Category: Documentation

Add sorting icons in your product table column headings. Your shoppers will be able to sort the products in the table by clicking on the column headings. Products can be sorted based on any product criteria, making it easier for your prospective customers to compare and find products in which they are most interested.

To do this you need to add the ‘Sorting’ element to your column heading.

Sorting by ‘Custom Field’

While sorting by custom field, please note the custom field type – number or text, and choose an option for ‘Sort by’ accordingly. If you select the wrong option, the sorting may malfunction in some cases.

If the custom field values are text type, you must select ‘Custom field as text’

And if the custom field values are numbers, you must select ‘Custom field as number’.

Sorting by ‘Attribute’

Note: Now you can sort by attributes, category and taxonomy using the convenient WCPT PRO v2.3.0+ sorting facilities! The below doc is not needed anymore. It is only left here for legacy purpose.

(You can use the same method described below for sorting by category or other taxonomy)

By default WooCommerce does not allow sorting based on product attributes. So we will use another route to achieve attribute based sorting. We will duplicate the attribute to custom field and then sort the products based on our new custom field that represents the attribute, thus creating the smart illusion that the products are getting sorted by attribute.

To duplicate the attribute to custom field, you can either go to each product’s page and manually do the duplication or choose one of these more efficient methods to vastly speed up the process.

Once you have added a new custom field to each product with the attribute term as the value, you can not sort the column by the custom field, and in effect, it will appear as if the column is being sorted by an attribute.

You can see the same system working very well for the WCPT PRO demos.

Let’s take an example: In the following screenshot from the ‘Courses’ demo, consider the ‘Subject’ column. ‘Subject’ is a WooCommerce attribute for the products in this table. However, you can see the sorting is working for this column.

Each Course product has a term set for the ‘Subject’ attribute.

Each Course product is also given a ‘Subject’ custom field with a corresponding value matching the attribute term for the product.

The custom field section can be revealed on any product editor page by using the ‘Screen Options’ tab at the top right of the page. The custom field section will appear further down on the page.

For more information on how to set custom fields, please check the WordPress documentation on custom fields.

Continuing with our example: Now in the table settings > Columns, in the heading of the Subject column, a ‘Sorting’ element is added. It is configured to sort the column by ‘Custom field as text’ when the heading is clicked. And the ‘Custom field’ is set to ‘Subject’.

And therefore, the column becomes sortable by the WC attribute ‘Subject’.

The ‘Archive override’ facility features and benefits

1. By default woocommerce will show your products in your product archive pages (i.e. shop, search, category, attribute, brand and tag) in a product grid layout. But with the product table plugin’s ‘archive override’ facility you can replace the product grid layout on your woocommerce archive pages with a product table/list layout of your choice. This improved custom layout can be much better for shopping than the default woocommerce grid layout.
2. You can assign different product tables to different archive pages so that ‘shoes’ category page may have a different table/list layout than ‘songs’ category page or product ‘search’ could have a different layout that the general ‘shop’ page, etc. Or you can simply select one default table layout to be used for displaying products across all the product archive pages.
3. You don’t have to create new product tables for each product archive page. The product table will automatically show the correct set of products depending on the current archive page when you are using this facility. The same product table will show shoes on the ‘shoes’ category page and pants on the ‘pants’ category page etc. So you only need to create one table for your entire site. But you can choose to build more tables to show completely different table layouts for different product archive pages if you want.
4. And lastly, you can also leave the default woocommerce product grid on specific archive pages if you don’t want to replace it with a product table on those specific pages.

Configure the ‘Archive Override’ setting to show table/list on product archive pages instead of grid

With WooCommerce Product Table PRO installed on your site, go to:

wp admin → product tables → settings → replace shop product grid with table

Here you can conveniently assign product tables to your product archive pages such as shop, search, category etc.

Refer to this setting screenshot for clarity and follow the numbered steps:

Step by step instructions for replacing product grid with tables

1. Go to wp admin → product tables → settings → the global settings page for the plugin will open up.
2. On the global settings page open the settings section called ‘Replace shop product grid with table’.
3. First you select ‘automatic’ or ‘manual’ mode for how the grid → table replacement is done by this facility. See description for the options:
   Automatic method: suitable for most sites if you’re not using any theme builder plugin to take control of your shop, category and other product archive pages.
   Manual method: select this if you are using a theme builder plugin to modify the the shop, category etc templates. You also need to copy paste the shortcode [wcpt_archive_table] in your shop, category, product archive template to show the product table.
4. In the ‘default override table’ option you can select a table to use across all the product archive pages. If you need to enter a product table shortcode use the second option called *custom shortcode* that will open an input for the custom shortcode. More details on entering custom shortcode are provided lower down in this document.
5. Now select tables for any of the product archive pages you want ie — shop, search, category, attribute, brand, tags. You can select which table layout appears on which archive page and even skip pages where you want to keep showing the default woocommerce product grid.
6. For category, attribute, brand and tag product archives pages you can drill down further and select exactly which category, attribute etc pages get which table or make them all use a default table.

Note on using a ‘custom shortcode’ in the archive tables

By default the settings let you select tables from a dropdown for the archive pages. But in some cases you may want to enter the product table shortcode manually to include some shortcode options in it like laptop_sticky_heading="true".

To manually enter the complete shortcode you can select the second option in the table dropdown called *Custom shortcode* and you will get a text area to enter your custom shortcode below. See reference screenshot below:

Note for page builder / theme builder plugins like Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder etc

If you are using a theme builder plugin like Elementor PRO, Divi builder, Beaver builder, Oxygen, Avada builder, Bricks builder, Visual composer builder to change your shop’s product archive templates then you need to follow these steps:

1. In the ‘Replace shop product grid with table’ settings section mentioned above select the ‘manual’ option at the very top.
2. Configure the rest of the settings as described in the guide above.
3. In your theme builder plugin open your product archive templates like shop, category, search, etc and replace the default woocommerce grid with the shortcode [wcpt_archive_table]. This gives the product table plugin an opportunity to inset table into the theme builder template based on its own settings. Check out this step by step guide for Elementor PRO as a reference —the process work exactly the same for all other theme builder plugins as well.

Using the ‘Select Variation’ element in the product table you can give your shoppers the option to select specific variations when purchasing a variable product, right inside the table. There are 3 different ways the product variation options can be displayed and you can choose the display type you require for your table:

1. Dropdown with all the product variations listed as options
2. Radio buttons for each of the possible variations
3. Single radio button for each variation, manually created to be placed in separate columns

Special Note: If you want to show all the variation attribute dropdowns separately like you see on the variable product page then add the ‘Cart Form’ element in your table. On the other hand the Select Variation element described in this doc provides a single dropdown with variation attribute combined for each variation option. For example if you have a variable product with 2 variation attributes – color and size then the woocommerce product page will show 2 variation attribute dropdowns to select the variation you want. You can use the ‘Cart Form’ element to print these in the table as well. Whereas the ‘Select Variation’ element is going to print a single dropdown where each option is a variation with all attribute values listed for that variation. In many cases this combined variation dropdown will look neater. But in some cases users may prefer to print the variation dropdowns separately with the ‘Cart Form’ element.

If you have any difficulty in following along with this tutorial or are unable to achieve the final results you require, please contact me via the support form and I will assist you asap with your requirements. 

1. Variations as ‘Dropdown’

 Select the ‘Display type’ to be ‘Dropdown with all variations’

You can modify the variation labels with 3 facilities –

1. Hide/shop attributes in the name. Eg:
   A. (attribute names displayed) Color: Red, Size: Small
   B. (attribute names hidden) Red, Small
2. Change the separator between attribute name and terms to any valid character. Eg:
   A. (using : ) Color: Red, Size: Small
   B. (using :: ) Color :: Red, Size :: Small
   C. (using – ) Color – Red, Size – Small, etc
3. Change the separator between attributes to any valid character. Eg:
   A. (using /) Color: Red / Size: Small
   B. (using ,) Color: Red, Size: Small
   C. (using ||) Color: Red || Size: Small

2. Variations as ‘Radio buttons’

Note: Normally the radio buttons will attempt to display horizontally. However, you can give the column a fixed narrow width to force the options to display in a vertical column as above.

3. Single variation as radio button

The following steps are illustrated in the screenshots below. Please follow along the highlighted sequence of steps in the screenshot.

1. Each ‘Select variation’ element is going to represent a single variation. Give this variation a name. For example ‘Small’. This name will be used by the table editor to represent this variation in the editor > column. 
2. Select the attributes and terms to that are part of this variation. The plugin will look through the product variations and find the closest match to these attribute – terms.
3. Use the ‘Add another’ button to add more attribute – terms to the list of properties of the variation if required.
4. A default template for the element is auto-created. You can modify this template to include images, icons, remove the name, etc. However keep in mind the ‘Select’ element must remain somewhere in the template to ensure the variation is selectable. This select element creates the radio button.

 

Here’s an example of using the single radio button facility:

In the example below the column 2 in the table is made to show a product variation with Serving size (attribute): Small (term).