How to Remove Products from WooCommerce: A Comprehensive Guide
Introduction
WooCommerce is a fantastic platform for selling products online. But what happens when you need to remove products from your store? Whether you’re discontinuing a line, running out of stock, or simply updating your inventory, knowing how to effectively remove products is crucial for maintaining a professional and user-friendly online shop. This article will guide you through the various methods of removing products from WooCommerce, ensuring you can manage your product catalog with ease. We’ll cover everything from simple deletions to more nuanced approaches that retain your SEO value.
Removing Products in WooCommerce: Step-by-Step
There are several ways to remove products from your WooCommerce store, each with its own pros and cons. Here’s a breakdown of the most common methods:
#### 1. Deleting Products Permanently
This is the simplest and most direct method. Be warned: this is permanent! Once a product is deleted, it’s gone from your database (unless you have a backup).
* Navigate to Products: In your WordPress admin panel, go to Products > All Products.
* Find the Product: Locate the product you want to remove. You can use the search bar or filters to find it quickly.
* Delete the Product: Hover over the product name and click the “Trash” link. This moves the product to the Trash.
* Permanently Delete (Optional): To permanently delete the product, go to Products > Trash. Hover over the product and click “Delete Permanently.”
Important Considerations:
- SEO Impact: Deleting a product permanently removes its associated URL. If that URL has been indexed by search engines, visitors clicking on it will encounter a 404 error. This can negatively impact your SEO. To mitigate this, consider redirecting the old product URL to a similar product or a relevant category page (covered in detail below).
- Order History: Deleting a product will NOT remove it from past orders. The product will still appear in order details for historical records.
- Easy Reversal: Easily revert the product to “Published” at any time.
- SEO Retention: The product URL still exists, avoiding 404 errors. However, it won’t be visible on your storefront, and users trying to access it might see a “product not found” message.
- SEO retention: product url remains accessible.
- Quick Re-publishing: Easily re-publish the product without losing any data.
- Source URL: Enter the old product URL (the one that’s now broken).
- Target URL: Enter the URL of the new product, a related category page, or your homepage.
- Add Redirection: Click the “Add Redirection” button.
- Hide out-of-stock products from your catalog (WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Inventory).
- Display a “Read more” button instead of an “Add to cart” button for out-of-stock products.
- Allow backorders if you’re willing to accept orders for products that are currently out of stock.
#### 2. Moving Products to Draft
This method is less drastic than deleting and allows you to temporarily hide a product from your storefront while keeping it in your database. This is useful if you plan to bring the product back later, or if you simply need to take it offline temporarily.
* Navigate to Products: Go to Products > All Products.
* Find the Product: Locate the product you want to remove.
* Edit the Product: Hover over the product name and click “Edit.”
* Change Status to Draft: In the “Publish” meta box (usually in the top right corner), change the “Status” from “Published” to “Draft.”
* Update: Click the “Update” button.
Advantages:
#### 3. Unpublishing Products
Similar to moving to Draft, unpublishing removes the product from the storefront but retains the product information and URL.
* Check out this post: How To Accept Bitcoin On Woocommerce Navigate to Products: Go to Products > All Products.
* Find the Product: Locate the product you want to remove.
* Edit the Product: Hover over the product name and click “Edit.”
* Change Visibility: In the “Publish” meta box (usually in the top right corner), click “Edit” next to “Visibility”.
* Change Visibility to Hidden: Choose “Hidden” from the dropdown.
* Update: Click the “Update” button.
Advantages:
#### 4. Redirecting Old Product URLs (Crucial for SEO)
If you’ve permanently deleted a product, it’s highly recommended to redirect the old product URL to a relevant page. This prevents 404 errors and helps preserve your SEO ranking. You’ll need a plugin like “Redirection” or “Yoast SEO Premium” to manage redirects. Here’s how to do it using the Redirection plugin:
* Install and Activate the Redirection Plugin: Install the “Redirection” plugin from the WordPress plugin repository. Activate it.
* Access the Redirection Settings: Go to Tools > Redirection.
* Add a New Redirection: In the “Add new redirection” section:
Example:
Let’s say you deleted a product with the URL `https://yourstore.com/product/old-red-shoes/`. If you have a new product `https://yourstore.com/product/new-red-shoes/`, you would redirect the old URL to the new one. If you don’t have a similar product, redirect to `https://yourstore.com/category/shoes/` or even `https://yourstore.com`.
#### 5. Using WooCommerce’s Stock Management (For Temporary Removal)
If you’re simply out of stock and expect to restock soon, the best approach is to manage your inventory using WooCommerce’s stock management features.
* Edit the Product: Go to Products > All Products and edit the product.
* Inventory Tab: Go to the “Inventory” tab in the product data meta box.
* Manage Stock: Check the “Manage stock?” box.
* Stock Quantity: Set the “Stock quantity” to “0”.
* Stock Status: Choose the “Out of stock” option in “Stock Status.”
* Update: Click the “Update” button.
Optional: You can also configure WooCommerce to:
Example of bulk setting a product to draft
Here’s a simplified example of how you could programmatically set multiple products to “draft” using PHP and the WordPress `wp_update_post` function. This is a more advanced method that requires a bit of coding knowledge and is best suited for developers.
<?php
// Get all product IDs (you might need to refine this query based on specific criteria)
$args = array(
‘post_type’ => ‘product’,
‘posts_per_page’ => -1, // Get all products
);
$products = get_posts( $args );
if ( $products ) {
foreach ( $products as $product ) {
$product_id = $product->ID;
// Update the product status to ‘draft’
$update_args = array(
‘ID’ => $product_id,
‘post_status’ => ‘draft’,
);
wp_update_post( $update_args );
echo ‘Product ID ‘ . $product_id . ‘ updated to draft.
‘;
}
} else {
echo ‘No products found.’;
}
?>
Important:
* Backup First: Always back up your database before running any code that modifies your data.
* Testing: Test this code on a staging environment before running it on your live site.
* Error Handling: This example lacks error handling. You should add error checking to ensure the `wp_update_post` function succeeds.
* Placement: You wouldn’t typically place this code directly in a template file. Consider creating a custom plugin or using a code snippets plugin to execute it.
Conclusion
Removing products from WooCommerce is a common task that requires careful consideration. By understanding the different methods available – deleting, moving to draft, managing stock, and, most importantly, redirecting old URLs – you can effectively manage your product catalog while minimizing any negative impact on your SEO. Choose the method that best suits your specific needs and remember to always prioritize SEO best practices when removing products from your online store. Taking the time to properly manage your product removals will ultimately contribute to a better user experience and a more successful online business.
