Your store, your first sale
This is real WordPress and WooCommerce on your computer. Products, orders, stock changes, downloads, and captured emails are real practice records. Payments, delivery, and the tax example are simulated.
1. Inspect a product
Open Products in the WordPress dashboard. Everyday Tee is a simple product with 12 in stock. Make It Yours Tee has Color and Size attributes and 9 variations, with 5 of each. Change one variation’s price and stock, then view the shop.
2. Buy your first shirt
Visit the shop and add one Everyday Tee. At checkout use: Alex Learner, 123 Practice Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60601, United States; learner@example.test. Choose Standard delivery and a successful Practice payment.
Expected total before any coupon: $24 shirt + $5 shipping + $1.92 practice tax = $30.92. The 8% Illinois rate is an invented training example. Shipping is untaxed in this example.
3. Follow the order
In WooCommerce → Orders, open your order. Processing means paid and awaiting fulfillment. Stock should now be 11. Read the order notes and inspect the fake transaction ID. In WooCommerce → Practice Lab, open the captured confirmation email.
4. Fulfill and refund
Pretend you packed and shipped the shirt; change the order status to Completed. Inspect the completed-order email. Then use Refund, enter the line-item quantity, select Restock refunded items, and use the practice-payment refund button. No money moves. Check the refund record and restored stock.
5. Explore a failed or delayed payment
Make another purchase and choose Declined. The checkout should show an error and the order should be Failed. Choose Success to retry. For a separate order, choose Waiting: it becomes On hold. Inspect its notes, then cancel it or manually confirm the pretend payment.
6. Change the business rules
Try coupon FIRSTTEE10. Compare buying one shirt with buying three: free delivery becomes available when the product subtotal after discounts reaches $50. Compare Standard delivery with Local pickup. In WooCommerce → Settings, inspect Shipping and Tax to find these rules.
7. Sell something digital
Buy only the T-Shirt Care Checklist. It is both virtual and downloadable: shipping disappears, the paid order can complete automatically, and you get a working download link. Then try a cart containing both a shirt and the checklist.
8. Back up and practice changes
Run Backup-Dev.ps1 in the woocommerce-deploy folder to save the database, uploaded files, and captured emails. Test-Restore.ps1 restores a backup into a separate environment on port 9406. Use a separate copy to experiment with themes, plugins, and updates before changing your main practice store.
What this lab cannot reproduce
There is no real bank, payment provider, carrier, payout, chargeback, or external webhook. Captured emails are previews, not email deliverability tests. This environment runs Nginx, PHP-FPM, and MariaDB in Linux containers. Public hosting, HTTPS, and cloud recovery operations are separate deployment steps.