This is How to Create a Shortcode Displaying a Simple Product Names List in Woocommerce
As an e-commerce store owner using Woocommerce, you may often need to display a simple list of your product names on your website. Whether it's for showcasing your entire product catalog, highlighting featured items, or creating a product directory – having a quick and easy way to generate this list can be incredibly useful.
Fortunately, you can create a custom shortcode in WordPress that will output a list of all your published Woocommerce products. In this blog post, we'll walk through the step-by-step process of creating this shortcode and how you can use it on your site.
Why Use a Shortcode for Displaying a Product List?
Shortcodes in WordPress provide a simple and flexible way to add dynamic content to your pages and posts. Rather than hard-coding product lists or having to manually maintain them, a shortcode allows you to automatically generate the list based on your current Woocommerce products.
Some key benefits of using a shortcode for a product list include:
- Easily Customizable: With a shortcode, you can quickly adjust the output, such as changing the order, number of products shown, or the HTML formatting.
- Reusable Across Your Site: Once the shortcode is set up, you can place it anywhere on your WordPress site where you want the product list to appear.
- No Coding Required: End-users can simply copy and paste the shortcode without needing to understand the underlying code.
- Automated Updates: As you add new products or update existing ones in Woocommerce, the shortcode will automatically reflect those changes.
Overall, a custom shortcode is an efficient and user-friendly way to display product information on your Woocommerce-powered website.
Creating the Shortcode
To create the shortcode, we'll be adding a small code snippet to the functions.php
file of your WordPress theme or child theme. This file is where you can add custom functionality to your site.
Here's the code you'll need to add:
function get_custom_product_list() {
// The WP_Query
$query = new WP_Query( array(
'posts_per_page' => -1,
'post_type' => 'product',
'post_status' => 'publish',
'hide_empty' => 0,
'orderby' => 'title',
) );
$output = '<ul>';
while ( $query->have_posts() ) : $query->the_post();
$output .= '<li>' . $query->post->post_title . '</li>';
endwhile;
wp_reset_postdata();
return $output.'</ul>';
}
add_shortcode( 'product_list', 'get_custom_product_list' );
Here's a breakdown of what this code does:
- The
get_custom_product_list()
function uses the WP_Query
class to fetch all published Woocommerce products, ordering them by title.
- It then loops through the results and appends each product's title to an unordered list (
<ul>
).
- Finally, the function returns the complete HTML list.
- The
add_shortcode()
function registers the 'product_list'
shortcode and associates it with the get_custom_product_list()
function.
To use the shortcode, you can simply add [product_list]
anywhere on your WordPress site where you want the product list to appear. This could be in a page, post, or even a widget.
Customizing the Shortcode Output
The example code above provides a basic implementation of the product list shortcode. However, you may want to customize the output to better suit your needs. Here are a few ways you can modify the shortcode:
Change the Order of Products
To change the order in which the products are displayed, you can modify the 'orderby'
parameter in the WP_Query
arguments. For example, to display the products in descending order by title, you would use:
'orderby' => 'title',
'order' => 'DESC'
Limit the Number of Products Shown
If you only want to display a subset of your products, you can adjust the 'posts_per_page'
parameter. For example, to show the 10 most recently added products, you would use:
'posts_per_page' => 10,
'orderby' => 'date',
'order' => 'DESC'
Add Custom Styling
You can easily apply your own CSS styles to the product list by wrapping the <ul>
element in a custom class or ID. For example:
$output = '<div class="product-list-container"><ul>';
// ... loop and add products ...
$output .= '</ul></div>';
return $output;
Then, in your theme's CSS file, you can target the .product-list-container
class to style the list as desired.
Include Additional Product Information
If you want to display more than just the product title, you can modify the loop to include other product data, such as the price, description, or image. For example:
while ( $query->have_posts() ) : $query->the_post();
$product = wc_get_product( $query->post->ID );
$output .= '<li><h3>' . $product->get_name() . '</h3>';
$output .= '<p>' . $product->get_short_description() . '</p>';
$output .= '<p>Price: ' . $product->get_price_html() . '</p></li>';
endwhile;
This will include the product name, short description, and price for each item in the list.
Conclusion
In this blog post, we've walked through the process of creating a simple shortcode that displays a list of your Woocommerce products. By adding this code snippet to your WordPress theme's functions.php
file, you can quickly and easily generate a product list on any page or post of your site.
The great thing about this shortcode is its flexibility – you can customize the output, order, and number of products shown to suit your specific needs. Additionally, as you add new products or update existing ones in Woocommerce, the shortcode will automatically reflect those changes.
If you'd like to take your Woocommerce product analytics and optimization to the next level, be sure to check out Flowpoint.ai. Our AI-powered platform can help you identify technical issues, user behavior insights, and conversion rate improvement recommendations to drive more sales for your online store
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