How to use WooCommerce in catalog mode?

If you have been forced to temporarily take your WooCommerce store offline in order to perform maintenance tasks, you will have tried in that time to work as quickly as possible to leave it online immediately and not lose sales. But working fast is not the best; one makes mistakes and also forgets the details. For this case and many others like it, the YITH WooCommerce Catalog Mode plugin has been created: it allows you, instead of leaving your store offline, place it in "catalog" mode. This convenient mode will not put your store out of business, but instead your products will remain online, allowing your potential customers to view your business and make inquiries. It's an excellent way to keep everything online without hurting sales or losing the loyalty of your visitors.

Secondly, If our store needs to be a product catalog without the sale action, this is undoubtedly the plugin you were looking for.

Among the benefits of this plugin, the following stand out:

• Easy activation and deactivation of the “catalog mode” from the plugin configuration panel (deactivating it in the free version).
• You can decide if you or your site administrator can also view the catalog mode once active.
• You can hide the “Add to cart” button in the presentation form of your products if you prefer.
• You can also hide “Add to cart” on any other page of your site (such as in the store or in the catalogues).
• Optionally you are allowed to hide the “Cart” and “Checkout” pages (check out), including any reference or link to them.

YITH WooCommerce Catalog Mode is a free plugin. To obtain it, go to your components section as we show you in the screenshot below.

You will be presented with the following window; pay attention to the search engine by keywords, because there you can write the name of the plugin as shown in the following screenshot.

Found the plugin, click the “install now” button, and when the component has downloaded, you can press "Activate" (note: the same “install now” button will become “activate” once the download to your server is complete).

Once this is done, go to the new item on the left menu, indicated in the screenshot below.

On this screen you can quickly check the options of your interest.

As a first step, you will notice that “Enable YITH WooCommerce Catalog Mode” mode is checked by default after plugin is enabled (so, to deactivate the catalog mode you must deactivate the plugin, this in the free version; later we will discuss the benefits of the paid version, which includes deactivation without the need to deactivate the plugin in your WordPress installation).

In the lower box, “Catalog Mode Settings”, we can optionally check the options described at the beginning of the note, when we check the benefits of the component.

Finally, in “Other Settings”, we are allowed to disable the pages related to the store, such as “Cart”, “Checkout” and any buttons/links related to the internal WooCommerce purchase process.

Note: remember to deactivate the plugin when you have completed your maintenance tasks!

Compatibility with other related components

The developers have tested the YITH WooCommerce Catalog Mode plugin for compatibility with the following optional WooCommerce components.

• YITH WooCommerce Request A Quote
• YITH WooCommerce QuickView
• YITH WooCommerce Badge Management
• YITH WooCommerce Tab Manager

PREMIUM version: what does the paid version of this component offer?

The paid version of YITH WooCommerce Catalog mode includes a juicy list of additional benefits that could certainly tempt you. Therefore, we recommend that you take a look at them.

• You will be able to Activate/Deactivate the catalog mode without the need to deactivate the component (something that is not possible in the free version, as we mentioned above).
• The paid version allows you ignore those products added to an “exclusion list”. In other words, you can select specific products so that they are not affected by the "catalog mode" while you carry out your maintenance tasks in the store.
• You may select options within the “exclusion list” so that certain plugin functionalities are not activated in catalog mode.
• You can reverse the “exclusion list” so that it is affected by the "catalog mode", while the rest of your store is not.
• You can hide the cart and checkout page from the user, including references within your site to them.
• You can hide the prices of your products.
• You can add an alt text that replaces the price socket (for example, instead of ARS550, the user could see “register to the site to see the price”, “the price will be displayed when we finish the maintenance tasks” or any other message you want).
• You can hide the prices of your products for all users or only for those who have not yet registered on your site.
• You can add a tab with a small form for each product, so that your potential customers contact you about a certain item and/or ask questions about their purchase item.
• You can include the link to the product in question in the emails generated through this form mentioned in the previous point.
• You can customize the buy button for product pages.
• You can select a certain action for the button (such as placing a link to a particular landing page, generating an email or phone call link, and even configuring the button as a Skype contact).
• You can disable the “User Reviews” tab for all visitors who browse your site without registering as users.

After introducing you to the additional benefits of the premium version, we wish we could have recommended a quality product that already you will find it extremely useful in its free version. If you want to know more, you can go to the official documentation Or leave your questions in the comments below. successes!