Products Shortcodes

While WooCommerce primarily uses blocks to offer interactive and customizable display settings for products, you can still use legacy product shortcodes on your store by adding them to a shortcode block. This document lists and explains the available WooCommerce product-related shortcodes.

Here’s a video overview of how product shortcodes can be used.

The [products] shortcode is one of our most robust shortcodes.

The [products] shortcode allows you to display products by post ID, SKU, categories, attributes, with support for pagination, random sorting, and product tags, replacing the need for multiples shortcodes such as  [featured_products], [sale_products], [best_selling_products], [recent_products], [product_attribute], and [top_rated_products], which were needed previously.

Available Product Attributes

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The following attributes are available to use in conjunction with the [products] shortcode. They have been split into sections for primary function for ease of navigation, with examples below.

Display Product Attributes

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These attribute are used to alter the way products are displayed, ordered, and arranged within the [products] shortcode:

• limit – The number of products to display. Defaults to and -1 (display all)  when listing products, and -1 (display all) for categories.
• columns – The number of columns to display. Defaults to 4.
• paginate – Toggles pagination on. Use in conjunction with limit. Defaults to false set to true to paginate .
• orderby – Sorts the products displayed by the entered option. One or more options can be passed by adding both slugs with a space between them. Available options are:
  • title – The product title. This is the default orderby mode if no other attribute is used.
  • date – The date the product was published.
  • id – The post ID of the product.
  • menu_order – The Menu Order, if set (lower numbers display first).
  • popularity – The number of purchases.
  • rand – Randomly order the products on page load (may not work with sites that use caching, as it could save a specific order).
  • rating – The average product rating.
• order – States whether the product order is ascending (ASC) or descending (DESC), using the method set in orderby. Defaults to ASC.
• skus – Comma-separated list of product SKUs.
• category – Comma-separated list of category slugs.
• tag – Comma-separated list of tag slugs.
• class – Adds an HTML wrapper class so you can modify the specific output with custom CSS.
• on_sale – Retrieve on sale products. Not to be used in conjunction with best_sellingor top_rated.
• best_selling – Retrieve the best selling products. Not to be used in conjunction with on_sale or top_rated.
• top_rated – Retrieve top-rated products. Not to be used in conjunction with on_saleor best_selling.

If you do not include the orderby attribute, the system displays products in the default sorting order, which is by menu order, then title.

Content Product Attributes

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These attributes are used to determine which products are displayed inside the [products] shortcode:

• attribute – Retrieves products using the specified attribute slug.
• terms – Comma-separated list of attribute terms to be used with attribute.
• terms_operator – Operator to compare attribute terms. Available options are:
  • AND – Will display products from all of the chosen attributes.
  • IN – Will display products with the chosen attribute. This is the default terms_operator value.
  • NOT IN – Will display products that are not in the chosen attributes.
• tag_operator – Operator to compare tags. Available options are:
  • AND – Will display products from all of the chosen tags.
  • IN – Will display products with the chosen tags. This is the default tag_operator value.
  • NOT IN – Will display products that are not in the chosen tags.
• visibility – Will display products based on the selected visibility. Available options are:
  • visible – Products visible on shop and search results. This is the default visibility option.
  • catalog – Products visible on the shop only, but not search results.
  • search – Products visible in search results only, but not on the shop.
  • hidden – Products that are hidden from both shop and search, accessible only by direct URL.
  • featured – Products that are marked as Featured Products.

• category – Retrieves products using the specified category slug.
• tag – Retrieves products using the specified tag slug.
• cat_operator – Operator to compare category terms. Available options are:
  • AND – Will display products that belong in all of the chosen categories.
  • IN – Will display products within the chosen category. This is the default cat_operator value.
  • NOT IN – Will display products that are not in the chosen category.

• ids – Will display products based on a comma-separated list of Post IDs.
• skus – Will display products based on a comma-separated list of SKUs.

Note: If the product is not showing and should be, make sure it is not set to “Hidden” in the “Catalog Visibility” settings.

Special Product Attributes

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These attributes cannot be used with the “Content Attributes” listed above, as they will likely cause a conflict and not display. You should only use one of the following special attributes.

• best_selling – Will display your best selling products. Must be set to true.
• on_sale – Will display your on-sale products. Must be set to true.

Examples of [Product] Shortcode Scenarios

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Below you’ll find a few examples of how to use the [product] shortcode along with attributes (args) .

Scenario 1 – Random Sale Items

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Here’s how to display four sale products at random:

[products limit="4" columns="4" orderby="popularity" class="quick-sale" on_sale="true" ]

This shortcode explicitly states four products with four columns (which will be one row), showing the most popular on-sale items. It also adds a CSS class quick-sale, which we can modify with custom CSS.

Scenario 2 – Featured Products

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Here’s how to display featured products, two per row, with a maximum of four items:

[products limit="4" columns="2" visibility="featured" ]

This shortcode says up to four products will load in two columns, and that they must be featured. We did not use the orderby attribute. So the shortcode shows products in the default sorting, which is by menu order, then title. (A to Z by default because order is not used).

Scenario 3 – Best Selling Products

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Here’s how you would display three top best selling products in one row:

[products limit="3" columns="3" best_selling="true" ]

Scenario 4 – Newest Products

In this example, we’ll display the newest products first – four products across one row. To accomplish this, we’ll use the Post ID (which increases incrementally with new posts, and is generated when the product page is created), along with the order and orderby command. Since you can’t see the Post ID from the frontend, the ID#s have been superimposed over the images.

[products limit="4" columns="4" orderby="id" order="DESC" visibility="visible"]

Scenario 5 – Specific Categories

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Here’s how to display only hoodies and shirts, but not accessories. We’ll configure it to display in two rows of four:

[products limit="8" columns="4" category="hoodies, tshirts" cat_operator="AND"]

Alternatively, if we only want to display products not in those categories. All we need to change is the cat_operator to NOT IN.

[products limit="8" columns="4" category="hoodies, tshirts" cat_operator="NOT IN"]

Note that even though the limit is set to 8, there are only four products that fit that criteria, so four products are displayed.

Scenario 6 – Attribute Display

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Each of the clothing items has an attribute, either “Spring/Summer” or “Fall/Winter” depending on the appropriate season, with some accessories having both since they can be worn all year. In this example, there are three products per row, displaying all of the “Spring/Summer” items. That attribute slug is season, and the attribute’s terms are warm and cold. We’ve also sorted from the newest products to the oldest.

[products columns="3" attribute="season" terms="warm" orderby="date"]

Alternatively, if we want to display everything but warm weather products, I could add NOT IN as my terms_operator:

[products columns="3" attribute="season" terms="warm" terms_operator="NOT IN"]

Note that by using NOT IN, we exclude products that are both in “Spring/Summer” and “Fall/Winter”. If we want to show all cold-weather appropriate gear including these shared accessories, we would change the term from warm to cold.

Scenario 7 – Show Only Products With tag “hoodie”

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[products tag="hoodie"]

Sorting Products by Custom Meta Fields

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Note: We are unable to provide support for customizations under our Support Policy. If you need to further customize a snippet, or extend its functionality, we highly recommend Codeable, or a Certified WooExpert.

When using the Products shortcode, you can choose to order products by the pre-defined values above. You can also sort products by custom meta fields using the code below (in this example we order products by price):

add_filter( 'woocommerce_shortcode_products_query', 'woocommerce_shortcode_products_orderby' );

function woocommerce_shortcode_products_orderby( $args ) {

    $standard_array = array('menu_order','title','date','rand','id');

    if( isset( $args['orderby'] ) && !in_array( $args['orderby'], $standard_array ) ) {
        $args['meta_key'] = $args['orderby'];
        $args['orderby']  = 'meta_value_num'; 
    }

    return $args;
}

You need to place this snippet in functions.php in your theme folder and then customize it by editing the meta_key.

Questions and Support

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Do you still have questions and need assistance? 

• If you’re looking to extend the core functionality shown here, we recommend reviewing available extensions in the Woo Marketplace.
• Need ongoing advanced support, or a customization built for WooCommerce? Hire a WooExpert agency.
• Are you a developer building your own WooCommerce integration or extension? Check our Developer Resources.

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