wpgenie's WooCommerce plugins

One of the common inqury in our support tickets, unrelated to plugin functionality, was how to change number of products displayed on WooCommerce product archive page.

Most themes come with settings page where you can change number of producs displayed, in fact you can change number of rows and columns per page but there are also themes without that option.

So to do that you need to add code to your child theme’s functions.php file. Avoid adding custom code directly to your parent theme’s functions.php file as this will be wiped entirely when you update the theme.

This solution requires you to have your shop page display (WooCommerce > Product catalog set to “Show products”). Code snippet is below (snippet is from woocommerce.com):

/**
 * Change number of products that are displayed per page (shop page)
 */
add_filter( 'loop_shop_per_page', 'new_loop_shop_per_page', 20 );

function new_loop_shop_per_page( $cols ) {
  // $cols contains the current number of products per page based on the value stored on Options –> Reading
  // Return the number of products you wanna show per page.
  $cols = 9;
  return $cols;
}

In this article we’ll explain benefits of using real UNIX cronjobs instead of interal WordPress cron. The default WordPress cron functionality checks on each page load for scheduled tasks that are due to run. This means wp-cron is not a true UNIX cron and actually runs more or less often based how much access to site you have (traffic).

First of all, a couple words about why do we have a need for cronjobs in our plugins like Simple Auctions, Lotteries and Group Buy. Custom product types (auctions, lotteries and deals) in these plugins have start and end timestamp and we need to have reliable way to fullfill start and end timestamps for auctions, lotteries and group buy / deals on time and to send email notifications in specified intervals (for example twice daily).

We cannot use WordPress cronjobs because they are not reliable and depend on visitor accessing your website. That means if your WordPress has say 3 visitors a day it will run internal WP cron 3 times that day (and we will be able to close auction only 3 times a day and not on end datetime set in auction). So if there is no site activity for say 3 days, the cron will not be triggered for 3 days but next time you have visit on your website.

Another problem – if there are a lot of pending tasks to be run by WP internal cron, user will have to wait for those to be executed and then website will load for user meaning bad user experience due to slow loading times (which are caused by WP internal cronjob running and executing pending tasks). Real server cronjobs do not depend on website activity and are run in fixed defined intervals as set in cronjob config.

It’s better to have maintenance tasks running in background by cron than by your visitors – one more reason to use either real cronjobs or external service like EasyCron. EasyCron has nice tutorial how to setup cronjobs for Simple Auctions (also useful for Lotteries and Group Buy plugin).

If your hosting company (hosting provider) does not support one minute cronjobs we suggest that you move your website to better (serious) hosting company (or use service like EasyCron).

One performance suggestion for your WordPress site – since you are allready setting up cronjobs, you could also setup main WP cron to be run by real cronjob (or EasyCron) so your visitors don’t load WP cron at all. You need to edit wp-config.php file and add this line:

define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);

Then set this cron (use either wget or curl – whatever your hosting supports, just don’t use both at same time!):

/usr/bin/wget -q -O https://domain.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron >/dev/null 2>&1

OR 

/usr/local/bin/curl --silent https://domain.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron >/dev/null 2>&1

Where you need to replace domain.com with your actual domain to your WordPress site and make sure to have right path to wget or curl (safest way to find out those is to contact your hosting provider).

With these in place you will have reliable way to do WordPress maintenance cron tasks and your visitors will have better user experience because your WordPress will load a bit faster since users will not run WP cron on every website access.

Ever wanted to have category called ending soon or starting today which are automatically populated based on auction, lottery, deal end / start date? One client did it with a free plugin so he does not need to use widgets or shortcodes for that purpose. Plugin called Post Expirator does the trick – among other things it can change (custom) product category on selected date.

Along with main features to modify, remove or completely delete content when the expiry date arrives plugin allows also some useful actions with posts / pages / products:

• Change the status to “Draft”
• Delete the post
• Send the post to the Trash
• Change the status to “Private”
• Enable the “Stick to the top of the blog” option
• Disable the “Stick to the top of the blog” option
• Remove all existing categories, and add new categories
• Keep all existing categories, and add new categories
• Keep all existing categories, except for those specified in this change

For our example we will use “Remove all existing categories, and add new categories” action. First define product categories – something like on screenshot below (and ofcourse categorize auctions with Auctions product category):

You can use “do not mix” settings for auctions, lotteries and group buy / deals. Now in Settings -> Post Expirator we need to enable it for product post type (and disable it on for example posts and pages if you don’t need it there).

Post Expirator plugin comes with handy bulk edit option and can be bulk set but problem is that expiration category must be set for each auction manually, one by one. This can be done during auction post publishing when you enter all auction details so we don’t see this as huge problem.

After time set in above screenshot auction is categoriezed under Auctions -> Ending Soon category.

Benefits of this approach is that when you custom style product archive page same style will be applied to all products even custom ones like auctions, lotteries and group buy / deals.

Customizing loop for widgets and shortcodes is not that easy while customizing product categories is more easy and can be done for example with Elementor. You can also completely unpublish finished auctions, lotteries, group buy / deals, or move them to their special product category called for example Past Competitions.

Post Expirator plugin is well maintained, has solid user base (more than 100k installations) and top rating.