WooCommerce settings

The storefront uses WooCommerce for its catalogue, prices, cart, shipping, checkout and orders, so many of its rules come straight from WooCommerce’s own settings. This page lists the WordPress and WooCommerce settings that matter for the storefront and what each one changes for shoppers.

Before you start

• WooCommerce and the Companion plugin are installed and active.
• You’re signed in as an Administrator.

At a glance

Setting	Where	Why it matters
Permalinks	Settings › Permalinks	The storefront talks to WordPress through its API addresses, which need “pretty” permalinks.
HTTPS	Your host, then Settings › General	Required for Facebook sign-in, wallets and AI agents; expected by every live store.
Timezone	Settings › General	Decides when “today” ends for Today’s Deals, and which clock every date on the storefront uses.
Store Address	WooCommerce › Settings › General	Guests start checkout in your shop’s own country.
Selling and shipping locations	WooCommerce › Settings › General	Which countries shoppers can pick at checkout and in their address book.
Currency	WooCommerce › Settings › General	The currency prices are shown and charged in.
Guest checkout	WooCommerce › Settings › Accounts & Privacy	Whether shoppers can buy without an account.
Reviews	WooCommerce › Settings › Products	Whether reviews are open, and to whom.
Shipping zones and free shipping	WooCommerce › Settings › Shipping	Delivery options, and the “free delivery” progress bar in the cart.
Brands	Products › Brands	Brand pages, the brand menu and the brands wall.
Color attribute (pa_color)	Products › Attributes	Colour swatches on product pages.
Menus	Appearance › Menus	The links in the header and footer.
Real cron	Your host	Back-in-stock emails and other background jobs run on time.

WordPress settings

Permalinks

Settings›Permalinks

Choose any structure except Plain. Post name is a good choice. With Plain permalinks the WordPress API addresses the storefront uses (everything under /wp-json/) don’t work reliably, and AI agents can’t connect at all.

HTTPS

Your WordPress site should load over https://. Ask your host for a certificate if it doesn’t, then check that both WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) under Settings›General start with https://. Facebook sign-in, Apple Pay and Google Pay don’t work without HTTPS.

Timezone

Settings›General›Timezone

Pick the city your store operates in (for example, “Berlin” or “Dhaka”) rather than a fixed UTC offset, so daylight saving is handled for you. The storefront uses this time zone for:

• Today’s Deals on the home page, which lists products whose sale ends before midnight tonight, in this time zone, and counts down to that midnight.
• Every date shoppers see: order dates, blog post dates and the end of a scheduled sale.

Menus

Appearance›Menus

The header and footer builders link to WordPress menus. Create your menus here (for example “Company”, “Customer care” and the main navigation), then pick them in the Header builder and the Footer. The Companion plugin keeps Appearance › Menus available even on block themes, which normally hide it.

Tip

The header’s Menu element shows only the top-level items of a menu. Nested items are used by the footer, but not in the header bar.

Site Icon

The storefront uses your WordPress Site Icon as its browser-tab icon (favicon). Set it under Appearance›Customize›Site Identity.

WooCommerce general settings

WooCommerce›Settings›General

Setting	What it changes on the storefront
Store Address (country)	A guest’s checkout starts in this country.
Selling location(s) and Sell to specific countries	Billing addresses at checkout can only use these countries. Signed-in shoppers can only save addresses in these countries to their address book.
Shipping location(s)	Shipping addresses at checkout can only use these countries.
Currency options	The currency every price is shown in. Card and PayPal payments use it too.

Accounts and guest checkout

WooCommerce›Settings›Accounts & Privacy

The storefront places orders through WooCommerce’s own checkout, so WooCommerce’s guest-checkout setting applies. If you turn off guest checkout (and don’t let shoppers create an account at checkout), signed-out visitors don’t see the Apple Pay or Google Pay buttons either. They need to sign in first.

Products and reviews

WooCommerce›Settings›Products

Under Reviews:

• Enable product reviews switches reviews on or off for the whole store. The storefront follows it.
• Reviews can only be left by “verified owners” limits reviews to shoppers who bought the product. The storefront follows this too, including for review photos and videos.

Review photos, moderation and Turnstile on reviews are set on the Companion plugin’s Product page tab. See Reviews.

Brands

Products›Brands

The storefront’s brand pages, the header’s Brands menu and the home page’s brands wall use WooCommerce’s built-in Brands (WooCommerce 9.6 and newer). Tick Featured on a brand to show it first. Each brand’s main category is worked out automatically once a day from its products. See Products.

The Color attribute

Products›Attributes

To show colour swatches on product pages, create an attribute named Color whose slug is exactly color. WooCommerce stores it as pa_color. The Companion plugin adds a colour picker to that attribute’s terms. An attribute with any other slug (for example colour) shows as plain text options instead.

Featured products and scheduled sales

Two ordinary WooCommerce product settings feed home page sections:

• The Featured star on a product (in Products › All Products) puts it on the home page’s Daily essentials shelf.
• A sale price with a Schedule end date of today puts the product in Today’s Deals. See Home page.

Shipping

WooCommerce›Settings›Shipping

Set up your shipping zones and methods as usual. The storefront shows the live rates for the shopper’s address in the cart’s shipping estimator and at checkout.

Free-delivery progress bar. If a zone has a Free shipping method that requires a minimum order amount, the cart and mini cart show how much more the shopper needs to spend (“Add … more for free delivery”). The bar uses the zone of the shopper’s own address, and it hides itself when there’s no free-shipping minimum to count towards.

Payments and emails

• Payment methods are set up in WooCommerce›Settings›Payments. See Payments.
• The Companion plugin’s six emails appear in WooCommerce›Settings›Emails and use WooCommerce’s email design. New accounts must confirm their email before they can sign in, so make sure your site can send email reliably (an SMTP or transactional email service). See Emails and background jobs.

Set up a real cron job

WordPress runs its scheduled tasks (“WP-Cron”) only when someone visits a WordPress page. With a storefront in front, WordPress itself gets very few visits, so tasks such as back-in-stock emails can run late. Ask your developer or host to replace WP-Cron with a real scheduled task.

1. Add this line to wp-config.php, above /* That's all, stop editing! */:

   define( 'DISABLE_WP_CRON', true );

2. In your hosting control panel (or the server’s crontab), schedule a request to your site’s wp-cron.php every few minutes. A typical crontab line, using your own WordPress address:

   */5 * * * * curl -s https://wp.example.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron > /dev/null 2>&1

3. After a day, check WooCommerce›Status›Scheduled Actions. Pending actions should not pile up past their scheduled time.

Leave WooCommerce's own stock notifications off

WooCommerce has an experimental built-in back-in-stock feature switched on by the WOOCOMMERCE_BIS_ALPHA_ENABLED constant. Don’t use it alongside the Companion plugin’s stock alerts, or shoppers may get two emails for one restock. WordPress shows a warning if both are on.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause	What to do
Today’s Deals is empty although a sale ends today	The sale end date isn’t today in the store’s time zone, or the time zone is wrong	Check Settings › General › Timezone and the product’s sale schedule.
A shopper’s country is missing at checkout	It isn’t in your selling or shipping locations	Add it under WooCommerce › Settings › General.
No free-delivery bar in the cart	The zone has no Free shipping method with a minimum order amount	Add one, or set its requirement to a minimum amount.
Colour options show as text, not swatches	The attribute’s slug isn’t color	Use an attribute with the slug color.
Back-in-stock emails arrive hours late	WP-Cron depends on WordPress visits	Set up a real cron job (above).

Next steps

PaymentsStripe, PayPal, Express Checkout and offline methods.

ProductsVideos, trust badges, swatches and brands on the product screens.

Emails and background jobsThe six emails and the jobs that run in the background.

Home pageSlider, banners, deals and testimonials.