Since the last WooCommerce update (9.9.4.) the product categories don’t show anymore if they have no products in it but subcategories. I had to make a roll back to the previous version. I hope this bug will be fixed soon!
It’s totally expected behavior for a parent category to show no products if there aren’t any products directly assigned to it. Products assigned only to subcategories won’t appear under the parent unless they’re linked there too.
Just to make sure we’re on the same page—could you walk us through exactly where the category isn’t showing? For example, is it missing on the shop page, in a menu, or somewhere else?
If you can share a screenshot of what you’re seeing, that would be super helpful! If you don’t already have a tool for that, Snipboard.io is a quick and easy way to upload and share screenshots with us.
I can’t really show a screenshot of the problem, because I made the rollback to the previous version, which “solved” the problem.
But if you look at the screenshot. There is a category “Vaporizer & Zubehör”, which has no products itself, but has two subcatecories with products in it. So in Woocommerce 9.9.4. all three categories disappear (the main category and the two subcategories).
The screenshot is from the sidebar widget “product categories”. But the category “Vaporizer & Zubehör” would also disappear from the page you see on the screenshot below.
I tried to replicate the issue on my end using WooCommerce 9.9.4, but the product categories and their subcategories display as expected, even when the parent has no direct products but the subcategories do.
There was a known issue in version 9.9.3 where empty parent categories didn’t display correctly, but that was resolved in version 9.9.4. You can find the changelog here for reference: https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/#developers
If you try updating again and still notice any unexpected behavior, feel free to share details and we’ll gladly take a closer look.
