How to set a custom cookie that carries attribute selection from page to page?

Hi @justmontessori,

That’s a fascinating idea. There are a couple of ways you could do this without having to code a custom solution.

Option One: Utilize Archives
My wife has a cabinet business as well. She uses a separate category for each cabinet color, though you could use an attribute as well. The advantage of using this method is WooCommerce will generate archives with all of the products in that category or attribute.

That way the customer can see only products that are in that color unless they leave the category. Instead of listing products on the shop page, she shows categories to make it cleaner for customers.

Option Two: Filter Plugin
Another option would be to use a filtering plugin like WooCommerce Product Search. It adds ways for your visitors to be able to select a color and then see all the products that match that color.

You would still need to add attributes or categories to the products, but customers could easily find the cabinets with the right color and switch colors if they want to.

I would take a look at those options before diving into custom coding. If you have any questions, please let us know.

Thanks!

Hmmm, not sure I understand the “archives” part of your explanation. I am using categories based on the cabinets (base, vanity, etc.) and door style (framed vs. frameless), however to do it by color, it seems I would have to duplicate the cabinets in each color instead of having all colors as an attribute for each cabinet.

Anyway, thank you, but I feel like to have a cookie “set” the OPTION VALUE in each dropdown as a customer navigate the site is the direction I’d like to go.

Appreciate the alternatives, though, and maybe you can explain the “archives” in a little more depth, or point me to documentation? If you want? No worries, if not.

Thanks again!

Hey @justmontessori,

Sorry for not making what I had in mind more clear. Let’s try again.

What I was attempting to say is WooCommerce automatically generates archives, lists that have all the products in that category, or with a given attribute. You could then direct customers to select a category or attribute and therefore show them all the matching products at one time.

Looking at your site more closely I see that’s not going to work with how you have things structured. You can absolutely use colors for variations, but it does make finding/purchasing multiple products with the same color trickier. There is a filter widget for attributes, but it won’t preselect the exact color variation. It’ll only show what products have that attribute.

It is possible to preselect variations by adding the appropriate attributes to the end of the product’s URL. Something like this:

/?attribute_style-color=Torrance+Dove

That would give us a full URL like this:

https://tcckitchencabinets.com/showroom/12-double-door-stacker-wall-cabinets/?attribute_style-color=Torrance+Dove

When you visit a URL like that, it will already select the Torrance Dove color variation.

What you could create is a series of checkboxes that will let the customer pick a color and then that color will be applied to all products by utilizing this URL structure. It could be passed via a cookie.

Creating that will take a fair amount of work. If you’d rather hire someone to create that for you, you could hire a developer at Codeable to put this together for you.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers

Hello @justmontessori,

It’s been a while since we heard from you, so I’m marking this thread resolved. Hopefully, you’ve been able to find a way to make this work. If you have any other questions, please open up a new post and we’ll be happy to help you out.

Take care

Thank you 3 Sons, you hit the right idea adding the attribute to the URL. Now, I just need to know how to add this to a global cookie, so it automatically sets the attribute_style-color=[STORED COLOR ADDED TO CART].

I guess this thread is closed so may not find out here. Wow, only a week went by and the thread is closed. Yikes! <smile>

Hey @justmontessori,

That does sound like a promising direction for you. Creating this will take a developer a fair amount of work. They’ll have to set up a widget or shortcode that has the list of attributes with checkboxes. Then they’ll need to create some JavaScript to generate a cookie and read any attributes saved in it. They’ll also have to create a script that adds the selected attribute to the URL of the product pages to pre-select that color.

Given the amount of work involved, it will most likely take hiring someone to create this for you. It would be unlikely to have someone make it for free.

I would suggest getting in touch with a freelance developer at Codeable. They can give you a quote on what it would cost to implement a system like this and then build it for you.

https://woocommerce.com/codeable/

I hope that gets you pointed in the direction of a solution ??

Thanks Three Sons, I am making progress using built-in WooCommerce session variables. I’m not there yet, but will post everything back here when it’s working, then everyone can see how.

We haven’t heard back from you in a while, so I’m going to mark this as resolved – if you have any further questions, you can start a new thread.

Hi Lisa @justmontessori

I’m wondering if you managed to find a solution to this? I have the exact same need but haven’t been able to work out how to do it, if you managed to solve this, I’d be super grateful to hear how you managed it.

Thanks

Dave