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As a business owner or website administrator, there are plenty of reasons why you might want to hide WordPress pages from public view. For example, if you’re running an online membership site or have a small business that sells premium content, then hiding certain pages, posts, categories, or your entire site from public view is essential.

The only problem is that WordPress comes with very limited options for hiding pages, posts, and categories. Not to mention, the options that are available to you aren’t particularly user-friendly.

The good news is that by the time you’re done reading this article, you’ll walk away knowing exactly how to:

• Hide WordPress pages, posts, and categories - either with simple password protection, or restricted to specific users or roles.
• Make your entire WordPress website or WooCommerce store private.

And the best part? At the end, we’ll show you how to do all this in under 15 minutes using a great plugin, Password Protected Categories!

What’s wrong with the hidden content features in WordPress itself?

If you’ve been using WordPress for some time now, you probably already know the content management system (CMS) comes with hidden content features out of the box. However, these built-in options are pretty clumsy and not at all user-friendly, to say the least.

More specifically, WordPress’ built-in hidden content features will leave you password protecting individual pages and posts.

There are two main reasons why:

• Manually password-protect new postsYou have to remember to password-protect each individual new post or page on your website. As you can probably imagine, this leaves plenty of room for human error. In addition, it’s more time-consuming for you, especially if you have to password protect dozens of posts or pages.
• Poor user experienceIf you password-protect individual pages or posts then your site’s users will need to enter a password for each page or post they’d like to access. This delivers terrible user experience and makes your site come off as unprofessional.

Fortunately, there’s a better way to hide WordPress pages, posts, and categories that doesn't involve messing around with PHP files.

The solution: Password Protected Categories

The Password Protected Categories plugin makes it incredibly easy for WordPress site owners to hide just about any type of content on your WordPress site. This includes posts, pages, categories, and custom post types.

If you’re running an online business or membership site, or if you sell online courses, it might be easier for you to hide WordPress categories instead of password-protecting individual posts and pages.

Password Protected Categories key features

Here’s why protecting entire categories is better than hiding individual posts and pages:

Protect entire categories at once

• Instantly hide the entire WordPress category page and all its contents. This includes all of the content sorted under that category and its sub-categories. So, when you create a new page or post, all you’ll have to do is add it to the protected category. Put simply, you won’t have to worry about remembering to protect it as it will automatically be hidden once it’s sorted under the protected category. And, it doesn't affect permalinks or SEO.
• There are 3 types of protection available to you with Password Protected Categories. You can choose to password-protect pages and posts, or make them private to specific users or roles.
  • Password-protect. You can add one (or more) passwords to a category and instantly protect all of the content and sub-categories sorted under it. Visitors can log in from a single page or the sidebar. The Password Protected Categories plugin will automatically direct them to the correct category based on their password.
  • User role protection. You can create private categories that will only be visible to logged-in users with a specific role.
  • Individual user accounts. For even more fine-grained control, you can choose exactly which users on your site can access each private area.

Easier for you and your visitors

• There’s no need to create individual user accounts if you use password protection. All you have to do is give a valid password to everyone who you’d like to grant access to. This makes it easy to keep things organized on the back-end. Alternatively, if your users already have accounts then you can enable the user or role protection which works with their existing accounts.
• The Password Protected Categories plugin supports multiple passwords. This means you can password-protect a page, post, or category using multiple passwords and give different users different passwords. The key benefit here is that it makes it easier to grant and revoke access to hidden content.
• Once someone unlocks a hidden WordPress category, they can navigate to all the pages, posts, and sub-categories inside it without having to re-enter passwords. This delivers a good user experience to your site’s visitors.
• Password protecting WordPress categories or making them private doesn’t affect your public-facing site in any way. This makes it easy for business owners to have a private area on their site in addition to a public-facing site.
• You can choose whether you’d like to show protected pages or posts on public parts of your site so that people must enter a password to access them. This is a great way to encourage prospective members or subscribers to act on your conversion goal. Similarly, you can choose to hide WordPress pages from public by making them password-protected or private. Password protected categories are hidden from search engines like Google.

How to hide parts of WordPress (in 3 easy steps)

Here, we’ll show you how to hide WordPress posts, pages, and categories in three easy steps:

1. Installing the Password Protected Categories plugin
2. Configuring plugin settings
3. Hiding WordPress pages, posts, or categories

Feel free to follow along or use the jump links to skip ahead to a specific step.

Step #1: Install the Password Protected Categories plugin

If you haven’t done so already, get the Password Protected Categories plugin. You’ll receive the plugin files along with a license key via email.

Log into your WordPress site and install and activate the plugin by heading over to Plugins → Add New from the WP admin. Once that’s done, navigate to Settings → Protected Categories to enter your license key.

Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen to proceed.

Step #2: Configure the plugin settings

From the same screen (i.e. go to Settings → Protected Categories from the WP admin panel), you can configure the plugin’s Category Protection and Login Form settings.

Category Protection

The Password Protected Categories plugin lets you decide how quickly you’d like to hide WordPress categories after they’ve been unlocked. In other words, you can decide how long the category remains unlocked before the password automatically expires. By default, this is set to 10 days.

In addition, you can tick the checkbox next to the Show Categories? option to show password-protected categories, posts, and pages to visitors. If you enable this option, the protected categories will appear in public areas of your WordPress site. This also includes sidebars and navigation menus.

Private, user and role restricted categories

Choose what will happen if someone tries to access hidden content while they're logged out.

Login Form

When a visitor tries to access a password protected page, post, or category on your WordPress site, they’ll be prompted to fill out a WP login form. The Login Form settings let you configure the look and feel of the WP login form that’s displayed on password-protected categories and posts.

You can set the:

• Title of the login form
• Form message
• Password label
• Placeholder (i.e. if you want to use the password label as placeholder text)
• Button text

Depending on the WordPress theme or child theme you’re using, the login form (or login page) will look something like this on the front-end:

Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen to proceed.

Step #3: Hide WordPress pages, posts, or categories

Once you’ve configured the plugin settings, you can hide WordPress pages, posts, and categories.

Here’s what you need to do to make categories hidden, password-protected or private:

Head over to Posts → Categories from the WP admin panel. Create a new category and give it a name, slug, and description.

You can also create a hidden sub-category. Simply use the Parent Category option to choose the correct parent category. If your parent category isn’t protected then only the content you add to the sub-category will be protected.

Use the Visibility settings to either password-protect the WordPress category or hide it based on users or roles.

If you choose to password-protect the WordPress category, you’ll have the option to set one (or more passwords).

You can also restrict the hidden category to specific users or roles.

Feel free to mix and match the different types of protection, as they are designed to work alongside each other. For example, you can password protect a category and give the password to people who don't have an account; and you can also unlock it for specific logged in roles.

Click the Add New Category button to continue.

Tip: Out of the box, WordPress only lets you categorize posts. If you’d like to categorize your WordPress pages, you’ll need to install a free plugin to hide WordPress pages like your homepage.

Bonus tips

By now you already know how you hide WordPress posts, pages, and categories on your site. Here, we’ll share some bonus tips that will let you hide WordPress content in advanced ways.

How to make your entire site private

You can use the Password Protected Categories plugin to hide WordPress by making your entire site private. The easiest way to do this is by putting all of your site’s content – posts, pages, and custom post types – under one or more protected categories.

For example, you can create a category called Private WordPress and sort all of your content under it. Then, you would simply use the Visibility options of the Private WordPress category to hide it from public view.

How to hide WooCommerce

If you’re running a WooCommerce store and are looking for a way to hide WordPress content or product categories, you can use the WooCommerce Protected Categories plugin instead.

The WooCommerce Protected Categories plugin is built specifically for WooCommerce stores. In addition to this, it comes with extra features to hide product categories based on individual users or roles.

Similar to Password Protected Categories, you can also protect all of the products sorted under a specific category, including sub-categories, automatically. In other words, the products and sub-categories automatically inherit the same protection. They'll also automatically be hidden from search engines like Google.

Be sure to check out our article on hiding WooCommerce products for more information.

It is perfect for online store owners that need a way to sell to both wholesale and retail customers. Store owners can also use this to offer discounted rates to customers who create an account on their site.

Where to get the plugin

To get started, all you have to do is install Password Protected Categories – the easy plug and play solution that’s helping people all over the world hide WordPress posts, pages, and categories in a few simple steps.

To recap:

• No technical knowledge required – get up and running within minutes and no need to mess around with PHP files.
• Just follow the simple steps in our tutorial above to hide WordPress posts, pages, and categories on your site.
• Full support is available if you need any help getting started or advice.
• 30-day money-back guarantee – love it or get a full refund, zero risk!

Get Password Protected Categories and start hiding WordPress today!

If you run a craft brewery, it's a great idea to set up a brewery online store. This is a great way to meet customer demands and sell beer online.

For breweries, hard times and emergency situation can hamper and jeopardize the total meet of their sales targets. All of their usual ways of selling were affected by:

• Supplying craft beers to pubs and restaurants.
• Face-to-face sales directly from their brewery shop.
• Stores and shops they supply craft beers to.

For some microbreweries, selling online became the only way to stay in business and maintain their bottom line. Even with the world opening up again, it is now clear that online sales are essential for success.

The good news is that you can set up an e-commerce website to sell beer online. This is also a great way to reduce costs and overheads as you cut out the middleman and sell directly to the public. And the best part is that it's surprisingly easy to set up!

In this article, we’ll show you how to set up a brewery online store using the free WordPress and WooCommerce platforms. You can then choose between two excellent brewery plugins to list your beer in a quick one-page order form: WooCommerce Product Table and WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering.

Setting up WordPress and WooCommerce

We recommend using WordPress and WooCommerce to power your brewery online store. This is because they're easy to set up yourself, and you can sell beer online in a few simple steps. Plus, most of the software you’ll need is open-source and free to use.

This means you won’t have to pay a commission like you would if you were to sell on a hosted e-commerce platform. Finally, selling beer online through your own brewery online store means that you have full control over the look and feel of your store and payouts.

If you don’t already have a WordPress site with WooCommerce installed on it, we recommend checking out these helpful articles:

• How to install WordPress
• How to start an online WooCommerce store

Once you’ve set up your basic WooCommerce-powered online store, come back here and follow the instructions to sell beer online.

Which is the best brewery plugin for selling beer online?

Once you've installed WordPress and WooCommerce, you need to choose a brewery plugin to list the beers on your public-facing website. Beer sells best in a one-page order form layout, where customers can select the beers they want and quickly add them to their cart.

You can do this by installing either the WooCommerce Product Table or WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugins. They both convert the free WooCommerce plugin into a purpose-built food and drink ordering system.

Choose whichever plugin has the appearance and features you need, and then skip ahead to the setup instructions.

WooCommerce Product Table - Best for listing large numbers of beers

WooCommerce Product Table makes it quick and easy to find specific fine beers. Customers can use the filter dropdowns, column sorting and keyword search to find exactly what they're looking for. As a result, we recommend this beer ordering plugin if you have a large alcoholic drinks catalog.

Each drink is listed on its own row in a one-page order form (or multiple pages if you want pages for ale, lager, wine, golden apple mead, dark beeretc.). You can choose which columns of information to display. Customers can choose quantities and options, select multiple beers, and quickly add them to the cart.

WooCommerce Product Table is great for selling beer online for several reasons:

Setup instructions →

WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering - Best for a clean, simple layout

If you have a few dozen beers or less, then you might prefer the clean and minimalist design of the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin. It creates a simple list of your beers and other drink products. 

There are lots of reasons why WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering is perfect for selling beer online:

Setup instructions →

How to set up a brewery online store using WooCommerce Product Table

By now you should already have a WooCommerce store set up. Here’s what you need to do next to set up a brewery online store:

Step #1: Get the WooCommerce Product Table plugin

Get the WooCommerce Product Table plugin and install it on your WordPress site. You’ll receive the plugin files and license key in an email.

Log in to your WordPress admin panel and head over to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product tables. Enter the license key you received in the License key field to activate it.

Click the Save changes button at the bottom of the screen to proceed.

Step #2: Configure the plugin’s settings

The next step is to configure the WooCommerce Product Table plugin settings for your brewery online store. Here’s what you need to do:

Table display

Since you’re setting up a brewery online store, we recommend replacing the standard WooCommerce layouts in your theme with the product table.

For this, all you have to do is tick the checkboxes next to the Shop page and the Product category archives option.

Table content

Use the Columns option to specify which columns you’d like to show in the front-end table layout. Here’s a complete list of product table columns you can choose from. At the bare minimum, we recommend displaying image,name,summary,price,buy.

You might have created product attributes when adding craft beers to WooCommerce as products. This is an easy way to store extra information about each beer (such as the strength (i.e. ABV), type (e.g. IPA, double IPA, pale ale, seltzer), bottle size, or additional attributes (like bestsellers or limited edition beers).

WooCommerce Product Table makes it easy to display them as attribute columns in the table. To do this, use att:<attribute name>. For example, if you wanted to display the beer strength, you’d add image,name,summary,att:strength,price,buy to the Columns option.

Add to cart column

As we mentioned earlier, customers will likely want to purchase multiple beers at once from your brewery online store. We recommend setting the Add to cart button option to either Checkbox only or Button and checkbox using the dropdown menu.

In addition, you’ll want to tick the checkbox next to the Quantities option to show quantity selectors in the add to cart column. This way, customers can add multiple units of a specific beer to their cart at once.

If you sell variable products then you should set the Variations option to Dropdown lists in add to cart column. This way, customers can quickly select different options for each craft beer. For example, they can choose to purchase an individual bottle, growler, a 6-pack, box, keg, or crate. Or, you can have different types of barrels such as dark oak barrels or small barrels and big barrels. This is especially useful for brewery online stores that would like to sell to wholesale customers, as well.

Table controls

WooCommerce Product Table lets you add attribute filters to your front-end table layout. This makes it easy for customers to quickly find the types of beers they’d like to purchase.

For example, you can create attributes for IPA, craft beer, homebrew, lager, pilsner, wheatbeer, and so on and let customers select beers based on alcoholic strength (i.e. alcohol levels or high-proof liquor).

Set the Product filters option to Custom using the dropdown menu and add the attribute filters you’d like to the Custom filters option. For example, add att:strength if you’d like to display the Strength attribute as a filter.

Your brewery online store might look something like this:

How to use WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering to sell beer online

If you'd rather list your beers in a clean and simple order form, then WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering is perfect for you.

1. Get WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering and install it on your WordPress site.
2. Find the plugin settings page at WooCommerce → Settings → Restaurant.
3. Choose how you want your brewery order form to work. This includes choosing what information to display and the number of columns.
4. Go to the Pages section of the WordPress admin, find the new page called 'Restaurant Ordering' and rename it to something more appropriate like 'Order Beer Online'.
5. Now view the page. You will see your beers and other drinks listed in a professional-looking one-page order form, structured by category:

Add age verification and shipping options

Since most countries across the world restrict the sale of beer based on age, you’ll want to set up age verification on your brewery online store. Check out our separate tutorial on how to add a WordPress age validation pop-up to your store or prevent under-age people from accessing it.

In addition, you might also want to set up postage costs for cool beer since it’s heavy. You can do this using the flat rate options built into WooCommerce.

You can also use the Product Shipping plugin if you want to charge different postage based on weight.

It’s also worth mentioning that WooCommerce offers a local pickup shipping option which is suitable for local brewery online stores that can offer curbside pickup options. This way, customers don’t have to pay postage.

Bonus: Sell merchandise for your brewery

You can also use the WooCommerce Product Table and WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugins to sell merchandise for your brewery. This is a great way to establish your brand and supplement your income without doing hard work.

Some popular merch ideas for breweries include branded stickers, gift cards, t-shirts, and hoodies. You can also sell glassware like a branded pint glass or beer mugs.

You can follow the same techniques to sell merch through your brewery online store. We recommend creating a separate category (with sub-categories, if necessary) for the merch. This way, you can display it on separate pages on your brewery online store.

Add a wholesale area to sell to pubs and restaurants

Many breweries will benefit from a wholesale area that they can use to sell beer kegs, boxes, and crates to pubs, shops, restaurants, and other stores that they supply beer to.

These stores can then place their orders online and be charged the correct wholesale price rather than the regular price. The key benefit of selling beer wholesale online is that it saves a lot of time as compared to taking orders manually over the phone. Check out our tutorial on how to create a WooCommerce wholesale store.

Case study: How Beer Drive Thru uses WooCommerce Product Table to sell beers online

The Beer Drive Thru brewery store needed a way to sell beers to customers in an efficient way. Initially, they were looking for a simple way to set up a single page solution or one-page shop. This would allow Beer Drive Thru customers to choose their beers and place their orders, all from one page.

Using the WooCommerce Product Table plugin, they were able to start selling beers online and keep their business operations running during the Coronavirus lockdown.

Customers can visit the brewery online store to select the beers they'd like to purchase, set the quantity, and place their order in advance. Then, they can drive into the car park area at the brewery store for contactless pickup (similar to curbside pickup). This is perfect for selling beers during the lockdown.

Beer Drive Thru also offers nationwide delivery options. Using the WooCommerce Product Table plugin, the brewery set up two different order forms with different available options and prices for their beers.

Set up your own brewery online store

A brewery online store is a great way to avoid operational restrictions and reach a wider audience. And the easiest way to sell beer online is by using the WooCommerce Product Table or WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin to showcase the beers you sell and let customers place orders online.

Ready to start selling beer online? Get the plugin today!

'As a website owner or blogger, one of the things you might want to do is create private pages in WordPress. These pages can either act as a private blog, useful resources exclusively for subscribers, or something entirely different.

One thing’s for sure, by using WordPress to create subscriber-only content, you’ll be able to:

• Attract more signups 
• Encourage website re-visits and 
• Reward the loyal subscribers on your email list

The use cases of a WordPress Private Page

• To run membership sites /exclusive communities and forums: Exclusive content can be made private with access only for community members. It is typically used by affiliate marketers, course creators and even brands that offer premium membership for exclusive offers.
• For internal departmental use: Organisations like schools, universities and companies use private pages to store and maintain internal documents, coursework, sensitive information, private blogs etc.
• For content that is a work-in-progress: A WordPress Private page is perfect for work that needs tweaks. It can be used when multiple people are designing or brainstorming together (like a product launch page), or for content that simply isn't ready yet.

By the end of this article, you’ll walk away knowing how to create private pages for your email subscribers and for specific user roles in WordPress. The best part? We’ll show you how to have it up and running in a matter of minutes using the WordPress plugin, Password Protected Categories.

Creating a WordPress private page for subscribers 

How it works

From the user's perspective, here’s how your WordPress subscriber only content will work:

1. A site visitor signs up to your email list to gain access to your subscriber-only area.
2. Once they’ve signed up, they’ll receive a welcome email which contains a URL and password to gain them access.
3. They click the URL which takes them to a landing page. This page contains a simple form asking them to input a password.
4. Once the password is entered and they click ‘Login’, they’ll have access to your subscribers only area.
5. This subscribers area will contain resources, private articles and more in the form of either posts or pages within WordPress.

This tutorial contains step-by-step instructions for each of these stages, so continue reading to start creating WordPress subscriber-only content.

How to create WordPress private pages for your email subscribers

So let’s get to it. In this section, we’ll outline how to create your WordPress private pages in just 5 simple steps.

Note: This tutorial presumes you have an existing WordPress site set up.

Step 1: Install Password Protected Categories

To get started, get Password Protected Categories plugin from the Barn2 store: https://barn2.com/wordpress-plugins/password-protected-categories

Then follow these steps:

1. Go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
2. Choose the zip file you downloaded, upload, and then click Activate.
3. Once activated, you’ll need to enter your licence key.

Now that we have Password Protected Categories installed, we can move onto creating our private pages.

Step 2: Create your subscriber only categories

At this stage, you’ll want to decide if you’d like to have your private WordPress subscriber only content as pages or posts. If you’d like to have it as pages, you’ll need to install a free plugin to allow them to be categorized, as WordPress doesn't provide page categories by default. This guide will help you set it up.

Next, you’ll want to create the category page that’ll have all the subscriber-only pages or posts inside it. This will act as your private subscriber-only landing page.

1. Go to Posts or Pages → Categories.
2. In the Add New Category section, give your new private subscriber area/category a name, slug and description (optional).
3. Scroll down to the Visibility section and click the Password protected checkbox.
4. Here you can add one or more passwords for your protected subscriber area. This will protect the category page and all the pages/posts inside it so that subscribers must enter the password to unlock them. 
5. Click Add New Category and your new password-protected category will appear on the right-hand side of your screen with your other categories.

Step 3: Create your subscriber login page

The login page will act as a password protected barrier stopping non-subscribers from accessing the private content. Essentially, it contains a simple form field that requires the visitor to fill in with a password and click ‘login’ to gain access.

This step can be as simple or complicated as you’d like depending on your skill level. You can either:

1. Link directly to the category page. This can be added to your navigation menu, website footer, or welcome email you send to new subscribers. You can find the link by going to: 
   
   
   1. Posts or Pages → Categories.
   2. Hover over your password-protected category and click View.
   3. Copy the URL of this page.

2. Create a subscriber area login page. This technique works well if you want to add extra information to your page or if you’re creating separate password-protected categories for different types of subscribers. 
   
   
   1. Go to Pages → Add New.
   2. Give your page a name.
   3. Paste the shortcode [category_login] into the page text area.
   4. Then, add whatever extra content you desire to the page, click Publish and you’re done.

Step 4: Create your WordPress private pages/posts

Now the category that hosts your private pages/posts has been created, it’s time to create the pages/posts themselves. This involves using WordPress to make pages visible to subscribers only. Again, the Password Protected Categories plugin makes this easy. 

This part is pretty straightforward and depending on how much content you want to add, will only take a minute:

1. Go to Pages or Posts → Add New.
2. Add your page/post content as you wish. This could be anything from private articles to downloadable resources, videos, pdfs and more.
3. In the Document section on the right-hand side of your screen, scroll down to the Categories section.
4. Check the new password-protected category you created earlier.
5. Once ready, click Publish and your new page or post will be added to your password-protected page.

By default, Password Protected Categories hides these posts or pages from the public-facing areas of your site (e.g. widgets and navigation menus). If you’d like them to appear there, you can do so in the Password Protected Categories settings. Just go to Settings → Protected Categories. Scroll down to the Category Protection section and tick the checkbox next to Show protected categories? That way, people will see the login page if they try to access any WordPress subscriber only content.

Step 5: Tell your subscribers

Now that you’ve created your private pages for subscribers in WordPress, it’s time to tell them about it. You’ll want to tell existing subscribers and have a way to incentivise new blog visitors to sign up too. Here’s how to do both.

Tell your existing subscribers

To tell your existing email subscribers, you’ll simply need to send them an email with a link to your newly created protected area. Within this email, you’ll want to add the page link and password so your subscribers can gain access to the hidden content. 

Incentivise new blog visitors to sign up

To encourage new blog visitors to sign up and gain access to the WordPress subscriber only content, you’ll want to add an email signup form to your website.

We recommend MailChimp. You can use this to send notifications of your new private blog articles and resources to your subscribers. Find out how with our tutorial below, which includes instructions on how to:

• Set up MailChimp and add it to your WordPress site.
• Send your new private pages/posts to email subscribers.

Now that you have MailChimp up and running, you’ll need to create a welcome email. This will be sent to all new subscribers and will contain both the link to your subscriber-only area and the password.

To do this, open up your MailChimp dashboard and do the following:

1. In your MailChimp account dashboard, click the Automate drop-down menu and click Email.
2. Then, click the Subscriber Activity tab and click Welcome new subscribers.

3. In the Single email tab, enter a campaign name (this is just the name of your welcome email) and click the drop-down menu to choose your audience (previously called ‘list’ in MailChimp). If you need help with setting up your audience, read our tutorial here. 
4. Once ready, click Begin.
5. Next, you’ll be able to add your welcome email content. Make sure to add the URL of your private subscriber area and the password. 
6. Once happy, click Start Sending and your new email subscribers will automatically be sent this new email once they sign up.

Creating WordPress private pages based on
user roles

You won’t need any plugins for this, you can use default WordPress to make pages accessible only to the admin and editor user roles. Here’s how: 

• Go to the Page settings on your WordPress Admin dashboard.
• Navigate to “Visibility” in the Publish section located on the top right corner of the page and click on “Edit”.
• A dropdown list will open with “Public” selected by default. Choose “Private” and click on “OK”.

• This page is now accessible only to those with the admin and editor user roles. Site visitors and those with other user roles, will be shown a simple “Page Not Found” message since they do not have the right permissions.

That’s it, you can now set up a private subscriber-only area and make pages private to admin and editor user roles. With a private subscriber-only area or private blog up and running, you’ll be able to encourage more email signups, automate sending out private content (including new product offers) and add new pages/posts within a matter of minutes.

Make this setup quick and risk-free with Password Protected Categories.

One of the most effective ways to boost sales on your e-commerce store is by making it easy for customers to browse products, select a variation, and add it to the cart. For this, you need a WooCommerce bulk variations form. This acts as a quick order form, allowing people to buy variations more easily.

A WooCommerce bulk variations form allows customers to choose quantities and add multiple variations to their shopping cart at once. This way, they don't have to spend time adding each WooCommerce variation one at a time or searching for the precise combination they want: every option is easily visible at a glance. For this reason, using a WooCommerce bulk variations plugin is a better way to sell variation products.

In this article, we’ll show you how to create three different types of bulk variations forms for your WooCommerce store without any complicated messing around with PHP code. You'll learn how to list WooCommerce product variations in either a variations grid or table layout, depending on your requirements.

The benefits of using WooCommerce bulk variations forms

Some online stores sell multiple variations of the same product. For example, clothing stores generally sell items in more than one size. Color and material are two other common variations. You might even consider offering e-books, albums, games, or movies as variations on a generic product.

By default, WooCommerce forces you to select each variation individually. This takes ages for customers wanting to buy variations in bulk!

For example, imagine you wanted to buy lots of different sizes and colors of a t-shirt. Would you rather add each variation individually by using the size and color dropdowns and clicking the 'Add to cart' button lots of times? Or would you rather enter the required quantity for each variation from a bulk variations form and click the 'Add to cart' button once?

As you can see, the default variation dropdowns provided by WooCommerce can make the process long and complicated for customers buying lots of variations.

Displaying product variations in a WooCommerce bulk variations form offers many benefits to both you and your customers. As well as being able to buy variations in bulk more quickly, they can see all the variations at once and bulk edit their orders.

This way, customers can still see all the available variations in the order form and quickly add the ones they want to their cart in bulk from a single page.

3 ways to list WooCommerce product variations

We'll explain three different ways to list WooCommerce product variations so that customers can select quantities and buy them quickly and easily:

1. Variations grid Lets customers quickly select multiple variations of a single product and add them to cart at once.
2. List variations in a table List product variations for one or more products on separate rows in an order form layout. This is great for SEO.
3. List variable products in a table with dropdowns List product variations in dropdowns in a table layout, with a different product on each row.

Jump straight to whichever method you'd like to implement, or keep reading to learn more about each one.

Types of bulk variations forms

Creating a user-friendly WooCommerce bulk variations form allows customers to view and select the product variations they’d like to purchase. This is essential for online stores that sell variable products.

Here are a few different types of bulk variations forms that you might consider creating for your WooCommerce store:

#1: Variations grid

You need a variations grid if you want to enable customers to quickly enter quantities for multiple variations of a single item and add them to cart all at once. This is a must-have if you sell variable products to wholesale buyers, such as t-shirts. It's also useful if you sell by weight, with each weight option as a variation.

For this, you will need the WooCommerce plugin and the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin. It lets you list the variations for a specific product in a matrix-style grid layout. Each variation has a quantity box and price. It works for variable products with either 1 or 2 product attribute terms, which are used for variations.

In this way, the WordPress plugin works as a WooCommerce bulk variations manager. Customers can simply:

1. Enter the quantity they’d like to purchase of each variation.
2. Click a single Add to Cart button to add the selected WooCommerce product variations (in the correct quantities) to their shopping cart.
3. Proceed to the checkout page.

Here's how you can set up a bulk variations grid in WooCommerce.

A WooCommerce bulk variations form created in a matrix-style layout simplifies the purchasing user flow and can help you boost sales. It also lets you bulk add variations to your WooCommerce store. Setting up WooCommerce bulk variations forms is the easiest way to implement differential pricing.

#2: List variations in a table

Another way to list WooCommerce product variations on the front-end is by listing them in a table layout with each variation on a separate row. The easiest way to create this sort of layout is by using the WooCommerce Product Table plugin.

Whereas the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin is designed to list the variations for one product in each order form, this is the best option for you if you’re looking for a way to create an order form containing variations for multiple variable products. Customers can browse through all the product images, filter products according to their needs, and then simply tick the checkbox next to the product variation they’d like to purchase, set the quantity, and add it to their shopping cart.

Another key benefit of using this approach is that it gives you the flexibility to display extra information about each product variation (such as the SKU and variation description). With WooCommerce Product Table, you can choose which columns to include in the table.

Here's how you can list product variations in a table layout.

#3: List variable products in a table with dropdowns

If you sell both variable products and simple products, you might consider listing them in a table layout with dropdowns. This is also ideal if you want the compatibility to sell the variations for multiple products in the same table - this time, each product takes up one row in the table regardless of the number of variations or extra product add-ons.

You can do this using the WooCommerce Product Table plugin. It's an easy way to list more than one variable product in the same order form with a single row per variable product.

This method also makes it easy for customers to identify variable product types as they’re the only ones with dropdowns next to them. Customers can browse the products, use the dropdown to select the variation they’d like to purchase, set the quantity, and add the variation to their shopping cart. When you add new products to your WooCommerce store, update products, or update prices, they will automatically appear in the product table.

Here's how you can list product variations in a table layout with dropdowns.

Option 1 instructions - How to create a WooCommerce bulk variations grid

Creating a WooCommerce bulk variations grid makes it quick and easy for customers to:

• See the different variations available for a variable product.
• View the regular price of the variation.
• Enter the quantity they’d like to purchase of each variation.
• Add multiple variations to the cart at once.

To get started, get the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin. Once you have it installed and activated on your WordPress website, head over to the variable product you’d like to enable bulk purchasing for. Or, to do it globally for all your variable products, enable it on the plugin settings page.

Scroll down to the Product data section on the Edit Product screen and click on the Bulk Variations tab. Tick the checkbox next to the Enable bulk variations grid option, as shown in the screenshot below.

Next, select the variation attributes you’d like to display in the Columns and Rows of the price matrix using the dropdowns.

Finally, tick the checkbox next to the Display variation images option if you’d like to have product variation images appear in the matrix layout.

That’s it! When you preview the single product page on the front-end, it should look something like this:

Option 2 & 3 instructions - How to list variations in a table layout

Using the WooCommerce Product Table plugin, you can list variable products in two different ways in a front-end table layout with search, sort, and filter options. You can either list each variation on a separate row or list variable products in the table with dropdowns.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the WooCommerce Product Table plugin to your WordPress website. Once that’s done, head over to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product tables from the admin panel to configure the plugin’s settings.

Use the Columns option to enter the columns you’d like to include in the table layout.

Scroll down till you reach the Variations option and select the:

• Separate rows in table (one per variation) option using the dropdown if you want to list each variation on a separate row.
• Dropdown lists in add to cart column using the dropdown to display a dropdown menu for variable products.

Click the Save changes button at the bottom of the screen to proceed.

For details, be sure to check out this in-depth tutorial on how to create a WooCommerce product variations table using the WooCommerce Product Table plugin.

Create your bulk variations form today

A WooCommerce bulk variations manager makes it easy for online store owners to display WooCommerce variable products on the front-end in an intuitive way. It also makes it easy for customers to:

• View product prices and details of variations.
• Enter the quantity they'd like to purchase.
• Quickly add variations to their shopping cart.

This is a simple way to encourage customers to buy more, increase your average order value, and boost sales. And with no coding required, you don't have to mess around with PHP files - the plugin will create the table automatically for you.

Need to list WooCommerce product variations in an intuitive way? Get the WooCommerce Bulk Variations or WooCommerce Product Table plugin today!

As an online business owner, there are many scenarios where you might need to sell by weight in WooCommerce. For example, you might sell fruits and vegetables from your farm, purchase dry fruits and nuts in bulk for resale, or grow various herbs - all of which need WooCommerce weight-based pricing.

Lots of store owners wonder: "How do I sell a product by weight in WooCommerce?" That's because it’s not immediately obvious how to use WooCommerce to sell by weight. The good news is that, with the right WooCommerce plugins, you can easily start selling products by weight.

In this article, we’ll walk you through two different ways to use WooCommerce to list products in a way that allows you to sell by weight. The methods we cover in this tutorial work equally well if you’re selling by other types of measurement such as volume, size, width, length, or dimensions.

Let's get started ⚖️

Why you might need to sell by weight in WooCommerce

There are several different types of products that store owners typically sell by weight. Here are a few examples:

• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Dry fruits
• Nuts
• Flour, lentils, and beans
• Meat

Store owners set the products up in a way that each product has a price per unit weight. For example, this could be in grams, ounces, or pounds. Customers can simply select the number of, say, grams they’d like to purchase of the product and proceed to checkout to place their order.

As an e-commerce store owner, you can sell by weight in WooCommerce with the right combination of plugins.

Two ways to sell by weight in WooCommerce

There are two different ways to sell by weight in WooCommerce:

1. Add pre-set weight options as product variations.
2. Allow customers to enter an exact weight to receive an exact weight-based price calculation.

If you choose Method 1, you can add each weight option as a separate variation. This is particularly useful for store owners that sell items at different weight quantities. For example, if you have three different weight options – 500 grams, 1 kilogram, and 5 kilograms. You would add products as variable products in WooCommerce.

Alternatively, you can go with Method 2 if you need WooCommerce weight-based pricing with more flexible options. For example, if you want to sell different types of flour by the kilogram, you could simply add your product prices by weight instead of selling by quantity.

Here's what each option might look like in your WooCommerce store:

Keep reading to learn more about each method and how to set it up.

Method 1: Add weight options as variations

You can use the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin to add each weight option as a product variation. This plugin lets you list all the variations in a matrix layout directly on the single product page.

Customers can enter the required quantity of each option and order the exact amount they want. They can mix and match multiple variations to reach the total weight volume they require.

For example, let’s say you’d like to sell sweets online. You might set up the following weight options as variations to sell by weight in WooCommerce:

• 500 grams
• 1 kilogram
• 2 kilograms

So, if a customer would like to purchase 1.5 kilograms of sweets, they could add the 500 grams variation and the 1-kilogram variation to their shopping cart at the same time and proceed to the checkout page. In this way, the plugin supports custom weight measurements. You just need to create a variation for each possible step within the price range.

Setup instructions

1. Get the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin and install it on your WordPress site.
2. Activate your license key in the plugin setup wizard, which will open automatically.
3. Next, go to Products → Add New and create a WooCommerce product which you will sell by weight.
4. Go to Product Data → Attributes and add all the attributes that you would like customers to select from. For example, in the case of sweets, this may be flavor and weight. Enter all the possible options for each attribute, such as all the different weights that you sell in. Tick the 'Use for variations' box for each attribute, then click 'Save attributes'.
   

   

5. Open the 'Variations' tab underneath and click 'Generate variations'. This will create a variation for each combination of attributes. Go through each one and enter a price, add an image, and so on. (Tip: Use the filters above the list of variations to quickly select multiple variations and apply the same changes to each one.)
   

   

6. Now open the 'Bulk Variations' tab and configure the following settings:
   • Make sure the Enable variations grid checkbox is ticked.
   • Set the Horizontal option to the attribute you want to display in columns for the variations grid.
   • Set the Vertical option to the attribute you want to display in rows for the variations grid.
   • Make sure the Display variation images checkbox is ticked.

   

7. Click the Publish button to add the product to your store.

On the front-end, the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin will display the variations along two dimensions in a grid with all the weight options.

Method 2: Price products by weight

If you want to set up WooCommerce weight-based pricing, then there's a simple method for replacing the standard quantity field with a weight input field. This lets you sell products by weight instead of quantity, like this:

The great thing about this method is that it also supports decimal quantities, and minimum and maximum quantities. For example, you can allow customers to order coffee in any decimal value between 1 and 10kg.

You can do this with the WooCommerce Product Options plugin, which lets you replace the standard quantity field with custom product options. These offer more flexibility, such as the ability to order decimal quantities and display the weight on the product page.

How to add a product weight field to the product page

Step 1: Set up the product

First, you need to disable the quantity field on the main page, and enter the price for one unit of weight:

1. Go to the 'Products' section of the WordPress admin and open the 'Edit product' page.
2. Find the 'Product data' section and enter the basic product price. For example, if you are selling by kg then you should enter the cost for 1kg.

3. Next, go to the 'Inventory' tab and tick the 'Limit purchases to 1 item per order' box. This hides the product quantity field. You need to do this because you'll be selling by weight rather than quantity. (We'll be adding a weight field in the next section.)

Step 2: Add a weight field to the product

1. Get the WooCommerce Product Options plugin and install it on your site.
2. Go to Products → Options.
3. Create a Options Group which you'll use to add the weight field, plus any other options you want to add to the product.
4. Choose which products/categories you want to display the weight field on, or leave it to appear globally on all products.
5. Click 'Add Option' and select the 'Number' field type.
6. Enter a name for the weight field (e.g. "Weight") and untick the 'Display' box next to it.
7. Underneath in the 'Choices' section, enter the label which will appear next to the weight field (e.g "Weight in kilograms"). Leave "No cost" selected for the price because we'll be a proper price formula in a minute, instead of adding a static price here.
8. Set the field to 'Required' to force customers to enter a weight.
9. Next, open the 'Advanced settings' to display some additional options:
   • If you want customers to be able to select partial weights (e.g. 1.5kg) then use the 'Decimal' number type to allow this.
   • Set a minimum and maximum weight that customers can enter, if needed.

9. Save the option group.

Step 3: Add the weight-based pricing to WooCommerce

Now you've added the weight field, you need to create a price formula which will calculate the weight-based pricing:

1. In the same Option Group that you created in Step 2, click 'Add option' again and select 'Price formula' this time.
2. Add a name for the option, such as "Weight calculation", and untick the 'Display' box again.
3. Select the Price Formula option type.
4. Create a price formula which will calculate the price based on the weight that the customer enters. To do this, click on the name of the number field which appears underneath the 'Formula' field, and also the 'Price' field which will retrieve the price for 1 unit of weight which you entered in Step 1. Enter the multiplication symbol between the two variables so that the formula looks something like: [Weight] * [product_price]. Use mathematical operators, brackets etc. to add extra complexity to the formula as needed.
   

   

5. Use the 'Price display suffix' field to enter some text to indicate that the main price you entered for the product is based on weight. For example, if you entered the price for 1kg on the 'Edit product' screen then you should enter "per kilogram" or "per kg" to make this clear to customers. This will appear after the price for 1kg at the top of the product page.
6. Finally, visit a product page and test the pricing by weight. Enter a number in the weight field and make sure the correct price is shown below. Keep making changes until you're completely happy.

Bonus: Selling by weight on the main Shop page

Both methods for selling WooCommerce products by weight focus on what it looks like on the single product page. For even more convenience, you can use WooCommerce Bulk Variations or WooCommerce Product Options with our other plugin, WooCommerce Product Table. This displays products in a much clearer layout on the main Shop page, like this:

This makes it very clear to customers that the products are priced by weight. That's because we have renamed the 'Price' column in the table to clearly show that each price is based on weight, rather than by quantity.

Be sure to check out the How to sell by weight guidelines in the WooCommerce Product Table plugin documentation.

Case study: Provenance Meat

Selling by weight is particularly useful if you’re selling meat. It gives customers full flexibility to place orders based on the exact amount they’d like to purchase whether it’s 1.5 kilograms or 1.675 kilograms. Here's an example of how Provenance Meat uses WooCommerce Product Table:

Start selling WooCommerce products by weight

In this tutorial, we've looked at several methods for selling by weight in WooCommerce. Read about each one, and choose the combination of plugins that best suits your needs:

• WooCommerce Bulk Variations - Create a variation for each weight option, and display them in a user-friendly order form on the single product page.
• WooCommerce Product Options - Replace the standard WooCommerce quantity field with a purpose-built weight field. It supports decimal quantities, min/max quantities and more, making it ideal for selling by weight.

Both plugins come with a full 30-day money back guarantee. Try out your chosen plugin and start selling by weight today!

The possibility for virtual eateries or "ghost kitchens" has dramatically grown as internet usage has increased. Fortunately, you can set up and run a virtual restaurant in WordPress quickly and easily.

In this complete guide, you will learn how to build your own virtual restaurant website, which you will own 100%. This will save you lots of money compared to using a hosted restaurant ordering system such as Uber Eats, Grubhub, or DoorDash.

We’ll show you how to set up a virtual restaurant in WordPress using the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin. It only takes 10 minutes and by the time you're done, your virtual restaurant site will look something like this:

What is a virtual restaurant?

Most people place an emphasis on both quality and convenience. These are services that a virtual restaurant can easily offer if it is set up on the appropriate principles and adheres to the suggested procedures for serving its customers. At times, this has been the only way to keep their business running and continue trading.

A virtual restaurant (also called a ghost kitchen, ghost restaurant, or cloud kitchen) is a restaurant that offers delivery options only. Generally speaking, virtual restaurant services are facilitated through web apps and third-party delivery companies like the Postmates food delivery app. However, you can also create a virtual restaurant website with WordPress and WooCommerce.

This restaurant concept is hugely popular in most large cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Kitchen United, for example, is a popular virtual kitchen and restaurant brand.

This foodservice business model allows restaurateurs to cut down on traditional expenses that come with offering a dine-in experience. In fact, adapting the virtual restaurant or ghost kitchen approach helped several restaurant businesses stay operational during the global coronavirus crisis. Now it's here to stay.

How does a virtual restaurant work?

Customers can go to the restaurant’s website to view menus and place their orders online. Once a customer places their order, the virtual restaurant kitchen is immediately notified, and kitchen staff begins preparing the order.

The establishment then delivers the food directly to the customer or uses a third-party food delivery service to deliver the meal to the customer’s location. Some virtual restaurants offer both online payment options and cash on delivery. Once the food is delivered, patrons can enjoy it in their own dining room.

Benefits of online-only restaurants

As compared to the traditional restaurant business model, virtual restaurants have their own set of benefits.

For starters, restaurant owners can mitigate the costs associated with finding an ample restaurant space with room for dining in and instead use that budget to create a kitchen that focuses on improving food preparation processes. Additionally, you can also opt for a shared kitchen setup.

In addition to this, virtual restaurant owners can change their menu items whenever they’d like. This is especially useful if a particular ingredient becomes unavailable or is temporarily inaccessible. This also means that you can experiment with your menu and swap out dishes that aren’t popular with your customer base.

Not to mention, studies indicate that customers favor home-delivery dining options, which makes a strong case for setting up a virtual restaurant.

Types of food that sell best from virtual restaurants

One of the key benefits of running a virtual restaurant is that you can use the wealth of dynamic customer data available to you to your advantage. For example, you might search for the different types of foods and meals that sell best from virtual restaurants and pizzerias in your area on Google.

Here are some popular examples:

• Chinese and Japanese food – sushi, noodles, spring rolls
• Indian food – BBQ, chicken tikka masala, naan
• Mexican food – tacos, burritos, nachos, taco salad
• Pizza – make your own pizza with different toppings and crust sizes
• Mediterranean food – shawarmas and Greek salad
• Fast-casual food – burgers, sliders, wraps, fried chicken, and fries

How to set up and run a virtual restaurant

The first thing you need to do is set up an attractive, easy-to-use website for your virtual restaurant complete with an order form and delivery slots.

For this, we recommend using WordPress and WooCommerce, so you have full ownership of your virtual restaurant website. This isn’t possible with a hosted solution like Uber Eats, Deliveroo, and Just Eat.

If you don’t already have a WordPress website, you’ll need to choose a hosting company to make your website available to patrons. We recommend going with a reliable web hosting provider like Kinsta.

Once that’s done, we’ll show you how to set up a virtual restaurant using the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering and WooCommerce Delivery Slots plugins. Together, these fantastic plugins provide everything you need to build a WooCommerce virtual restaurant.

Here’s a complete video tutorial you can follow:

Step #1: Create your virtual restaurant website

If you don’t already have a WordPress website set up, you’ll need to create one on a hosting account. We recommend Kinsta as they’re a managed WordPress host that’s perfect for running a website for your virtual restaurant.

The best part is that you can install WordPress directly from your Kinsta account. Once you’ve entered your domain name, location, and site title, you can configure your login credentials and install WooCommerce to enable e-commerce features.

The WooCommerce Setup Wizard is incredibly intuitive and walks you through the process of setting up e-commerce features for your virtual restaurant website. Since you’ll be offering food delivery options, it’s important to configure your shipping zones and delivery areas carefully.

If you deliver food to a single area and charge the same delivery costs then you only need to create one shipping zone. However, if you’re going to deliver food to multiple areas and charge different costs depending on the area, you’ll need to create multiple shipping zones.

WooCommerce lets you choose from three different delivery options including flat rate, free shipping, and local pickup.

Later, I'll also show you how to add delivery slots and opening hours for your virtual restaurant.

Step #2: Add a food menu

The next step is to add each food item as an individual WooCommerce product. To keep things organized, start by creating different categories for your menu items similar to how you’d do it on a paper menu. For example, your categories might be Starters, Main Courses, and Desserts.

Once that’s done, head over to Products → Add New from the WordPress admin panel to add each food as a product. At the bare minimum, you should enter a title, brief description, image, and price of the food item. Select the appropriate category for the food item. Consider adding nutritional information and allergens to the product description.

If you’re thinking of selling make your own pizzas or need a way to offer a choice of options for a dish, you’ll need to create a variable product or add-on fields. Variations let customers choose from a dropdown, whereas add-ons are great for selling optional extras such as pizza toppings or sandwich fillings.

Step #3: Create a food order form using WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering

To let customers place orders, you’ll need to create an order form using the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin. You’ll receive the plugin files and license key in an email.

1. Install the plugin to your WordPress website and activate it.
2. Next, head over to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product table from the WordPress dashboard and activate the plugin license.
3. Now, go through the different settings available with the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin to configure your food order form. This includes adding opening hours. You can ignore these if your virtual WooCommerce restaurant is open 24/7. But if you only want to accept orders while you're open, then this is a must.

Finally, go to the list of Pages in the WordPress admin and find the page called 'Restaurant Ordering'. Rename this to whatever you like, e.g. 'Order Food Online'. This page lists all the food products that you added in step 2, divided by category:

If you'd rather list different categories on different pages, then you can do that using the restaurant ordering shortcode.

Add a cart

Most virtual restaurants display a cart on the food ordering page. This shows the items in your order and makes it easy to click through to the checkout.

The easiest way to do this is to add a sidebar to the restaurant ordering page. Most themes come with page templates that include a sidebar. You can then go to Appearance → Widgets and add the 'Cart' widget to the sidebar.

If you don't want a sidebar and prefer to keep your page full-width, then you can add a floating popup cart using the WooCommerce Fast Cart plugin.

Step #4: Set opening hours and delivery times

If you’re offering food delivery options at your virtual restaurant, you’ll need an easy way to manage customer expectations and delivery orders. You can do this with the WooCommerce Delivery Slots plugin.

Once you have the plugin installed and activated on your website, go to WooCommerce → Opening Hours to configure your opening hours, delivery dates and time slots. Here are some of the main features you’ll want to use for your virtual restaurant site:

• Delivery dates and time slots – You can add delivery slots based on the way you choose to structure food deliveries.
• Maximum number of deliveries per time slot – This option lets you better manage kitchen capacity by adding a limit to the number of delivery orders per slot.

For in-depth, step-by-step instructions, be sure to check out our article on how to create a restaurant ordering system.

Set up your virtual restaurant today

If you’re looking for ways to keep your restaurant running with minimal costs, consider setting up a virtual restaurant (or ghost restaurant) that serves solely as a delivery base or offers takeout. You can do this whether you have a physical restaurant or not. Virtual restaurants are hugely popular in the restaurant industry.

Start by installing the WooCommerce plugin on your WordPress website. Next, add food items as individual products in WooCommerce. Finally, use the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering and WooCommerce Delivery Slots plugins to create a front-end order form with a table of available delivery time slots.

Ready to set up your virtual restaurant and grow your bottom line? Get WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering today!

The coronavirus crisis has had a huge impact on e-commerce stores. WooCommerce store owners have suddenly faced large numbers of out of stock products, and difficulties ordering supplies. However, even though stock problems due to COVID-19 are out of your control, there's still plenty you can do to keep customers happy.

Think about it from the customer's perspective. You've visited an e-commerce website, but the product you need is out of stock. Which of these messages would you prefer to see?

How frustrated would you feel to see an 'Out of stock' message without any further information? The customer wants to know when the product will be back in stock - this helps them to decide whether to shop elsewhere. And if you don't have this information, then they need you to notify them when the product is back in stock.

Fortunately, there are some excellent WooCommerce plugins that can improve the way you handle temporarily out of stock products and variations. You can these as standalone solutions, or you can combine them and use the plugins together.

#1 - Add a notice to temporarily out of stock products

The WooCommerce Lead Time plugin lets you add a custom text message which appears next to the stock information on the product page. You can add the same message for all products, or you can add a custom message for each product.

This is how to set it up:

1. Install WooCommerce Lead Time.
2. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Lead time.
3. Activate your license key (you'll receive this in the order confirmation email) and choose the plugin settings:
   1. Tick the boxes to display the message on backorder and/or out of stock products only.
   2. If you like, enter a prefix to appear before the lead time text for each product (e.g. you might set this as 'Stock expected on:'
   3. If you want to show the same message for all out of stock products, then enter a global lead time.
   4. Save your changes.

If you've entered a global lead time message, then this will appear for all products with the stock statuses that you selected on the settings page. Alternatively, you can add a different message for each product on the 'Edit Product' screen under Product Data → Inventory.

If you know when the product will be back in stock, choose the 'Dynamic' lead time option. This lets you select the expected availability date from a calendar. The WooCommerce Lead Time plugin will then display a countdown displaying the number of days or weeks until the product will be back in stock.

Alternatively, enter a static lead time with whatever text you want to display on the page.

For more advice, check out the plugin knowledge base.

#2 - Add a WooCommerce email when back in stock plugin

The YITH WooCommerce Waiting List plugin displays an email field and 'Join waitlist' button for out of stock products. Customers can enter their email address to receive an email when the product is available again.

A 'Notify me back in stock' WordPress plugin an excellent way to avoid losing their business. They're less likely to buy from your competitors because they know they will hear from you when the product is back in stock.

How to set it up:

• Get the YITH WooCommerce Waiting List plugin and install it on your WordPress site.
• As soon as you activate the plugin, the 'Email when back in stock' option will appear for all your out of stock products. Simple!

You can also see the plugin documentation for further information.

Get the plugin

Use both plugins together for best results

Of course, you can provide an even better experience for your customers by providing helpful information about when the product is due back in stock, and by allowing them to sign up to be notified.

The two plugins work perfectly together - you can use WooCommerce Lead Time to add the availability notice, and WooCommerce Waitlist for the email signup:

Can I just un-publish unavailable products?

No, absolutely not! If your search engine position is important for your store, then you should leave out of stock products online.

Unpublishing them will affect your SEO by temporarily removing them from search results - and it may not be easy to regain your previous ranking for the product. It's better for SEO to keep the products online, while providing clear and helpful information to your customers using the tips in this article.

This will help to retain your search engine position, while minimizing the number of lost sales for you. After all, if customers can see the products and sign up to be notified when they become available, then you may not have lost the sale after all.

Discontinued products

Before we finish, it's worth mentioning that there's a difference between products which are temporarily and permanently out of stock. The advice about is about temporarily out of stock products which will become available again soon.

The situation is very different for end-of-life products which will never come back into stock:

• Customers need to know that the product will never be available again.
• You don't want to lose the SEO value of your discontinued product pages.
• Store owners need to view and manage discontinued products separately from out of stock products in the WordPress admin and stock reports.
• You need to recommend alternative products to avoid losing the sale.

The WooCommerce Discontinued Products plugin is the perfect solution for managing end-of-life products. Use it for permanently out of stock products, while using the advise from earlier in this article for products which will be available again soon.

Where to get the plugins

There's plenty you can do to help your customers when products are unexpectedly and temporarily out of stock. You can:

• Display a helpful message on the product page, which only appears for out of stock products - get WooCommerce Lead Time.
• Add an 'Email when back in stock' waitlist feature to notify customers about future availability - Get WooCommerce Waiting List.

Improving your out of stock messaging won't change the world, but it's one small step that you can take to help people to get the supplies they need during the coronavirus crisis.

If you sell to wholesale buyers or stock variable products, a WooCommerce price matrix can help you list product variations in a grid or matrix layout. This makes it easier for customers to view variations at a glance, see pricing, and quickly add variations to their shopping cart.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what a WooCommerce price matrix is and how you can use it to list product variations in a variety of different ways using WooCommerce Bulk Variations. We’ll also share some examples of products you can list in a WooCommerce price matrix.

What is a WooCommerce price matrix?

A WooCommerce price matrix lets you list WooCommerce product variations in a grid or matrix layout instead of a simple price list. There are 3 easy ways to list variations in WooCommerce:

1. Price matrix - list all the prices for a specific variable product.
2. Variations order form matrix - list all the variations for a specific product with quantity boxes and add to cart button.
3. List prices for multiple products in a table - list prices for multiple products in a table layout.

What sort of products should you list in a WooCommerce price matrix?

A WooCommerce price matrix is perfect for listing products that have one or two variation attributes (e.g. 'size' and 'color'). The price matrix makes it easy for customers to see the available variations at a glance and make an informed buying decision. One attribute (e.g. 'size') appears along the horizontal axis of the matrix, and the other attribute (e.g. 'color) appears along the vertical axis, with the variations in the middle.

Here are some examples:

• Clothes (such as t-shirts) and shoes available in different colors and sizes.
• Furniture with color and material variation attributes.
• Tech products (like smartphones) with color and storage variations.
• Printer inks with compatible printer models and ink color variations.
• Custom jewelry with metal and stone variations.

Put simply, if you sell products that have one or two variation attributes, listing them in a WooCommerce price matrix is the best way to increase variation visibility and make it easier for customers to quickly purchase variations in bulk.

And the great news is that you can do this in minutes with the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin.

If you want to list prices for more than one product in the same matrix, then you'll need the WooCommerce Product Table plugin instead.

Different ways to list variations in WooCommerce

Here, we’ll step through some of the different ways you can list variations on your store using WooCommerce plugins:

#1: Price matrix

A WooCommerce price matrix simply displays the variation’s product price in a grid or matrix layout. This is perfect for creating a price matrix in WooCommerce for displaying product variation information only without giving customers the option to purchase directly from the matrix.

For example, you might want to display a price matrix in the short description on the single product page, with the usual variation dropdowns and add to cart button underneath.

The product variations in a price matrix layout are listed in a grid or matrix with a separate price for each variation, without a quantity box.

Here’s how you can set up a price matrix layout using WooCommerce Bulk Variations:

1. From the Product data section on the Edit Product screen, navigate to the Bulk Variations tab and tick the checkbox next to the Enable bulk variations grid.
2. Tick Disable purchasing.
3. Select the variation attributes to display in the Columns and Rows of the price matrix using dropdowns.

Tip: You can also enable the variations grid for individual products, or use a shortcode to insert it anywhere on your site.

#2: Variations matrix layout

If you sell to wholesale buyers, then you might consider displaying quantity selectors in the matrix along with pricing information. This way, customers can quickly enter the number of each variation they’d like to purchase and add multiple variations to their cart in one go.

With WooCommerce Bulk Variations, the product variations are displayed in a matrix-style grid with a separate quantity box for each one along with pricing information. Customers simply enter the quantity they wish to purchase for each variation and click a single Add to Cart button to add selected variations to the cart at once.

Here’s how you can set up a variations matrix layout using WooCommerce Bulk Variations:

• From the Product data section on the Edit Product screen, navigate to the Bulk Variations tab and tick the checkbox next to the Enable bulk variations grid
• Make sure that the Disable purchasing checkbox is unticked.
• Select the variation attributes to display in the Columns and Rows of the price matrix using dropdowns.

#3: Product table layout

With WooCommerce Bulk Variations, if you want to list the prices for more than one product on the same page, then you can use a shortcode to add as many matrixes as you like. There will be one price matrix for each product.

If you need to list prices for multiple WooCommerce products in the same matrix, then you'll need the WooCommerce Product Table plugin instead. This lists the prices for simple or variable products with one product on each row of the table. For variable products, you can either list each variation on its own row, or you can have one product per row with variation dropdowns.

Read the Complete Guide on How to use WooCommerce Product Table to Create a WooCommerce Price List for your Products.

Bonus tip: Manage variations more easily

I expect you've noticed that it takes forever to edit the prices, images etc. of variations in WooCommerce. For example, let's say that a t-shirt shop has 15 variations in the 'Large' size and wants to change all their prices to $50. To do this, the store owner has to edit each of the 15 variations individually.

You can save lots of time by using the bulk management features that come with the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin. These let you select specific variations and apply bulk actions to them together.

If you've followed Method 1 or 2 of this tutorial then you have already installed WooCommerce Bulk Variations. Go right ahead and use its variation management features.

If you're using Method 3 then you can still use WooCommerce Bulk Variations to bulk-edit variations. The only difference is that you will also be using WooCommerce Product Table to display the variations. As a result, you need 2 plugins in total. One for the front end, and one for the back end.

Where to get the WooCommerce price matrix plugin

Listing WooCommerce product variations in a matrix makes it quick and easy to see the price of each variation. Depending on which variable products you’re selling, you might create a:

• Price matrix for WooCommerce products
• Variations matrix layout
• List variations in a pricing table
• List variable products in a table with dropdowns

Ready to create a price matrix for your WooCommerce products? Install the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin today!

Companies that sell subscription boxes ship products to their customers at regular intervals for a recurring fee. In other words, customers sign up for a subscription to receive a box of goods, say, once a month. As an online business owner, you can create and sell a WooCommerce subscription box through your WordPress website.

WooCommerce subscription boxes are a great way to build a stable business because they allow sellers to generate predictable recurring revenue. Once you set a price for your subscription box, you’ll know exactly how much you’ll earn based on the number of subscribers you have.

In this article, we’ll show you how to create a subscription box website on WooCommerce in two different ways - both using the WooCommerce Product Table plugin. You can choose to sell WooCommerce subscription boxes with pre-defined content or set up a build-your-box type subscription box.

But before we begin, let’s take a look at some examples of subscription boxes and how to get started planning your WooCommerce subscription box business.

Examples of WooCommerce subscription boxes

When it comes to selling WooCommerce subscription boxes, there are a few different things you need to consider. First, you have to decide what sort of subscription boxes you’ll be selling.

Here are some popular examples:

• Vegetable boxes. These can be curated or build-a-box style subscription boxes that contain farm-fresh vegetables. Curated boxes typically contain a selection of seasonal vegetables whereas build-a-box subscription boxes give customers the option to choose which vegetables they’d like to add to their box.
• Cosmetics boxes. These are typically personalized subscription boxes that include a variety of cosmetics products such as foundation, lipstick, eyeliner, and mascara. Since cosmetics are long-lasting products, you can sell them at three-month (quarterly) intervals.
• Snack boxes. Snack boxes are incredibly popular with customers. You can sell all sorts of snacks – fitness snacks, healthy snacks, oriental snacks, candy boxes, organic snacks, or gluten-free snacks.
• Coffee deliveries. Coffee subscription boxes are typically personalized, build-a-box style subscription boxes that let customers choose their preferred coffee brand, bag size, creamer, and filter options.
• Shaving supplies. These typically include razors, wipes, shaving creams, and other toiletries that are replenished on a monthly basis. Dollar Shave Club is a great example of a subscription box service.
• Hand-curated wines and beers. Customers can subscribe to a hand-curated wine or beer box that contains an assortment of bottles.

Monthly subscription boxes are pretty common though the interval depends entirely on the type of products you’re selling. For example, if you sell vegetable boxes or fitness bars, you might consider offering one-week and two-week replenishment options. And if you’re selling beauty products (like razors or toiletries), you might offer a bi-monthly or monthly replenishment option.

Planning your WooCommerce subscription box business

Before you begin designing your WooCommerce subscription box store, it’s important to take a step back and plan out the subscription model.

If you’re just starting out, the most profitable (and efficient) way to sell subscription boxes is to offer one or more boxes with predefined contents. The reason is that it saves you time on packing. Put simply, your subscription box becomes a product rather than a service.

However, when your subscription box business starts to take off, you can also consider offering build-a-box style subscriptions. This allows customers to select the products they’d like to add to their box from a list of available items. Then, the custom subscription box company fills each box individually and ships it to the customer.

As we mentioned above, in this tutorial, we’ll show you how you can create both types of subscription boxes:

• Predefined subscription boxes where you ship the same box to all of your customers
• Build-a-box style subscription boxes where customers select the contents of their weekly (or monthly) box

In both cases, customers will receive their selected subscription boxes on a regular basis.

With the right plugins, WooCommerce is the perfect e-commerce platform for selling subscription boxes through your WordPress site. The main idea behind both approaches is the same. You want to create a custom subscription box order form that presents available options to customers and lets them choose their subscription box. We’ll show you how you can create an order form using the WooCommerce Product Table plugin.

Method #1: How to sell WooCommerce subscription boxes with predefined contents

If you’re just starting out, you might want to sell WooCommerce subscription boxes with predefined contents. For this, you’ll need a way to set up an order form in WooCommerce and accept recurring payments from customers (i.e. subscribers).

Selling WooCommerce subscription boxes with pre-defined contents

We recommend using the official WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin along with the WooCommerce Product Table plugin.

WooCommerce Subscriptions allows you to sell products on a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual basis. This way, customers will be billed automatically at their chosen intervals using the selected payment gateway (such as PayPal or Stripe). In addition to this, it offers advanced features like free-trials and one-time sign-up fees.

The WooCommerce Product Table plugin lets you create a searchable, sortable order form with filter options. This makes it easy for customers to see important subscription box details at a glance and make their selection. You can use it to:

• Show extra data about each subscription box in a column directly in the order form. This way, customers don’t have to click through to the single product page to learn more about each subscription box.
• Display add to cart buttons in the product table so customers can set the quantity, add the subscription box to their cart, and proceed to checkout.
• Add filter options directly above the AJAX-based table so customers can quickly find the subscription products they’re looking for.

Be sure to check out our tutorial on how to list WooCommerce subscriptions in a product table for step-by-step instructions.

To take things further, you can integrate WooCommerce Product Table with WooCommerce Quick View Pro which allows you to showcase your subscription box (and its contents) in quick view lightboxes. This allows you to deliver a better shopping experience and make it easier for prospective subscribers to make a buying decision faster.

Handling variable subscriptions

WooCommerce Quick View Pro is also great for online store owners that need to sell variable subscription products. Instead of adding an add to cart column to your product table, you can add quick view buttons. Customers can then click on the button to select variations and purchase variable subscriptions.

Alternatively, you can use the All Products for WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin to sell variations directly in the add to cart column of the product table. This way, you can add subscription options to WooCommerce variable products.

Method #2: How to sell build-a-box WooCommerce subscription boxes

Selling WooCommerce subscription boxes as build-a-box products gives customers the option to choose their own products. You can implement this in 2 different ways, depending on whether you want customers to choose the same products to receive each time; or whether you want them to be able to change their order each week.

Let customers choose their regular products

First, we'll look at an easy way to let customers choose which products to include in their regular subscription. They choose their products as part of setting up the subscription, and then receive the same products each time.

Typically, the process goes something like this:

1. Customers start by choosing a box size. For example, if you’re selling a vegetable subscription box you can have two sizes – Small and Large. This lets you set a base price for your subscription box.
2. Next, customers can choose their subscription box contents using an order form. They can select as many products as they’d like, choose variations, and set quantities. Once that’s done, they can add all products to their subscription box in one go.
3. Optionally, customers can choose any finishing touches such as box filling. For example, if you sell snack subscription boxes, you can let customers choose between shredded crinkle paper filling or packing peanuts.
4. Finally, the proceed to checkout and select a payment method such as PayPal, Stripe, or credit card.

Check out the complete tutorial on how to sell build your own products for detailed instructions.

Allow subscribers to change their order each week/month

What if you want customers to be able to change which products are included in their regular subscription; or to choose which products to receive each time? For example, if you're selling a recipe box subscriptions (like Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, etc.), then subscribers need to be able to choose their recipes each week.

This is a more complex requirement, but you can achieve it by combining several plugins. They are all plugins from reputable companies which work well together:

1. Use the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin to sell your subscriptions. For example, you might have a product called ‘Weekly Recipe Box – 3 Recipes’ (with variations to choose the number of people per recipe). This would set up recurring billing for a fixed payment amount every week.
2. In a private area on your WordPress website (which you can create with our WooCommerce Protected Categories plugin), you should add the products for the customer to choose from. These might always be the same products, or they might change each week. You can then use WooCommerce Quantity Manager to restrict how many products your subscribers can order from that category. If you set the price for each product to 0.00, then they can order their products each time without paying any extra. Alternatively, you can charge surcharges for higher value products by adding this as the product price. The subscriber will be charged this when they complete the WooCommerce checkout to confirm their products for that week.
3. Finally, you can use the Follow Ups plugin to automatically send a weekly email reminder. Include information about how to access the hidden category containing the available products,  and the deadline for confirming their products.

Each week, the customer will log into their account, view the hidden category, select them from the product table, and check out to confirm their selection. Unless they have ordered surcharge products, they won't be charged for this because the payment comes from their weekly subscription instead.

As with all subscription boxes, if the customer forgets to confirm their products for the week, then you will select the box contents for them based on their preferences.

Advanced features

When selling subscription boxes, there are various advanced features you can add to your e-commerce store. This can help you deliver a better shopping experience to customers.

How to allow customers to choose the shipping frequency

One of the most important aspects of selling WooCommerce subscription boxes is letting customers choose the shipping frequency. This means how often they want to receive a new subscription box.

As we mentioned above, most subscription boxes are sold on a monthly basis. However, some subscription box services let customers set their own shipping frequency. For example, if you sell vegetable boxes or snacks, you might want to give customers the option to receive a new box every week or every two weeks.

The easiest way to let customers choose the shipping frequency is by creating a variable subscription with the different options available as variations. For example, your variations might be a weekly variation, a bi-monthly variation, and a monthly variation.

How to allow customers to choose their billing frequency

Depending on the sorts of subscription boxes you sell, you might want to let customers choose their billing frequency. For this, you will need to set up a billing schedule.

This is great for when you want to give customers more payment options. You can also leverage this to offer special discounts to customers who pay for their subscription boxes months in advance.

You can set this up in WooCommerce by offering different billing frequencies as subscription box variations. For example, your variations might be weekly, monthly, or six months at a time. To incentivize customers to pay for six months at a time, you could offer that variation at a 10% discount. Then, customers can choose to pay using the preferred payment gateway.

How to choose which day of the week to receive your order

If you sell vegetable subscription boxes or recipe boxes, you might want to let customers choose which day(s) of the week to receive their order. For example, customers subscribed to your vegetable box might want to receive a new box every Wednesday.

You can use the Checkout Field Editor plugin to collect this information from customers on the checkout page.

How to add a delivery note

Many times, customers want to leave some sort of delivery note for the delivery driver. This allows them to make special requests or provide delivery instructions. The easiest way to let customers leave a delivery note with their subscription box order is by using the Checkout Field Editor plugin. This way, you can collect this information from customers on the checkout page.

How to set up gift subscriptions

If you want to be able to let customers send subscription boxes as gifts to their friends and family, you might consider setting up gift subscriptions. For this, you would need to create special gift subscription boxes with limited-time subscription periods.

You can do this by using the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin with some additional features:

• Use the Product Options plugin to add a gift message field to the product.
  

  

• Use the standard WooCommerce checkout form to collect a different billing and shipping address. The customer would enter the recipient’s address into the shipping address fields. This way, the subscription box will be delivered to the gift receiver.

Bonus: reducing customer churn rates and boosting retention

Although subscription boxes can have predictable recurring revenue streams, they can also have high customer churn. In fact, more than a third of customers cancel their subscriptions in less than three months and more than half cancel within six months.

As a savvy business owner, you can cut down on customer churn by offering discounts to customers who sign up for a longer-term subscription. For example, you could offer a 10% discount to subscribers who opt for the yearly subscription instead of the monthly subscription. You can use the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin to offer a variety of subscription options. This can help you reduce customer churn rates and boost retention.

Where to get the plugins

If you’re looking to launch a successful e-commerce business, a subscription box service business model that generates recurring revenue is the way to go. It’s more profitable and efficient than selling one-off products through your WooCommerce store. Done right, selling subscription boxes can help you increase your average order value and boost sales.

Using the WooCommerce Product Table plugin for WordPress, you can sell WooCommerce subscription boxes with predefined content or build-a-box style subscription boxes. And to take things to the next level, you can use a variety of other WooCommerce plugins to integrate advanced options.

Ready to start generating recurring revenue selling WooCommerce subscription boxes? Get the WooCommerce Product Table subscription plugin today!