As a frequent user of WooCommerce, I have consistently been drawn to its adaptability and capability in handling e-commerce websites. A frequently encountered challenge for online store owners is how to effectively present products by category. This article will walk you through the steps of showcasing WooCommerce products by category, and also share some of my personal suggestions and observations.
Understanding WooCommerce Categories
Before diving into the details of displaying products by category, it’s important to have a solid understanding of WooCommerce categories. Categories in WooCommerce are a way to organize your products into different groups based on their similarities or characteristics. By grouping products into categories, you can make it easier for your customers to browse and find the products they are looking for.
Creating categories in WooCommerce is a straightforward process. Simply navigate to the Products section in your WordPress admin dashboard, and click on the Categories tab. From there, you can add, edit, and delete categories as needed.
Using Shortcodes to Display Products by Category
WooCommerce provides a powerful shortcode system that allows you to display products, categories, and other store-related information on your WordPress site. To display products by category, we can take advantage of the [product_category] shortcode.
The [product_category] shortcode accepts several attributes to customize the output, including the category, number of products per page, ordering, and more. To display products from a specific category, you can use the category attribute and provide the category slug.
For example, if you have a category called “Clothing”, you can use the following shortcode to display all products from that category:
[product_category category="clothing"]
You can also combine multiple attributes to further refine the output. For instance, if you want to display 10 products per page in the “Clothing” category, sorted by date in descending order, you can use the following shortcode:
[product_category category="clothing" per_page="10" orderby="date" order="desc"]
Customizing the Display of Product Categories
While the [product_category] shortcode provides a quick and easy way to display products by category, you may want more control over the layout and appearance of the category pages. Thankfully, WooCommerce makes it easy to customize the display of product categories through the use of templates.
To customize the layout of a category page, you can create a new file called taxonomy-product_cat.php in your theme directory. This template file will be used by WooCommerce to render the category pages instead of the default template.
Inside the template file, you can use standard PHP and WordPress template tags to generate the desired HTML structure. You can also utilize WooCommerce functions and hooks to display specific information about the products in each category.
Conclusion
Displaying WooCommerce products by category is a fundamental task for any online store owner. By leveraging the power of WooCommerce shortcodes and customizing the display through template files, you can present your products in a way that is both visually appealing and user-friendly. I hope this article has provided you with a clear understanding of how to achieve this task, and I encourage you to explore further customization options to make your online store truly stand out.