Enhancing WooCommerce Product Categories with Custom Fields Using Advanced Custom Fields

Introduction

WooCommerce is a powerful e-commerce platform for WordPress that allows you to create and manage an online store with ease. While it provides a robust set of features for product management, there are times when you may want to extend its functionality further. One common requirement is to add custom fields to product categories. In this blog post, we’ll explore how you can achieve this by using the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin, offering technical insights and step-by-step instructions.

Why Add Custom Fields to WooCommerce Product Categories?

Before diving into the technical details, let’s briefly discuss why adding custom fields to WooCommerce product categories can be beneficial:

1. Additional Information: Custom fields allow you to include extra information about product categories. This can be helpful for displaying unique content or filtering products more effectively.
2. Improved SEO: Adding custom fields can enhance your category pages’ SEO by providing search engines with more specific data about each category.
3. User Experience: Custom fields can enhance the user experience by displaying relevant information to customers and aiding navigation.

Now, let’s walk through the steps to add custom fields to WooCommerce product categories using ACF.

Step 1: Install and Activate ACF Plugin

1. Install ACF: From your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New, and search for “Advanced Custom Fields.” Install and activate the plugin.

Step 2: Create a Custom Field Group

1. Create a New Field Group: Navigate to Custom Fields > Field Groups and click “Add New.”
2. Field Group Title: Give your field group a descriptive title, like “Category Custom Fields.”
3. Add Fields: Click “Add Field” to create custom fields. Define field names, types (e.g., text, textarea, image, etc.), and label names as per your requirements. For example, you could add fields like “Category Banner Image” or “Category Description.”
4. Location Rules: Under the “Location” tab, set rules to show these fields for the “Taxonomy Term” (Categories) and select the taxonomy “Product Categories.”
5. Save: Click “Publish” to save the field group.

Step 3: Assign Custom Fields to Categories

1. Edit a Category: Go to Products > Categories and select a category you want to add custom fields to.
2. Fill in Custom Fields: Scroll down to find the custom fields you created earlier. Fill in the relevant information for this category.
3. Update Category: Click “Update” to save the changes.

Step 4: Display Custom Fields on Category Pages

To display custom fields on your category pages, you’ll need to edit your theme files. Here’s a basic example:

<?php
$custom_banner = get_field('category_banner_image');
$custom_description = get_field('category_description');

if ($custom_banner) {
    echo '<img src="' . esc_url($custom_banner['url']) . '" alt="' . esc_attr($custom_banner['alt']) . '" />';
}

if ($custom_description) {
    echo '<div class="category-description">' . esc_html($custom_description) . '</div>';
}
?>

Place this code within your theme’s category template file (usually found in wp-content/themes/your-theme/woocommerce/content-product-cat.php) to display the custom fields on your category pages.

Conclusion

Adding custom fields to WooCommerce product categories using Advanced Custom Fields is a powerful way to enhance your online store’s functionality and user experience. By following these steps, you can create and manage custom fields for your product categories, providing additional information and improving the overall shopping experience for your customers. Customization possibilities are endless, so feel free to experiment and tailor your store’s categories to your specific needs.

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash