Hidden products are not hidden from WC shortcode

I am working on a website for a friend that sells group events through WooCommerce. After the event start time, the WPC Timer is used to set the WC product to ‘hidden’.

However, I am not convinced that this actually means the product is set to hidden in the database, which means WPC does not behave as it should.

The URL provided includes 5 shortcodes like this one, but with different categories.

[products category="tasters" limit="1" columns="1" orderby="menu_order" order="ASC"]

Each category contains many products, some of which are in the past and hidden by WPC. The menu_order is formatted as yymmdd, so the next upcoming (ie visible) product should be displayed.

For the category “tasters” I have deliberately intervened and edited all past events to set them to hidden, so WC knows they are not visible and the shortcode query does not return them.

For the other 4 categories, I have not done this and it doesn’t work. My guess is the shortcode query is returning the oldest product that WPC has supposedly set to hidden, but WC thinks is still visible… and the returned product is hidden at the point of display.

Thanks

Clare

The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]