock things down a bit tighter. Cheers!

I'm trying to understand the best way to approach a situation where WooCommerce, a payment gateway webhook, and an external fulfillment system can all update the same order within a few seconds of each other.

For example, say a customer completes checkout, but the payment gateway's confirmation webhook is delayed. Meanwhile, a fulfillment integration picks up the order, and then the webhook arrives while another background process is updating its status.

My understanding is that WordPress doesn't provide transactional guarantees across all of these operations, and relying on order status alone isn't necessarily enough to prevent duplicate processing.

Would the better approach be to make every operation idempotent using unique event IDs, or would you also implement some form of locking around order updates?

I'm also curious how HPOS changes the equation, particularly when plugins are still using older post/meta-based assumptions.

For developers who've dealt with this at scale, how do you prevent duplicate fulfillment or conflicting state changes without creating a system where failed jobs leave orders permanently locked?

I'm less interested in specific plugin recommendations and more interested in the architectural approach you'd trust in production.

Can anyone guide me on how to integrate the Elavon Payment Gateway with WordPress without relying on any third-party plugins or paid app subscriptions?

We only need a direct, synchronized connection between Elavon and WordPress to process payments.

If anyone has experience with Elavon API integration or can share relevant documentation, tutorials, or code references, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

I’ve been building custom WP themes for a long time (ACF, CPTs, the usual). For forms I mostly use CF7, occasionally Gravity Forms.

Recently a client needed a scholarship application collecting hundreds of submissions, each with several file uploads. WP didn’t feel like the right tool: public upload folders, sensitive documents, and a site that quietly turns into a 100GB file repository. We went with Cognito Forms using their JS embed. It worked well, and the WP site stores none of the sensitive data.

I know GF can store uploads outside the public path and you can bolt on retention rules. I’d still rather offload it. Retention, access control, and breach liability sit with the vendor instead of with me and a client who will never purge anything.

Now another client takes job applications through their WP site, and I’d like to steer them the same way, maybe Jotform. Am I overthinking it? What do you use for this, and is there a hosted option you’d recommend or avoid?

Really noob question here.

Im contributing to a blog that left their website very dry for the last year, so I offered to take care of it. I asked the "boss" and he gave me my login/password that I access through the website.

I see that I can make normal post, I cant seems to find where to create image gallery or even install plugin.

Am i working with the free version, or maybe a restricted login?

Thanks for the help