Shop filters

Shop filters puts your products into your shop’s own filters. A shopper who filters by Navy, or by size XXL, finds every product that sells it through AddOnBoss.

This is a Pro feature. It is off until you switch it on.

Why your filters miss these products

A shop’s filter reads WooCommerce’s own Colour and Size lists, and nothing else. That is true of WooCommerce’s filter blocks, of WOOF and YITH, and of the filters most themes add.

AddOnBoss keeps colours and sizes in option sets, not in those lists. So a polo that sells Navy through AddOnBoss does not show when a shopper filters by Navy.

Shop filters copies each product’s colours and sizes into those lists, out of sight, so every filter finds it.

Switch it on

1. Go to BossMage › AddOnBoss.
2. On the Shop filters card, switch on Let your shop filters find these products.
3. Press Save changes. Check the matches opens. Nothing is added yet.
4. Look through the tabs and fix anything you want changed (see below).
5. Press Add to my filters.

Your products are added in the background. You can leave the page. After a minute or two the card says how many products are in your filters.

What your filters show

Colours go in as one of fourteen families: Black, Grey, White, Beige, Brown, Red, Pink, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Navy, Purple and More than one colour. French Navy, Oxford Navy and Navy Marl all appear as Navy. Your Colour filter stays short, however many shades you sell.

Sizes go into one list per kind:

• Size: XXS to 8XL, and One size
• Waist and Leg length: 32/R is waist 32, leg Regular
• Women’s size: UK sizes (EU sizes such as 36 are turned into UK 8)
• Kids size: by age, with baby months
• Collar, Chest, Shoe size, Glove size, Hat size and Paper size

Each kind is its own list, because the same number means different things. An 8 on a ladies’ shirt and an 8 on a boot are different sizes.

Sizes written different ways become one: XXL and 2XL, 3XL and XXXL, Small and S. A size that covers two, such as S/M, appears under both.

Sold-out choices stay out. When a colour or size runs out, it leaves your filters within a few minutes. It comes back when it is restocked.

Nothing changes on the product page. The lists are hidden there, so shoppers still choose on your options as before.

The lists on the card

Each list has its own switch and its own goes into choice:

• Yours is a list your shop already has, such as your own Colour or Size. AddOnBoss adds to it and never changes the entries already there.
• New list is a list AddOnBoss makes.

Lists your products never use stay hidden.

Colour shade is off at the start. It adds every exact shade name as a list of its own. Switch it on only if you want a filter by exact shade: it grows with every product you add.

Show a new list in your filter

Your filter shows Colour and Size straight away. A list AddOnBoss makes, such as Shoe size or Leg length, appears once you add it to your filter, the same way you would add any other attribute.

Check the matches

This screen shows how every colour and size will appear. Open it from the card with See the matches at any time.

• Couldn’t place: a colour AddOnBoss cannot be sure of, or a set of plain numbers it cannot read. Pick a family, say what the numbers are, or leave it out. Until you answer, it stays out of your filters.
• Colours: every shade under its family, with how many products use it. Use the small arrow on a shade to move it to another family. The move applies to that shade on every product. A shade marked Check sits between two families and is listed under both: keep both, or pick one. Show only these lists just those shades.
• Sizes: what goes into each entry, such as S, Small and S-2XL all going into S.
• New since last check: shades added since you last saved this screen.
• Option sets: which sets are read. Sets that are not colours or sizes, such as print positions or finishes, are left out. You can switch any set in as colours or as sizes, or leave a set out.

You can also rename a family, or hide one from your filters.

How AddOnBoss decides

For a colour, AddOnBoss looks at these in order:

1. A family you chose for that shade.
2. The colour’s name, in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese or German. The last colour word counts: Stone Blue is Blue. Navy always counts as Navy.
3. The supplier’s own colour group, for products built by SupplierBoss. It fills names that say no colour, such as Flintstone or Bubblegum, and marks striped colours as More than one colour.
4. The colour of its swatch, but only when it is clearly one colour.

The name comes first because it is what your shoppers read. A supplier’s own filing can differ: PenCarrie files Sand and Stone under Brown, where a shopper filtering Beige looks for them.

When the name has no plain colour word, the swatch has a say too. PenCarrie files Sunshine under Yellow, but its swatch is nearly cream, so Sunshine is listed under Yellow and Beige and a shopper finds it under either. A Stone with a grey swatch is listed under Beige and Grey. About 1 in 10 PenCarrie colours sit between two families like this. A name with a plain colour word, such as Royal Blue or Dark Beige, is never doubled.

If none of these is sure, the colour waits in Couldn’t place. AddOnBoss never guesses a colour onto your filters.

For a size, AddOnBoss reads the size itself (UK 7, 28/R, 3-4), then what the product is: its name, its categories and, for supplier products, its type.

Switching off

Switch off Let your shop filters find these products and press Save changes. AddOnBoss takes out every entry it added, in the background. Lists it made are deleted once they are empty.

Your own entries are never removed. If you took one of AddOnBoss’s entries off a product by hand, it stays off that product.

Good to know

Product feeds. Google and Facebook product feeds can read Colour and Size. A feed wants the exact shade on the page, not a family, so AddOnBoss keeps its families out of both feeds, always. Your feeds keep sending your own values.

Search engines. If your shop is very large, your SEO plugin can keep search engines away from filter pages. AddOnBoss leaves robots.txt to it.

Page caches. After an update, AddOnBoss tells LiteSpeed Cache and W3 Total Cache to refresh your pages. WP Rocket does this by itself.

Translations. With WPML, each language’s product gets the same entries. Translate the list entries once in WPML, under taxonomy translation.

Simple products only. A variable product keeps its own Colour and Size from its variations, so AddOnBoss leaves it alone.

If your Pro plan ends. Your filter entries stay as they were and stop updating. Switch Shop filters off to take them out.