How to Make a WordPress Theme WooCommerce Compatible

So you want to add a shop to your theme – awesome! WooCommerce is a great choice. This guide will show you how to integrate the plugin so that your theme is WooCommerce ready.

Now, technically all themes are “WooCommerce compatible/ready” because it’s a plugin and in theory any plugin should work with any WordPress theme. However, as a theme developer you may want to tweak the way the plugin works to better integrate with your theme or provide additional settings to your users that are not available in the plugin by default (such as altering the number of columns on the shop).

Below you will find some helpful snippets that you can use to provide “better” support for WooCommerce in your theme and/or to alter things for your specific design.

Important: Many of the snippets below use functions available in WooCommerce only. So make sure these snippets aren’t just dumped at the bottom of your functions.php file in a theme created for distribution. If you are going to share your theme with others or sell it be sure to place the snippets in their own file loaded only when the WooCommerce plugin is active.

Check if WooCommerce is Enabled

In my themes I like to define a custom constant that can be used to check if WooCommerce is enabled this way I can include files or run functions only when WooCommerce is active (see important message above if you haven’t yet).

define( 'WPEXPLORER_WOOCOMMERCE_ACTIVE', class_exists( 'WooCommerce' ) );

Now with the constant in place I can use it in my conditional statement as follows:

if ( WPEXPLORER_WOOCOMMERCE_ACTIVE ) {
    // Do something...
    // Such as including a new file with all your Woo edits.
}

Declare WooCommerce Support

This is the first and most important piece of code to add to your theme which “enables” WooCommerce support and prevents the warnings from the plugin telling the end user that the theme is not compatible.

add_action( 'after_setup_theme', function() {
    add_theme_support( 'woocommerce' );
} );

Notice how this code is added to the “after_setup_theme” hook? Most likely you are already hooking into this somewhere else in your theme to declare theme support for core functions. If this is the case, simply add the part that reads add_theme_support( 'woocommerce' ); along with your other declarations instead of adding a new action hook.

Remove WooCommerce CSS

In order to style WooCommerce to match your theme you can add custom CSS to your site that overrides the plugin styles. However, if you want complete control and to slim down your site I recommend removing all the plugin CSS and then adding your own to style things.

Use the following code to remove all WooCommerce CSS:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_enqueue_styles', '__return_empty_array' );

Use the following code to remove only certain WooCommerce CSS:

function wpexplorer_remove_woo_styles( $styles ) {
    unset( $styles['woocommerce-general'] );
    unset( $styles['woocommerce-layout'] );
    unset( $styles['woocommerce-smallscreen'] );
    return $styles;
}
add_filter( 'woocommerce_enqueue_styles', 'wpexplorer_remove_woo_styles' );

Enable Product Gallery, Zoom & Lightbox (v3.0+)

In WooCommerce 3.0 they introduced new product gallery, zoom and lightbox functionality. These must all be enabled via “add_theme_support” if you want to make use of them in your theme.

add_action( 'after_setup_theme', function() {
    add_theme_support( 'wc-product-gallery-slider' );
    add_theme_support( 'wc-product-gallery-zoom' );
    add_theme_support( 'wc-product-gallery-lightbox' );
} );

Remove The Shop Title

A lot of themes already have functions to display archive titles so this code removes the extra title from WooCommerce which is better than hiding it via CSS (which is what some themes do).

add_filter( 'woocommerce_show_page_title', '__return_false' );

Change the Shop Archive Title

If your theme is using the archive_title() or get_archive_title() functions to display the title for your archives you can easily tweak it via a filter to grab the name of your product page instead for the shop archive title.

function wpexplorer_woo_archive_title( $title ) {
    if ( is_shop() && $shop_id = wc_get_page_id( 'shop' ) ) {
        $title = get_the_title( $shop_id );
    }
    return $title;
}
add_filter( 'get_the_archive_title', 'wpexplorer_woo_archive_title' );

Change How Many Products Display on the Shop Pages

You can use the following code to change how many products display per page on the shop and product archives (categories and tags).

function wpexplorer_woo_posts_per_page( $cols ) {
    return 12;
}
add_filter( 'loop_shop_per_page', 'wpexplorer_woo_posts_per_page' );

Change the Number of Product Columns on the Shop Pages

I don’t understand why WooCommerce works in this way but you can’t just alter the ‘loop_shop_columns’ filter, you must also add the unique classes to the body tag in order for the columns to work. While the Woo shortcodes have a div wrapper with the correct classes the shop pages do not, that’s why we need two functions.

// Alter shop columns.
function wpexplorer_woo_shop_columns( $columns ) {
	return 4;
}
add_filter( 'loop_shop_columns', 'wpexplorer_woo_shop_columns' );

// Add correct body class for shop columns (this fix may no longer be needed)
function wpexplorer_woo_shop_columns_body_class( $classes ) {
	if ( is_shop() || is_product_category() || is_product_tag() ) {
		$classes[] = 'columns-4';
	}
	return $classes;
}
add_filter( 'body_class', 'wpexplorer_woo_shop_columns_body_class' );

Important: It’s possible WooCommerce has already fixed how the columns work so you may not need the second part of the snippet above. You may want to try using the first function only and if it doesn’t work as expected then added the second function.

Change the Next & Previous Pagination Arrows

This snippet will allow you to tweak the pagination arrows on the shop to match those in your theme.

function wpexplorer_woo_pagination_args( $args ) {
    $args['prev_text'] = '<i class="fa fa-angle-left"></i>';
    $args['next_text'] = '<i class="fa fa-angle-right"></i>';
    return $args;
}
add_filter( 'woocommerce_pagination_args', 'wpexplorer_woo_pagination_args' );

Change the OnSale Badge Text

Especially useful on sites using a different language or to remove the exclamation mark which I am not a huge fan of.

function wpexplorer_woo_sale_flash() {
	return '<span class="onsale">' . esc_html__( 'Sale', 'text_domain' ) . '</span>';
}
add_filter( 'woocommerce_sale_flash', 'wpexplorer_woo_sale_flash' );

Change the Product Gallery Thumbnail Columns

You may want to change the number of columns for the single product gallery thumbnails depending on your layout and this function will do just that.

function wpexplorer_woo_product_thumbnails_columns() {
    return 4;
}
add_action( 'woocommerce_product_thumbnails_columns', 'wpexplorer_woo_product_thumbnails_columns' );

Change the Number of Displayed Related Products

The following code can be used to alter the number of products displayed for related products on the single product page.

function wpexplorer_woo_related_posts_per_page( $args ) {
    $args['posts_per_page'] = 4;
    return $args;
}
add_filter( 'woocommerce_output_related_products_args', 'wpexplorer_woo_related_posts_per_page' );

Change the Number of Columns for Related Products & Up-Sells

Just like the shop if you want to properly alter the number of columns for related and up-sell products on the single product pages you must filter the columns and also alter the body classes accordingly.

// Filter up-sells columns
function wpexplorer_woo_single_loops_columns( $columns ) {
	return 4;
}
add_filter( 'woocommerce_up_sells_columns', 'wpexplorer_woo_single_loops_columns' );

// Filter related args
function wpexplorer_woo_related_columns( $args ) {
	$args['columns'] = 4;
	return $args;
}
add_filter( 'woocommerce_output_related_products_args', 'wpexplorer_woo_related_columns', 10 );

// Filter body classes to add column class
function wpexplorer_woo_single_loops_columns_body_class( $classes ) {
	if ( is_singular( 'product' ) ) {
		$classes[] = 'columns-4';
	}
	return $classes;
}
add_filter( 'body_class', 'wpexplorer_woo_single_loops_columns_body_class' );

Add a Dynamic Cart Link & Cart Cost To Your Menu

Something that’s really popular is to show how many products are currently in your cart via an icon in your header menu. The following snippet will add a WooCommerce cart item to your menu that will update automatically whenever products are added or removed from the cart.

• Make sure to update where it says “main_menu” to be the name of the menu location you want to target.
• Also this snippet will display a cart icon and the cost of the items in the cart, if you rather display the count (number of products) simply change where it says wp_kses_post( $cart_total ) to instead say wp_kses_post( $cart_count ).

// Add the cart link to menu
function wpexplorer_add_menu_cart_item_to_menus( $items, $args ) {

    // Make sure your change 'main_menu' to your Menu location !!!!
    if ( 'main_menu' === $args->theme_location ) {
        $css_class = 'menu-item menu-item-type-cart menu-item-type-woocommerce-cart';
        if ( function_exists( 'is_cart' ) && is_cart() ) {
            $css_class .= ' current-menu-item';
        }
        $items .= '<li class="' . esc_attr( $css_class ) . '">';
            $items .= wpexplorer_menu_cart_item();
        $items .= '</li>';
    }

    return $items;
}
add_filter( 'wp_nav_menu_items', 'wpexplorer_add_menu_cart_item_to_menus', 10, 2 );

// Function returns the main menu cart link
function wpexplorer_menu_cart_item() {
    $output = '';

    $cart_count = absint( WC()->cart->cart_contents_count );
    $cart_total = WC()->cart->get_cart_total();

    if ( $cart_count ) {
        $url = wc_get_cart_url();
    } else {
        $url = wc_get_page_permalink( 'shop' );
    }

    $icon = '<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" height="24px" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="24px" fill="currentColor"><path d="M0 0h24v24H0V0z" fill="none"/><path d="M15.55 13c.75 0 1.41-.41 1.75-1.03l3.58-6.49c.37-.66-.11-1.48-.87-1.48H5.21l-.94-2H1v2h2l3.6 7.59-1.35 2.44C4.52 15.37 5.48 17 7 17h12v-2H7l1.1-2h7.45zM6.16 6h12.15l-2.76 5H8.53L6.16 6zM7 18c-1.1 0-1.99.9-1.99 2S5.9 22 7 22s2-.9 2-2-.9-2-2-2zm10 0c-1.1 0-1.99.9-1.99 2s.89 2 1.99 2 2-.9 2-2-.9-2-2-2z"/></svg>';

    $output .= '<a href="'. esc_url( $url ) .'" class="menu-cart-total">';

        $output .= $icon . wp_kses_post( $cart_total );

    $output .= '</a>';

    return $output;
}


// Update cart link with AJAX
function wpexplorer_main_menu_cart_link_fragments( $fragments ) {
    $fragments['.menu-cart-total'] = wpexplorer_menu_cart_item();
    return $fragments;
}
add_filter( 'add_to_cart_fragments', 'wpexplorer_main_menu_cart_link_fragments' );

Important: The code above must not be wrapped in an is_admin() conditional because they rely on AJAX. So if this code isn’t working make sure you haven’t conditionally loaded this code for the front-end only.

Making your Theme WooCommerce Ready is Easy!

WooCommerce will work with any theme by default but adding some extra support for the plugin so that it better fits your theme is very easy to do.

This is a very simple guide with general tweaks you may want to make, we will be creating dedicated guides for more complex integrations or WooCommerce customizations. If you have any suggestions for these future guides let us know!