Articles About Plugin News

I'm excited to announce that our new WordPress plugin, WooCommerce Product Table, is now available. It provides a WooCommerce product table view to display your products in an interactive list or table. Grid layouts are an increasingly popular way to list products and now you can do it too!

We've developed this plugin in response to demand from uses of our Post Table Pro plugin. They have enjoyed using the general table view to display products, but wanted WooCommerce-specific features integrated into the table such as 'Add to Cart' buttons.

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What is a WooCommerce product table view?

WooCommerce is the world's leading e-commerce platform, according to the latest e-commerce usage stats for 2017.

Most WooCommerce websites have standard category layouts which list products in a grid format. There's usually 3 or 4 products per row with large images, the title, price and except underneath, and then an Add to Cart button. This takes up a lot of space.

Lots of WooCommerce store owners need a more compact product table view. A table lets them list more product per page so that customers can easily choose products and add to the cart, without scrolling through many pages.

The WooCommerce Product Table plugin provides a table view to list your products.

How flexible is the WooCommerce product table?

The product table view is incredibly flexible. You create your WooCommerce product table by adding a shortcode to any page or post. The default shortcode works well and you can use the knowledge base to configure it to suit your exact needs.

• You can choose which columns display in the table. Nearly all the data that is stored about WooCommerce products can be used as a column in the table view. This includes title, short description, long description, price, tags, product categories, product featured image, etc. You can even add a quantity selector and Add to Cart button to the table view. It's also possible to display extra product data such as custom fields and taxonomies.
• You can display all your products in the WooCommerce table view, or display products from a specific category only.
• There are links to the product titles so that people can click through to the single product page and buy from there. Or you can disable these links and let people add to the cart straight from the table (or both!).
• You can control how the product table view behaves, such as ordering the products by any column when it first loads. You can choose how many rows are displayed per page.
• Customers can click on a column header to sort by that column. They can use the search box or click on a product category to filter the table.
• You can add filter dropdowns above the table, making it easy for customers to narrow the list of products and find what they need.

Read the knowledge base for a full list of everything you can do with the WooCommerce Protect Table View plugin.

Who is the plugin for?

WooCommerce Product Table is for any website owner who wants a more compact way to display WooCommerce products.

We've been amazed by how many users of our existing Posts Table Pro plugin have used it to create a WooCommerce table view. They use it for many different purposes, and the new dedicated WooCommerce version makes it suitable for many more use cases.

Here are some examples of websites that need a WooCommerce table view:

Use case: Wholesale or trade area

A lot of WooCommerce websites have a trade store, or a hidden trade area alongside a public online store. Wholesale stores tend to be less visual and more information-based than public online shops, so a table view is perfect.

You can use WooCommerce Product Table to list all your trade products. Your distributors can scroll down the list, add multiple products to the cart and make a purchase without having to click through to the individual product pages. This provides a much more functional way of shopping online which is perfect for trade stores.

Tip: If you want to create a private WooCommerce wholesale area, here are 2 ways that you can do it:

1. Check out our WooCommerce Password Protected Categories plugin. This lets you create a WooCommerce category for your wholesale or trade distributors and password protect it. We've even created a tutorial on How to Create a WooCommerce Wholesale or Trade Area with video. Plus a separate tutorial on how to Build a WooCommerce Wholesale Store with Hidden Categories for Each Customer.
2. Use WooCommerce Product Table to add a table view of your wholesale products to a standard WordPress page. You can then password protect this page using the 'Visibility' settings at the top right of the Add/Edit Page screen, or use a membership plugin to create a unique login for each trade user.

Use case: Bulk WooCommerce order form

WooCommerce Product Table is better than all the other WooCommerce order form plugins on the market. It lists your products in a flexible one-page order form with searching, sorting and filters. Your customers can buy products directly from the order form.

Use case: WooCommerce product catalogue

WooCommerce websites with large numbers of products often provide a catalogue view listing all their products. This displays everything in one place without forcing customers to scroll through many different pages. Learn how to use the plugin to create a WooCommerce product catalogue or directory listings.

Use case: Online takeaway restaurant

Takeaway restaurants often display their entire menu on a single page. Customers can choose all the dishes they want to order for delivery. They can add everything from the cart without being taken to a separate page for each option.

WooCommerce Product Table is perfect for an online food ordering system. It lists each item on the menu within an interactive table view. To get your customers' mouths watering, you can make the table more visual by displaying an image of each dish.

Use case: WooCommerce photography website

WooCommerce Product Table supports images, image galleries and embedded audio and video. Customers can view small or large product images, watch video and listen to audio/music directly from the product table view. It's an ideal way for photographers to display their image for sale.

Use case: 'Build a box' WooCommerce product configurator

You can also use WooCommerce Product Table to list multiple items which customers can select in order to create a custom product bundle unique to them. This is perfect for 'build a box' type websites, such as build-a-hamper or to customize a meat or vegetable box for home delivery.

Where can I get the plugin?

You can buy WooCommerce Product Table on our website. And if you like it, sign up as an affiliate and we'll reward you with 30% from all your referrals!

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We're excited to announce the release of our new table plugin. WordPress has long needed a dynamic table plugin where you don't have to enter data manually or copy it from a spreadsheet. Our new WordPress table plugin Posts Table Pro has been designed for this exact purpose.

Posts Table Pro is an extension of our popular free table WordPress plugin Posts Table with Search & Sort.

The free table plugin automatically generates a searchable, sortable HTML table listing your WordPress posts. Since launching the free version in January, lots of people have requested a plugin to create WordPress tables for other types of content such as pages and custom post types. And so Posts Table Pro was born.

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What does the table plugin for WordPress do?

Posts Table Pro lets you insert instant tables containing various types of content from a WordPress website. It automatically creates an interactive jQuery data table anywhere on your site.

This table plugin in WordPress can display:

• Standard WordPress posts
• Pages
• Custom post types
• Taxonomies
• Tags
• Custom fields
• Custom posts provided via other plugins e.g. WooCommerce (but see our dedicated WooCommerce Product Table plugin), Easy Digital Downloads or Events Calendar Pro
• Rendered shortcodes such as buttons, audio tracks, music playlists, image galleries and video galleries

You can create WordPress tables by inserting a shortcode into any WordPress page, post or text widget. There are various options and you can configure the shortcode to specify exactly how your HTML tables should work. You can choose which columns display, the default sort order, how it behaves on mobiles, how much of the post content to display etc.

The great thing about the new table plugin is that it creates interactive tables for your posts without needing any custom code or templates. Normally, if you want a new layout for your WordPress posts or other content then you need to add a custom template to your theme. For example if you wanted to create an online portfolio then you would need to create a portfolio template. With Posts Table Pro, the WordPress tables are added instantly - simply by inserting the shortcode.

Who is the 'Posts Table Pro' WordPress plugin for?

Our Pro table plugin for WordPress opens up many use cases that aren't possible with the free plugin.

You can use it to create a table of contents for your web pages or a product catalogue for your e-commerce store. Maybe you'll create a WordPress staff directory or directory of other information.

You can build a publications or document library listing your articles. Or even a table of upcoming events - the list goes on.

The table plugin also offers a simpler way to get functionality which could previously only be achieved using a much more complex plugin. For example WordPress directory plugins are complex to set up whereas Posts Table Pro is simple.

Where can I see the table WordPress plugin in action?

Play around with the Posts Table Pro demo. We've created demos of various ways you can create a table in WordPress. There are demos for an index of blog posts, table of contents (index of pages), WordPress document library, image, audio and video gallery with playlists, dedicated audio library or video gallery, staff directory with profiles, and a book directory. You can even use it to create a document library in WordPress, directory of members, content table, list e-commerce products or bookable events.

Based on feedback so far, we think Posts Table Pro will become the bestselling WordPress table plugin. People are already planning to use it for a huge variety of WordPress sites. We're excited to see all the different ways our new table plugin will be used, and how it allows people to display their content in new and exciting ways.

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We have created a video tutorial explaining how to use our WordPress password protect plugin to protect a WooCommerce category. The plugin lets you add password protections to a category and its products, or restrict it to specific logged in users or roles. Watch this alongside reading the knowledge base.

The tutorial tells you how to create a WooCommerce password protected category and private category in WooCommerce. It also explains the logic behind the plugin and how once you have protected a category, it will automatically protect all its products and any sub-categories too.

Here's a written tutorial for those of you who don't like videos:

Written transcript of WooCommerce Password Protect Category video

Before we learn how to password protect a WooCommerce category, you need to get the plugin on our website. Download the file and install it in the usual way for a WordPress plugin (Plugins → Add New → Upload), and also add the license key from your confirmation email.

Once you've got that all set up, you should have WooCommerce and WooCommerce Protected Categories installed on your website. You need both these plugins in order for WooCommerce Password Protect Category to work.

How to password protect a category in WooCommerce

Next go to Products → Categories in the WordPress admin. This is the usual page where you can create a WooCommerce category. If you've got an existing website then you probably have categories on the right already - that's fine. The process for creating a WooCommerce password protected category is exactly the same whether it's a new category or an existing one.

Let's great a new category. In the 'Add New Category' section on the left, add the following:

• Category name - e.g. 'Clothes'
• Slug - this is the last part of the category URL, e.g. 'clothes'

If you scroll down, you'll see that there's a new section at the bottom called 'Visibility'. This is what the WooCommerce Password Protect Categories plugin has added and it's not there by default in WooCommerce.

To password protect a WooCommerce category, you simply tick the 'Protected' option and enter a password, which can be anything you like. You can also set the category to only be visible to certain logged in users or user roles. Then click 'Add New Product Category'.

Click the plus (+) icon to add multiple passwords for a category. This lets you give different passwords to different customers.

This will add your new category in the list of categories on the right. In the 'Visibility' column, you can see that it is labelled 'Password protected'.

You can also restrict categories to specific users or entire roles. That way, they can automatically see the hidden content as soon as they log into their account. They don't need to enter a separate password.

Password protect sub-categories

You can also add sub-categories. If you have a sub-category, it will automatically share the same password. You don't need to password protect it - it just happens automatically.

Let's do this now and create a new category called 'Shoes'. I'm going to select the Parent as 'Clothes', and mark it as Public as I don't need to password protect it. Because this is a child category of a password protected category, it will be password protected even though it doesn't have its own password.

The great thing about that is that if you give your customers a password for the parent category, they can use it to access any of the products in that category, the child category page and any of the products in the child category. Customers only need to enter the password once and that whole area of the website will be unlocked for them.

That's much better than password protecting each individual product, which would be a nightmare for the customer because they'd have to enter the password for every single product they want to view. Not ideal!

If you want to create more complex structures for a password protected category, you can add other protected categories with their own password. For example, you might have a 'Furniture' WooCommerce category which is separate from the 'Clothes' category. You would add a different password to protect the Furniture category. That will work alongside the Clothes category and each will have a completely different password to protect it. If you give the customers who buy your clothes the password for the Clothes category, they will be able to access the Shoes category because it's a child category of Clothes. However they cannot access the Furniture category which is protected separately.

This is a good way to lock down lots of different types of WooCommerce store. For example you might use a password to protect a Trade section of your WooCommerce website and give the password to your trade distributors. You could give them each their own category and their own password. Or whatever the use case for you.

WooCommerce Password Protected Category settings

There are various settings for the WooCommerce Password Protect plugin in WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Protected Categories. These let you control how your protected WooCommerce categories appear on the main Shop page and in navigation menus and widgets. You can also customize the text on the password entry page.

Wrapping up our WooCommerce password protect tutorial

So that's how you set up the plugin and password protect a WooCommerce category. Give the password to your customers and they can buy from the protected categories.

For more information, check out our tutorials on how to hide a whole WooCommerce store and make it private, and how to use it as a WooCommerce wholesale plugin. If you want to protect an entire store, it's also worth looking at our dedicated private shop WooCommerce plugin.

Or sign up as an affiliate and earn 30% commission for recommending the plugin!

In response to popular demand, we have launched a new WordPress plugin called WooCommerce Password Protected Categories. It's the only plugin which lets you password protect categories in WooCommerce. It's even possible to create a WooCommerce wholesale site or hide a whole WooCommerce store!

Note: Since launching this plugin, we have added extra functionality and renamed it 'WooCommerce Protected Categories'. You can still password protect product categories, but you can also restrict categories to specific roles or even individual users. This makes it the most complete WooCommerce category protection plugin on the market. 

Why password protect WooCommerce categories?

There are several reasons why you might want to password protect a category or create WooCommerce private products. Here are some popular examples:

• E-commerce website with a public shop and a separate wholesale/distributors/B2B area.
• Photographers' website where each photoshoot is uploaded and made privately available for the individual client to sell.
• Members-only shop that you have to join before making a purchase.

Most WooCommerce websites are entirely available to the public. However with nearly 2 million websites using WooCommerce in 2017, there are also lots of stores that need protected, private or hidden areas.

Related tutorial: How to create WooCommerce private products.

What does WooCommerce Password Protected Categories do?

WooCommerce Protected Categories adds a password protection option to the WooCommerce Categories page (WooCommerce → Categories in the WordPress admin). It works in the same way as the password protection for pages and posts. You choose a password, and visitors must enter this password in order to access the category page.

Each WooCommerce product category can have one password. Alternatively, you can create multiple passwords for each category. This is useful if you want to create unique passwords for each category, for example.

The great thing about this plugin is that the password automatically protects all the products within the category you have protected. It also protects any sub-categories. This lets you divided up the protected area of your e-commerce store, creating a more complex navigation structure with as many products and sub-categories as you like - all protected by a single password.

The plugin also lets you mark categories as Private, so that only logged in Administrators and Editors can view them. Or if you prefer, you can restrict categories to specific logged in user accounts or user roles. These are all great ways to create WooCommerce private products within a single category.

What did people do before this plugin was released?

Previously, people wanting to create a hidden area for private products within a WooCommerce online shop would use one of the following methods.

Password protect or private WooCommerce products

You can password protect individual WooCommerce products in the same way as you can protect a standard WordPress post or page. You can also create individual WooCommerce private products. Do this via the 'Visibility' option in the 'Publish' section at the top right of the Add/Edit Product screen.

A password protected product will still appear on your main Shop page and category pages. If someone clicks on it then they will be prompted to enter a password before they can view the product.

With this option, you have to individually password protect every product that you need to hide. Or mark the product as private.

With password protected products, your customers will have to enter a password for every single product. Not very user-friendly.

With WooCommerce private products, they appear to logged in users with the correct privileges but it's a bit disjointed.

The WooCommerce Protected Categories plugin offers a more sophisticated solution because it includes a setting allowing you to hide products within private or password protected categories from the main Shop page. You can also hide private or password protected categories from your main list of categories. This means that people will only be able to find your protected products or categories if they have the link. (Or if they're logged in, with WooCommerce product categories.) This lets you have a private area of your WooCommerce shop without cluttering up your public shop pages.

Once a visitor has entered the password for a category, they will be able to view all the products within that category - and also within any sub-categories - without entering any further passwords. This is much more user-friendly than protecting each individual product.

Display products on a private or password protected page

WooCommerce has lots of built-in shortcodes which can be used to display products within a page. Some themes also have options for displaying WooCommerce private products or categories on a standard page.

You can use this to create a standard page in WordPress and password protect it in the usual way or mark it as private. You can then insert the required products onto the page.

The problem with this option is that it's not very secure as there are various other ways that people can find your products. The 'hidden' products will still be visible on your main WooCommerce Shop page which lists all your products - and people can guess the address of this page even if you haven't added any links to it.

If your hidden products are in the same category as publicly available products then visitors will be able to see the hidden products on the category page. There are probably other loopholes, too.

Restrict content using a membership plugin

For a more fully featured solution, you can create a complete membership site using a WooCommerce membership plugin such as WooCommerce Memberships or Groups (with the Groups for WooCommerce add-on). With a membership plugin, each of your users will have their own login details - as opposed to a shared password for each category.

This is a good option if your users will have access to other protected content, for example a wider members area. It's also good if any of your WooCommerce categories are particularly sensitive and a shared password isn't secure enough. However it can be overkill if your requirements are more straightforward than this. WooCommerce-compatible membership plugins are also more expensive. And it's a pain to have to spend your time helping members who are having problems logging in (yes I know WordPress has a 'Lost Password' feature, but owners of membership sites still receive constant enquiries about this.)

If you really want each user to have a separate login then you can create private categories instead of a whole membership plugin. This will automatically unlock your private categories to logged in users depending on their role. It's much easier than a full membership solution.

If you need to create a private area of your shop then the WooCommerce Protected Categories plugin is a great option. It's quick and easy to set up, and automatically protects all the products within your private or password protected categories. Simple!

Create a WooCommerce age restricted store

Password Protected Categories is ideal as a WooCommerce age verification plugin. You can use a password protected category to require customers to verify their age before they can view the age restricted products within.

Is it easy to use?

Absolutely, you can literally create WooCommerce private products within a minute or two. You can read the full plugin documentation here. We've also provided a detailed video tutorial on using the password protection plugin and marking products as private.

Where can I get the WooCommerce private products plugin?

So you'd like to password protect your WooCommerce categories or make them private! You can buy the plugin from here. It's much cheaper than setting up a full membership solution and we hope it is useful for making WooCommerce private and protected.

Or if you'd rather protect your entire shop, check out our WooCommerce Private Store plugin instead.

We've also created an opportunity to earn money from recommending the plugin. Sign up to our WordPress affiliate scheme and get 30% commission for WordPress plugin sales on our site.

We have developed a free WordPress plugin that lets you display comments from your posts anywhere on your website. You can insert comments in a page, post or widget. You can even choose what information about each comment is included.

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What's wrong with the default WordPress Recent Comments widget?

WordPress comes with a built-in 'Recent Comments' widget that unfortunately isn't very good. I mean, what's the point of a widget that tells you the name of the post that someone commented on, but doesn't actually include the content of the comment? No one will click to view the full comment if they don't even know what it's about.

Another drawback of the default Recent Comments widget is that - by definition - it's just a widget. Unless you use a plugin like SMR Shortcode Any Widget or your theme lets you add widgets within a page, there's no way to insert it elsewhere on your site - for example within the main body of a page or post. I realise that not many websites display WordPress comments within a post, but plenty of people want to do this on a page - particularly the homepage, to show how people are interacting with the site.

The default Recent Comments widget displays ALL the comments from your WordPress website regardless of language. This doesn't matter if you have a single-language website. However if your website is multilingual then it means that the widget will display comments from posts in the wrong language, which can be confusing to your users.

We therefore decided to develop a free WordPress Recent Comments plugin that would solve these problems.

Introducing the Better Recent Comments free WordPress plugin

Better Recent Comments was launched last week and has already had its first 5* review, which we're delighted about. You can use it to insert your comments in a widget or on a page or post using a simple shortcode.

The easiest way to use the plugin is simply to add the basic shortcode into a post, page or widget:

[better_recent_comments]

This will display your latest comments without needing any further configuration.

If you want more control over the information that is displayed then the plugin has several built-in options. You can use these by editing the shortcode - this is documented in the plugin description.

• Number - lets you control how many comments are included.
• Format - lets you control what information about each comment is displayed. Choose from avatar, author, post, comment and date.
• Date format - lets you choose from a range of date and time options to control how the comment date appears.
• Avatar size - lets you change the size of the avatar for each comment. (An avatar is the comment author's photo and is taken from their Gravatar, if they have one.)

I have a multilingual website. How can I display comments for the current language only?

The Better Recent Comments plugin is WPML-compatible. If you're using WPML for your multilingual website then the plugin will automatically display the comments for your current language only.

This means that if you have an English and a Chinese version of your website, for example, then the comments from your English posts will display on the English site and the Chinese comments will display on the Chinese site.

Where can I see a demo of the plugin in action?

You can see it in use on our own blog page - check it out in the right hand column near the bottom.

Where can I download Better Recent Comments?

You can download the plugin from the WordPress plugin repository or you can search for ‘Better Recent Comments’ in the WordPress admin (go to Plugins > Add New).

We’d love to hear how you get on with Better Recent Comments and how we could further improve it for you. Please leave a comment below or add a review or support request on the plugin page.

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