Millions of product variations

  • Resolved nicole2292

    (@nicole2292)


    1 year, 8 months ago

    Please help! I have a website with a customizable product which has 6 sets of attributes each with many terms such that if I generated all of the required variations it would result in 1.5 Million variations just for one single product. This is largly due to the fact that there are 30+ colors for 2 of the different attributes as the items can have two different colors selected. There are also some other options to customise as well which is how the numbers get so high.

    The thing is I don’t need that many variations. There are not 1.5M different prices and we certainly don’t have a unique image for all 1.5M combinations. The price only changes for two of the attributes which only have 2 terms (choices) each, not for every single color or other option. All I really want is the ability for the customer to select the attributes (mostly the colors) using attribute swatches and have their selections recorded and sent to the store owner.

    I have found this code snippet: https://gist.github.com/mtx-z/021d092442f43e895e7fc740ef058f84 which is extremely helpful however it does not work with any of the known attribute swatch or variation swatch plugins. I have tried about 5 different swatch plugins with no luck. I can see in the code that it is just writing out a select dropdown so that is obviously why it does not work with any of the swatch plugins.

    Can anyone point me to a swatch plugin which allows swatches to display and attributes to be selected for non-variable products or attributes which are not set to be used as variations?

    I do think the high number of variations generated is a limitation of WooCommerce. I have run into it before on another project. It should not be necessary to create a variation for every single attribute combination if that combination does not affect the price in any way. Only those combinations which have a unique product photo or a unique price actually need variations to be created. Other attibutes could simply be recorded as a customer selection and that information passed onto the store owner.

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

  • You don’t need to – there’s the ‘Any…’ option.

    For example – if you have 2 attributes: Size (Small or Large) and Colour (100 different options) you can do it with 2 variations:

    Small – Any Colour
    Large – Any Colour

    That way, Small and Large can have a different prove.

    Plugin Support Shameem R. a11n

    (@shameemreza)

    Hello @nicole2292

    I understand that you have a product with multiple attributes but only a few of these attributes affect the price. You’d like your customers to select their preferences and have these selections recorded and sent to the store owner without necessarily generating a unique variation for each combination.

    You are correct that the high number of variations can be a limitation of WooCommerce, especially when only a few attribute combinations affect the price or require a unique product photo. However, WooCommerce has been designed this way to ensure that each unique combination of product attributes can be tracked and managed individually.

    As for your request for a swatch plugin that allows swatches to display and attributes to be selected for non-variable products or attributes not set to be used as variations, I recommend checking out the WooCommerce Variation Swatches plugin. This plugin allows you to display swatches for non-variable products and works well with attributes not set to be used as variations. Here is another Variation Swatches plugin worth checking.

    However, while this plugin may help display attribute swatches, it may not completely solve your issue with the high number of variations. You might need to consider custom development to tailor the functionality to your specific needs.

    Another option is to use ‘Product Add-Ons‘ which allows your customers to customize products by adding inputs. This way, you can avoid creating a large number of variations and still collect the necessary customer selections.

    Additionally, if you have any further questions on development or custom coding, don’t hesitate to reach out to some of our great resources available for support. Our WooCommerce community is brimming with skilled open-source developers who are active on the following channels:

    I hope this information is helpful, and we appreciate your understanding. Please do not hesitate to ask if you have any further questions or need additional assistance.

    Thanks!

    Thread Starter nicole2292

    (@nicole2292)

    Thanks for your responses, particularly @seank123 for the suggestion to have an attribute which can be set as “Any…” option for a given variation. I had forgotten that was an option so thanks for the reminder. Based on the combinations which do affect price we have about 30 variations. I did not want to create each of these manually for each product. Therefore what I have done as a workaround is to only add those attibutes which affect price initially then I use the automatic create variations functions to create all 30 unique options. Then I go back to attributes again and add all the other attributes to the product (eg. colors) and they are then added as “any option” attributes to the 30 variations I already generated for that product.

    This workaround has solved my problem.

    Thanks very much ??

    • This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by nicole2292.
Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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