Hi! We, York Collective, have been looking at the different platform options for a library of things/tool library, does anyone have any insight into the feasibility of using woocommerce? There’s a hire shop woocommerce tutorial, so it can’t be too hard, right?
We’re a cycle courier cooperative, members of Coopcycle. The reason for wanting to use WordPress/Woocommerce is that we have a WordPress plugin for integration with the Coopcycle platform.
@MattN I don’t know much about your specific use case for a tool library but we very much recommend the WooCommerce/Wordpress for shop type thing. It just works (most of the time) and most of the tools are widely used.
I posted a request on my personal Mastodon account about your question. I’ll let you know if anyone replies.
Might be worth getting in touch with Shareable about your projects, as they’ll be able to put you in touch with the relevant people from other projects elsewhere.
Software- most LoTs/ Tool libraries use MyTurn (http://myturn.com) It’s not open source and the UX is a bit clunky sadly - but does the job for testing.
We’ve ended up building our own software (Library of Things) because the self-serve kiosk model we developed couldn’t be supported by MyTurn. It’s also not open source (not psyched about Amazon/ Bosch etc ripping it off), but v open to licensing it to the right folks.
I’ve also recently discovered Snipe-IT which is a powerful open source web designed for IT asset management, but I don’t see why it couldn’t be used for any other type of assets too. Think it could well work well for a Library of Things (that’s kinda sorta what asset management stuff is - think checking out laptops, projects etc at Universities etc):