# How to Hide Bulk Products in WooCommerce: A Beginner’s Guide
WooCommerce is a fantastic platform for selling online, but sometimes you need more control over what your customers see. Maybe you’re offering bulk discounts that aren’t suitable for casual browsing, or perhaps you’re managing inventory for wholesale clients separately from your retail storefront. Whatever the reason, knowing how to hide bulk products in WooCommerce is a valuable skill. This guide will walk you through several effective methods, perfect for beginners.
Why Hide Bulk Products?
Before diving into the *how*, let’s understand the *why*. Hiding bulk products can benefit your store in several ways:
- Improved Customer Experience: A cluttered storefront can overwhelm customers. Hiding bulk options keeps your main shop clean and focused on individual retail sales. Imagine a bakery website showing 50-pound bags of flour alongside individual loaves – it’s confusing!
- Inventory Management: Separating bulk and retail inventory simplifies order processing and prevents accidental orders of large quantities from retail customers.
- Targeted Marketing: You can promote bulk discounts through separate channels (e.g., a wholesale catalog, email marketing) rather than cluttering your main website.
- Price Transparency: Hiding bulk options until a customer is ready for them allows you to maintain a clear retail pricing structure.
Method 1: Using WooCommerce Product Visibility Settings
This is the simplest and most common method for hiding products. It utilizes WooCommerce’s built-in functionality, requiring no coding skills.
Steps:
1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
2. Navigate to Products > All Products.
3. Find the bulk product(s) you want to hide.
4. Click on the product title to edit it.
5. Scroll down to the “Product data” meta box.
6. Under the “Inventory” tab, find the “Visibility” setting.
7. Select “Hidden” from the dropdown menu.
8. Update the product.
Now your bulk product will be completely invisible to regular customers on your shop page and product category pages. Only you and those with administrator access can see them.
Method 2: Using Product Categories and Filters
This approach is slightly more sophisticated and allows you to group and manage your bulk products more effectively.
Steps:
1. Create a new product category: For example, “Wholesale” or “Bulk Orders”.
2. Assign this category to your bulk products.
3. Optionally, you can create a custom filter for the shop page to allow only customers with certain privileges to access wholesale categories. (Advanced users can use plugins like WooCommerce Product Filter for this.)
This method allows you to display your bulk products separately from retail products. You maintain control over visibility, but they are readily accessible if needed.
Method 3: Conditional Logic with a Plugin (Advanced)
For highly customized scenarios, you may need to use a plugin that enables conditional logic. This will allow you to hide bulk products based on user roles or other criteria.
For example, you could use a plugin like “WooCommerce Conditional Logic” to hide bulk products from customers who are not logged in or who don’t have a specific customer role (e.g., “Wholesale Customer”). These plugins often require some technical knowledge.
Method 4: Custom Code (Advanced)
This method requires significant coding knowledge and should only be attempted if you are comfortable working with PHP and WooCommerce functions. Incorrectly implemented code can damage your website.
This example uses a filter to remove bulk products from the main product query:
add_filter( 'woocommerce_product_query', 'hide_bulk_products', 10, 2 );
function hide_bulk_products( $q, $query ) {
if ( ! is_admin() ) { // Only hide products on the frontend
$q->set( ‘meta_query’, array(
array(
‘key’ => ‘_visibility’,
‘value’ => ‘hidden’,
‘compare’ => ‘!=’
),
) );
}
return $q;
}
This code snippet adds a meta query to the main product query, excluding products with `_visibility` set to `hidden`. This is essentially a more programmatic way of achieving what the Visibility setting in Method 1 does. Remember to add this code to your theme’s `functions.php` file or a custom plugin.
Conclusion
Choosing the right method for hiding your bulk products in WooCommerce depends on your technical skills and the complexity of your needs. Start with the simplest method (product visibility settings) and only move to more advanced techniques if necessary. Remember to always back up your website before making any code changes. Happy selling!
