“Uncategorized” product category still showing after 3.3.1

I have to agree with the above… I am so, so disappointed with this change.

My issue is that I had a ‘secret’ section of my shop, for club members only. By not placing those products in a category, they remained hidden – but my members could access it through a direct link.

I can’t simply set up a separate WooCommerce installation to solve this – because I want those members to also have access to the public products at the same storefront.

Now my Members-Only products are showing up for the world to see, and it has caused massive issues.

I have spent hours trying to figure out how to solve this problem, and it doesn’t look like there is a thing I can do.

The only ‘fix’ I have been able to do so far, is remove any widgets that list the categories from the Home Page and Sidebar, so that the Uncategorized category doesn’t blatantly show. But this has led to a noticeable reduction in my sales because all people see when landing on my shop now are lists and lists of products and no categories. It looks horrible.

I am so disappointed because WooCommerce was working so wonderfully for my needs until this. In one fell swoop, my whole set up is completely destroyed.

@ornamentgirl, I agree this does appear stupid, but I’m sure there’s method in the madness. Just delete the category via the database as per my earlier post, nothing has been destroyed, there are plenty of easy fixes.

One option which is less easy if you have a lot of products but can be done via the CMS, is to rename the uncategorised category and move products from a ‘real category’ to it, as the replacement for the real category.

In future, stage updates in a development installation. WordPress only installs minor builds automatically for good reason.