# How to Exclude Certain Variations in WooCommerce: A Beginner’s Guide
WooCommerce is a fantastic platform, but sometimes you need more control over your product variations. Maybe you’ve got a size chart with options that are temporarily out of stock, or perhaps you want to hide variations based on specific attributes. Whatever the reason, excluding unwanted variations can improve your store’s organization and user experience. This guide will walk you through several methods, from simple to more advanced.
Why Exclude WooCommerce Variations?
Before diving into Check out this post: How To Sell Affiliate Products Woocommerce the “how,” let’s understand the “why.” Excluding variations can significantly benefit your online store:
- Improved User Experience: A cluttered product page with many unavailable variations is confusing. Removing them creates a cleaner, more focused shopping experience. Imagine searching for a “red, small t-shirt” only to see it’s out of stock and surrounded by dozens of other unavailable options. Frustrating, right?
- Streamlined Inventory Management: Managing a huge number of variations can become a logistical nightmare. Excluding unavailable or unwanted ones simplifies stock tracking and reduces potential errors.
- Better SEO: Search engines prefer clean, well-organized websites. Removing irrelevant variations can boost your SEO rankings by improving the overall quality of your product pages.
- Hide out of stock variations: This is the most straightforward way to remove variations that are currently out of stock.
- Show out of stock variations: This keeps them visible, potentially useful for pre-orders or back-orders.
Methods to Exclude Variations in WooCommerce
There are several ways to exclude variations, each with its own level of complexity and effectiveness:
1. Managing Inventory Directly (Easiest Method)
The simplest approach is to manage your inventory directly within WooCommerce. If a variation is unavailable, simply set its stock quantity to zero. This automatically hides the variation from your storefront. This is ideal for temporary unavailability.
Example: You have a t-shirt with variations in sizes S, M, L, and XL. If you run out of size M, simply set the stock quantity for the “Size: M” variation to 0. It will disappear from the product page.
2. Using WooCommerce’s Out of Stock Visibility Setting (Simple & Effective)
WooCommerce offers a setting to control the visibility of out-of-stock products and variations. Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Inventory. Here, you can choose to:
This setting is a global option affecting all your products and variations.
3. Using Product Visibility (More Control)
You can control the visibility of individual variations via the Product Data meta box when editing a product. You can change the visibility to “Hidden“. This method gives you granular control over each variation’s visibility. It is still useful to update inventory levels correctly for proper stock management.
4. Advanced Techniques: Custom Code (For Developers)
For more complex scenarios, you might need custom code. This approach offers maximum flexibility but requires some coding knowledge. Here’s an example using a filter to hide variations based on a specific attribute:
add_filter( 'woocommerce_get_available_variation', 'hide_specific_variations', 10, 2 ); function hide_specific_variations( $variations, $product ) { foreach ( $variations as $key => $variation ) { // Check for specific attribute value, e.g., color "green" if ( isset( $variation['attributes']['attribute_pa_color'] ) && $variation['attributes']['attribute_pa_color'] == 'green' ) { unset( $variations[$key] ); } } return $variations; }
Explanation: This code snippet removes variations with the attribute “pa_color” set to “green.” Remember to replace `’attribute_pa_color’` and `’green’` with your actual attribute slug and value. You’ll need to add this code to your theme’s `functions.php` file or a custom plugin. Always back up your website before implementing custom code.
Conclusion
Choosing the right method for excluding variations depends on your needs and technical skills. Start with the simpler methods – managing inventory or adjusting WooCommerce’s out-of-stock settings – Check out this post: How To Change Text On Woocommerce Next Button and only resort to custom code if absolutely necessary. By effectively managing your variations, you’ll create a smoother, more enjoyable shopping experience for your customers and simplify your own store management. Remember to always test your changes thoroughly after implementing them.
