Hi there,
To help us better understand what’s happening, could you please share the exact URL of the page where the products are displaying randomly?
Additionally, please share your System Status Report so we can check your setup.
You can find it under:
WooCommerce → Status → Get system report → Copy for support
Then paste it into https://pastebin.com/ or https://gist.github.com/ and share the link here.
Once we have that information, we’ll be able to investigate the issue further.
Hi there,
Since we haven’t heard back, I’ll go ahead and mark this as resolved for now. If you want to continue later, just message us anytime.
Also, if this interaction was helpful, we’d really appreciate a quick review: https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/woocommerce/reviews/#new-post
I responded to the email but you apparently didn’t get it. Here’s the information you requested:
This is the exact url:
https://rav.kfw.mybluehost.me/website_e650b775/portfolio/
The site is not live yet and this is the last thing I have to do before taking it live.
Here’s the system status report:
https://pastebin.com/YN45YVHU
Hi @hikingyogi,
Thank you for getting back and for sharing the requested details. To better understand your setup, please go to Products > Categories and share a full screenshot of that page using snipboard.io.
Hi @hikingyogi, thank you for sharing that screenshot, it is really helpful in understanding how your categories are currently set up. I also took another look at the page you shared, https://rav.kfw.mybluehost.me/website_e650b775/portfolio, and from what I can see the page is loading correctly. Your products are displaying as expected in a shop page, so the page itself seems to be working as expected.
From what you described earlier, it sounds like what you actually want is a page that lists your product categories rather than individual products. Before guiding you further, can you confirm that your goal is to have a page that shows clickable product categories, each leading to the products inside them?
If that is what you are looking to achieve, WooCommerce has a built-in way to display product categories using shortcodes. You can review the full guide here so you can choose the layout that fits your needs
https://woocommerce.com/document/woocommerce-shortcodes/#product-category-shortcodes
Once I have your confirmation, I can guide you on where to place the shortcode or suggest alternatives depending on your theme setup. Looking forward to your reply so we can get this set up exactly how you want it.
Yes, that is what I’m trying to do. When someone clicks on the “Our Products” page, I want them to see categories, such as Awards and Drinkware. Then they can click on the category they are interested in to see the items within that category. Thank you.
Thank you for the clarification @hikingyogi,
Just to clarify, is “Our Products” a page where you’re using a shortcode, or is it a parent category for other categories?
- If it’s a page, you can display all your categories using the shortcode below:
[product_categories number="0" parent="0" hide_empty="0" columns="4"]
You can remove hide_empty to show empty categories, and remove parent if you want to display both parent and child categories.
- If “Our Products” is a parent category, go to Products > Categories > edit “Our Products” and edit it to display its subcategories instead of products.
- If “Our Products” is your shop page, go to Appearance > Customize > WooCommerce > Shop or Catalog and set the shop page to display categories.
If you found the support received helpful, we’d appreciate if you can take a moment to leave us a review here: https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/woocommerce/reviews/#new-post
“Our Products” is our shop page. If I go to Appearance, my choices are Themes, Premium Themes, Editor, Popup Builder and Upload Theme. And that’s where the problem started. There are a lot of web sites and videos that instruct what you did, but since that choice isn’t available under Appearance, I got stuck.
I can go to Woocommerce – Settings – Products and tell it that the shop page is Our Products. But I can’t find a setting to set the shop page to display categories.
Hi @hikingyogi,
Thanks for explaining further; that helps a lot. Since “Our Products” is set as your shop page, the option to display categories instead of products is usually found under Appearance → Customize → WooCommerce → Product Catalog. In that section, you should see a dropdown for “Shop page display” where you can choose Show categories (or Show categories and products) instead of just products.
If that menu isn’t appearing in your theme’s Customizer, it may be because your theme doesn’t expose WooCommerce’s catalog settings. In that case, you still have a couple of alternatives:
- Create a page and add the
[product_categories number="0" parent="0" hide_empty="0" columns="4"] shortcode. This shortcode will display all parent categories, including those without products
- If “Our Products” is a parent category, you can edit it under Products → Categories and set it to display subcategories instead of products.
However, if your theme has limited customization options, using shortcodes gives you flexible control over the display of categories without relying on theme settings.
I hope that helps. Let us know if you need anything else.
There is no “customize” under Appearance and “Our Products” is a page, not a parent category, so it seems that my only option is with the shortcode. I have been in IT for 30 years, but I know NOTHING about web design, so your instructions perplex me. We already have the page called “Our Products” and when I look at it in WordPress, there is nothing on it. When I preview it, all the products show alphabetically without the categories. So are you telling me to create another page and add that shortcode? Do I just create a block on the new page and paste that shortcode into it? Or do I need to go into the actual coding of the site? I hate to be ignorant, but explain it to me like I’m 5. Please. Thanks.
Thank you for getting back and for the clarification @hikingyogi,
I believe I see where the confusion is coming from. Based on your explanation, it looks like “Our Products” is set as your Shop page. Since the Customize option isn’t appearing under Appearance, you’re likely using a block theme rather than a classic theme, and both work differently.
I checked your theme and confirmed that you’re using the Bluehost Blueprint theme, which is indeed a block theme. To achieve what you want, you’ll need to use a Product Categories block. Before I provide the steps, I’d like to first see what the backend of that page looks like.
Please go to Pages → Edit the “Our Products” page, and share a full screenshot of what you see there using snipboard.io.
https://snipboard.io/w8ulcC.jpg
When I set up the web site, I let AI choose the theme and set up the site. Then I added our pictures and edited the text. So I have no idea what theme we have. When we decided to add products without making it an ecommerce site, I installed the Woocommerce plugin and set up all the categories and products. The weird thing was that when I was finished, I could see all of the products alphabetically if I previewed the site. However, on the backend side of it, I saw that original pictures and text that AI had designed for the Our Products page. To ensure that what was on the backend was never accidentally shown on the front end, I deleted everything on the Our Products page, which is what you see in this picture.
Hi @hikingyogi,
Thank you for the confirmation. Since you’re using a Block Theme, the shop page isn’t controlled by the “Our Products” page. That page only provides the slug and basic content, while the actual layout is managed in the Site Editor.
Please go to WooCommerce > Appearance > Editor > Templates and scroll until you find the Product Catalog template. This is the template that controls your shop page. You’ll need to remove the existing Products block and replace it with a Product Categories block. If you’re unfamiliar with the block editor, you can refer to this documentation for guidance: https://woocommerce.com/document/woocommerce-store-editing/
I think we’re finally making progress. The Appearance>Editor>Theme is not directly under WooCommerce, but I did find it. Here’s a screenshot of what I see:
https://snipboard.io/Hct8DT.jpg
The problem now is that when I click on the 3 dots for an action, nothing happens. I looked through the documentation you sent but I’m still not sure what to do from this point.
