Filter Manager

Overview

The filter tools build the product filters shoppers use on your storefront — the checkbox lists, dropdowns, colour swatches and price controls on shop and category pages. You create filters, group them into a Filter Widget, and place that widget on a page with its shortcode. One global set of styles controls how every widget looks.

Where to find it

The Filters group in the plugin's navigation rail has three screens, one for each building block:

The three building blocks

Filter Editor — the individual filters (a Color attribute list, a Brand list, a Price slider), edited as rows in a table. See Creating Filters.
Filter Widgets — named, ordered collections of filters that display as one block on the storefront. Each widget has its own shortcode. See Filter Widgets.
Widget Styles — one global set of styles, with a live preview, applied to every widget. See Filter Styling.

1. Filter Editor

A table of your filters, one row per filter, with every setting in its own column. The bar across the top holds the search, a type filter, Rows, + Create Filter and + Bulk Create; the bar at the bottom holds ✎ Edit Selected, Save Changes and the page controls. Changes are kept on the rows until you save.

Filter Editor

Collapse

PRO

Product Editor

Sale Manager

Filter Name ▲▼	Type	Attribute	Display Type	Query Type	Price Style	Item Limit	Smart Sort
Color	Attribute	Color	List	OR	—	0
Size	Attribute	Size	List	OR	—	0
Material	Attribute	Material	Dropdown	AND	—	6
Product Categories	Category	—	List	—	—	8	—
Brand	Brand	—	List	—	—	0	—
Price	Price Range	—	—	—	Slider	—	—

2. Filter Widgets

Your widgets, shown as cards (or a list) with each one's name and how many filters it holds. + Create Filter Widget opens the editor, where you add filters, put them in order, set the reset button and copy the shortcode.

Filter Widgets

Collapse

PRO

Product Editor

Sale Manager

3. Widget Styles

One global style editor. The bar across the top holds the Style Presets controls on the left and Save Styles on the right; the style groups sit beside a Live Preview of a filter widget.

Widget Styles

Collapse

PRO

Product Editor

Sale Manager

The five filter types

Type	Filters by	Notes
Attribute	A global product attribute	List, Dropdown or (for colour attributes) Swatches. OR or AND matching. Optional Smart Sort.
Category	Product categories	Lists categories as links to each category's page, as a list or a dropdown.
Brand	Product brands	Uses WooCommerce brands, or the Perfect Brands plugin's brands if that is what the store uses. Always matches any of the chosen brands.
Tag	Product tags	Always matches any of the chosen tags.
Price Range	Product price	Min/Max boxes with a Go button, or a two-handle slider with an Apply button.

How a filter reaches the storefront

Create filters

Add rows in the Filter Editor — one at a time, or many at once with Bulk Create — and click Save Changes.

Build a Filter Widget

Create a widget, add the filters you want, put them in order and set up the reset button.

Place the shortcode

Each saved widget has a shortcode like [wcbat_filters id="set_1700000000_ab12cd34"]. Put it anywhere that accepts shortcodes — a Shortcode block in a sidebar or template, or page content.

Style once

Use Widget Styles to set the look of every widget at once.

Where filters work

On the shop page and on product archive pages (categories, tags, brands, attributes), a widget narrows the products that page lists. It also narrows WooCommerce Product Collection blocks set to be filterable.
The filter stylesheet loads on the shop page, archive pages, and any page or post whose content contains the shortcode. Each widget also carries its own styles, so it looks right wherever the shortcode is shown.
Choosing a filter option loads a new page address; there's no background (AJAX) loading. Filtered pages are marked for search engines not to index, so filter combinations don't flood search results.

The filter index and counts

To keep counts and filtering fast on large catalogues, the plugin keeps its own filter index: a record of each product's categories, tags, brands, attribute values, price and stock. It builds itself in the background the first time, and updates itself whenever products, variations, stock, prices, terms or attributes change. You can see its state, and rebuild it by hand, under Settings → General → Storefront Filters → Filter index ("Up to date · N products", "Building… X of Y products", or "Not built yet"). A manual rebuild is only needed if something outside WordPress changes your catalogue.

⚙

Counts follow the other filtersOnce the index is built, each option's count reflects the products in the current page, search and price range that match the other chosen filters. Choosing "Red" in Color updates the counts in Size. Options with no matching products are left out. Out-of-stock products are left out of the counts when WooCommerce's Hide out of stock items from the catalog setting is on. Until the index is built, counts are simple totals per term.

The filter address

The choices are kept in the page address, so a filtered page can be bookmarked or shared. New links put every choice in one parameter, pf:

Part	Example	Meaning
`pf=`key`~`values	`?pf=color~red,blue`	An attribute (its slug without `pa_`) and the chosen values, separated by commas.
`!`	`?pf=color~red!brand~aurora`	Separates one filter from the next. `brand` and `tag` are the brand and tag filters.
`price~`min`-`max	`?pf=price~10-50`	The price range. The price boxes and slider send `min_price` and `max_price`.
`query_type_`slug	`&query_type_color=and`	AND or OR matching for that attribute.

Older addresses that use separate filter_color, filter_brand and filter_tag parameters still work.