How to get the Product Timer right?

  • Plugin Author WPClever

    (@wpclever)


    5 years ago

    Use the opposite actions for a date range/time range in the future.

    In order to set a timer for a future date range, you’ll need to set the OPPOSITE actions for your current item and separate the time conditionals into 2 temporal points: the “before” part & “after” part. It is because the timer will reverse the current status of your product and one action can only satisfy 1 future time conditional: it’s impossible to satisfy both “before date” & “after date” when the time you’ve set is in the future.

    Let’s study a case when you need to use a future date range. Assuming that today is 26 Nov 2019. If you’d like to set a product as “purchasable” between 20 Dec 2019 and 24 Dec 2019, which means keeping your product visible to customers but unpurchasable before 20 Dec and after 24 Dec 2019. Then, you will need to set two timers (2 actions):

    • Timer 1: Set unpurchasable – before date: 20 Dec 2019.
    • Timer 2: Set unpurchasable – after date: 24 Dec 2019.

    Image case 1: https://prnt.sc/q22xpz

    After configuring as in the above image, immediately your product will now be visible but unpurchasable. Then when by 20 Dec 2019, your product will become purchasable. After 24 Dec, it will be changed back to be unpurchasable. The same method applies to the other situation with “set unpurchasable” between 20-24 Dec 2019.

    Another case when the temporal point you chose involving a future time range, similarly, you need to separate it into 2 points: “before date & time” & “after date & time”. Specifically, if you would like to set a product to “In stock” between 8:00 and 23:00 of 27 Nov 2019, then you’ll have to separate the time range into 2:

    • Timer 1: Set out of stock – before date & time: 27 Nov 2019, 8:00
    • Timer 2: Set out of stock – after date & time: 27 Nov 2019, 23:00

    Image case 2: https://prnt.sc/q22y6v

    For other kinds of time conditionals, users can set as normal use. Hopefully, these explanations are clear enough for you to understand how this plugin works.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Author WPClever

    (@wpclever)

    Case 3:
    In an event when you want to sell your product only from 11:00 to 19:00, Monday to Saturday. Then you will need to create 3 actions to achieve that.

    As your product is available from Monday to Saturday, 11:00-19:00, then it’s unavailable on Sundays, and every day before 11:00 & after 19:00.

    Then you’ll need to separate them into 3 actions, create them accordingly as below:

    – Action 1: Set unpurchasable – weekly every Sunday
    – Action 2: Set unpurchasable – daily before 11:00
    – Action 3: Set unpurchasable – daily after 19:00

    See more in this screenshot: https://prnt.sc/rodumg. Now you’re good to go.

    Note that:

    – Date conditional should be above the time range (set to unpurchasable on every Sunday must be above other actions).

    – Always separate the events into 2 actions, with two time conditionals: before & after respectively, for events that require a time range.

    • This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by WPClever.
    Plugin Author WPClever

    (@wpclever)

    Case 4: Set Visible on Product Timer 2.0

    Recently, the new update of WooCommerce has changed something in the way of dealing with products, so the set Visible action cannot be achieved under any circumstances. This is because by default the visibility of all products is set to Visible, while our plugin tries to reverse the status, but it’s already visible.

    Hence, WPClever has released a new update for timer, version 2.0. With the new update, you’ll have to add 2 actions to set a product visible, for any time conditionals.

    Users need to set up one action to make a product hidden everyday (always hidden) to reverse the default visible status of that item. For example, you need to use another action to set the desired event: set visible on a date range.

    – Action 1: Set Hidden, Everyday

    – Action 2: Set Visible, Date range.

    Note: Please mind the order of action, the first one will be executed first, then the second. If you reverse the above order, it will change the event into make products unpurchasable everyday.

    Always put the action to hide items on every weekday above others to make it work. WPC Product Timer will apply the conditions respectively from the top to the bottom of the list, please mind the order of action.

    This also allows user to set more complicated actions like making a product visible on every Mondays, Wednesday or any weekday they’d like to, just by adding more actions for each day.

    This trick is applicable to action type: Set visible only. With Set hidden action, you can use it as normal.

    • This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by WPClever.
    Plugin Author WPClever

    (@wpclever)

    SPECIAL NOTES: About the functionality of hiding products that are linked to special product types.

    For products of special types such as bundles, smart group, bought together, composite, force-sells or any other similar types from third-party tools, the functionality of setting products to be hidden CANNOT be achieved, since these product types must keep the linked items always visible for display.

    With special product types created by our plugins like WPC Product Bundles, WPC Frequently Bought Together, WPC Grouped Products, WPC Composite Products, they always have an option to unlink the included items from its individual products. If you want to make sure customers won’t be able to find these linked items, kindly choose “No” for the “Link to individual products” option from the plugin setting.

    Similarly, if customers have the exact permalinks to those products or have added products to the wishlist/ favorite, they can always click on that link to visit the single product pages – Product Timer cannot prevent that.

    So briefly, Product Timer can only hide products from search and shop archive page, not from linked products to special product types. The target of our plugin is to only hide the products to prevent products from being found in shop and search results only.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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