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Install & your first option set

AddOnBoss puts product options, custom fields, add-ons and personalisation on any WooCommerce product, with no bundle involved. This page takes you from an empty install to a product a customer can configure, in three short stages.

Requirements

Section titled “Requirements”
  • WordPress 6.4 or newer
  • WooCommerce 8.0 or newer
  • PHP 8.0 or newer
Running BundleBoss too?

AddOnBoss and BundleBoss share one option-set library. If you run BundleBoss too, keep it updated to a version that hands product options to AddOnBoss before you activate AddOnBoss. Each plugin runs its own engine; AddOnBoss detects an older BundleBoss that still renders options itself and waits, with a notice, rather than risking a conflict. Once both are current they run side by side and share your set library.

Install

Section titled “Install”
  1. Download the plugin zip and go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
  2. Choose the zip, install, and activate.
  3. You now have a BossMage menu holding AddOnBoss's screens: the AddOnBoss settings page and the Option Sets library. Every product's edit screen gains a Product Options panel.

A checklist walks you there

Section titled “A checklist walks you there”

The AddOnBoss screen opens with a card called Your first product with options, four steps that tick themselves off as your store gets there:

  1. Build your first option set. Ticks the moment any set exists, ready-made or your own.
  2. Attach it to a product. Ticks when a product carries options.
  3. See it on the product page. Ticks the first time your options render on the storefront, and the card links you straight to that page.
  4. Place a test order. Order it like a shopper would; any test payment will do. Ticks when an order with options lands.

You do not have to follow it from the card. Each admin notice along the way offers the next step itself: saving a set adds a Now attach it to a product button to the saved notice, and putting options on a product offers View it on the product page. When all four are done the card says your options are live and selling, and a quiet cross dismisses the guide for good whenever you like.

Build an option set

Section titled “Build an option set”

An option set is a list of choices you define once and reuse everywhere. Build a Colour set and a Size set and every shirt in the shop can use them.

  1. Go to Option Sets and press New set. You are never handed a blank page: pick the closest ready-made starting point (garment colours, sizes S to 4XL, UK shoe sizes, paper and board sizes, bag weights, finishes, a set of charged add-ons like gift wrap) or Start from scratch. A starting point opens the editor already filled in, as your own copy to rename, prune or reprice, and nothing saves until you press Save set.
  2. Add or adjust the options. A colour option can carry a swatch; leave it blank and AddOnBoss fills it in from the name for common colours.
  3. Give any option a price where it costs more, say +2.00 for 4XL. Blank means the same as the rest.
  4. Save. The set is now reusable across every product.

See option sets for the full picture, including measured sizes priced by the metre.

Attach it to a product

Section titled “Attach it to a product”
  1. Edit any simple or variable product and open the Product Options panel.
  2. Attach your set. Add as many as the product needs, a colour set and a size set for a shirt.
  3. Mark a set Required if the customer must choose one, or leave it optional.
  4. Update the product.

The product now offers those choices on its own page, like a variable product would, without creating a single variation.

Give the product a price

A product with no price is not purchasable in WooCommerce, so its Add to cart area, and the options with it, never show. Set a price on the General tab and they appear. Zero is a valid price: use it when the options are meant to be the whole price.

Add a field customers fill in

Section titled “Add a field customers fill in”

Beyond a list of choices, a product can take fields a customer types into: a name to print, a message, a number, a tick box, or a file upload. Each can be optional or required, and each can carry a charge.

  1. On the same Product Options panel, add a field and pick its type.
  2. Give it a label, decide whether it is required, and set a fee if it earns one. A per-letter fee prices an engraving line by its length; a one-off fee is a flat charge for the order.
  3. Update the product.

See custom fields for every field type and how each is priced.

Where the picks go

Section titled “Where the picks go”

Whatever the customer chooses and types lands on the cart line, the order, the confirmation email and the warehouse pick list, named the way they chose it (“Navy / 4XL”, “Name: SAM”). Uploaded files and entered values are covered by WooCommerce’s personal-data export and erase tools. See cart, checkout & orders.

If your shop is not in English

Section titled “If your shop is not in English”

AddOnBoss ships translated into nine locales, and picks the right one from your WordPress language setting with nothing to configure:

  • Spanish, for Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Argentina
  • French, for France and Canada
  • Italian
  • Portuguese, Brazilian

Everything a shopper reads is covered. If your language is missing and you would like it, tell us: [email protected]. Translations are done against real shop copy rather than run through a machine, so a shop in Lima reads like a shop in Lima.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”
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