Global product attributes in WooCommerce – .com

In this tutorial we see what the global product attributes are in WooCommerce, how they work and what utilities we can give them.

Global product attributes

Global product attributes in WooCommerce serve two different functions in our eCommerce. On one side add information to the products about their characteristics (size, color, material, languages, etc…) and on the other hand it can also be a classification method of all the products in our eCommerce, an alternative to categories and labels.

Global attributes are available to all products in the store, unlike custom attributes, which are only available on the product we create them on. If you want to see all this live and direct, take a look at the class of , where you will see this and much more through a video in real time.

We can find the attribute creation and management interface in “Products/Attributes”, and it looks like this, which reminds us so much of:

Creating a new attribute is very simple, it only asks us for 5 very basic data:

• Name: The name of the attribute. For example, “size”, “color”, “language” or whatever we want. Imagination to the power.
• Slug: The identifier. If the “enable file” option is activated it will be used in the URL.
• Enable file: To be able to see a list of products with that specific attribute on the web. We will see it below.
• Guy: We can choose between a selector (category style) or a text field (labels style) to choose the values ​​of that attribute.
• Default order: Order in which we want the products that have that attribute to be seen.

So, we choose everything and click on “Add attribute”. With this we can create the attributes themselves (for example “color”)but we haven’t configured the values ​​of those attributes yet (for example “blue, green, white”). These values ​​are called terms, and we see it below:

Attribute Terms

Once we have the attributes created, we will have a list similar to this one, in which we see the name, slug, type, order and terms:

At this point, we can do a couple of things. The first is to edit the attribute itself, to modify any of these parameters that we just set. We do this by clicking on the “Edit” link that appears below the term when you hover over it.

The second option is to configure the terms of that attribute. We achieve this by clicking on the name of the attribute or on the cogwheel that we have to the right of the term. When clicked, we see the following screen:

In this case we see that there are already three terms (in this case, colors) created: Blue, white and black. To create another, they simply ask us for four pieces of information:

• Name: term name
• Slug: Identifier and part of the URL
• Higher: If we want we can create a sub-term, such as “cotton” within “textile”.
• Description: Internal description, which some themes display on the archive page.

So, here we see what a new term would look like, in this case, color:

And with this we already have created our attributes, and the terms that make them up. This is very good, but… Now what do we do with them? What do we use them for? Well, as I mentioned before, we have two options: To show it in the products, or to classify them. Let’s look at both options.

Assign attributes to products

The first utility of attributes, and the simplest to manage, is simply to assign them to certain products. As we already saw in the tutorial adding a new product in WooCommerce, we just have to assign them in the “Attributes” tab of the “Product data” box:

As we can see, we already have a dropdown ready with the four attributes that we have previously created: Color, language, material and size. We just have to select the one we want, and hit “Add”.

With that we can select the terms that correspond to that specific product. For example, if we have a shirt that is only blue and black, we will select those two colors from the dropdown.

Notice that we can only select between the colors (terms) which we’ve set at the attribute level a moment ago. So that, we can’t create a new color herebut we can only choose among the existing ones. This occurs because at the time of creating the term, we have opted for the “Select” type.

However, this changes with “Text” type attributes. These do not show us a drop-down with the values, but we must enter them by writing them each time, separated by a vertical line:

As you can see, in this case we have not selected the terms from a list, but have simply indicated them directly here. This allows us to create new terms on the fly, without having to do it through the attributes interface.

It’s partly good, because we can do it quickly, but sometimes we can make mistakes, creating two versions of the same term. (with or without an accent, synonyms, typographical errors, etc.). Personally I prefer the dropdown, as it is more secure, and does not allow errors.

Notice that in both cases we have selected the box “”Visible on the product page”. That is precisely what will show all the attributes in the product filein the “Additional information” tab.

As we can see, the attributes “color” and “material” are shown, with their respective terms: Blue, black, cotton and linen.

Well, this is the first utility of the attributes: Let them be seen in this tab. But we also have another possibility: Use them to classify and filter!

Filter products by attributes

In order to classify and display the products of our store based on the attributes, we must activate the option “Enable file?” of which we have spoken before.

By activating this box we will be able to see archive pages based on each term of the attributes. Let’s see how it looks:

Do you realize how useful it can be? Obviously this example is a bit absurd, since no one will look for “red products” in our store, but perhaps they may be interested in cotton clothes, pants of a certain size, or books in Spanish. In certain cases it will make sense to offer it, and in other cases it won’t.

As we can see in the image, at the top right we have a drop-down menu in which we can indicate the order in which we want to see the products. By default they will appear ordered by date, but we can change that default value to any other, in the settings that we have seen previously.

These product listing pages by terms are not linked from anywhere in WooCommerce, we must place the link ourselves, or place them in a menu or . That way we can place it in any area widget:

And if we want to offer our clients an advanced filter so that they can select both attributes, such as categories and tags, take a look at the plugin, thanks to which you can configure an advanced filter widget. This way someone could do complex searches, such as “red cotton t-shirts of a certain size” throughout the store.

Summary and conclusion

WooCommerce global attributes allow us to both add information to our products, such as sort and filter them in the shop. We can define them globally, and then set the terms at the product level.

Attributes also allow us to create variable products. If you want to see how to do it, take a look at the basic lesson.

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