A Simple Guide to Override WooCommerce Templates

When running an online store, customizing your store’s appearance often involves customizing WooCommerce templates. Typically, you’d use WooCommerce hooks to make these changes because they allow you to modify functionality without altering the core files. This method is efficient and maintains compatibility with updates. However, there are times when you need to make more specific changes, which cannot be achieved through hooks alone.

In such cases, overriding WooCommerce templates becomes essential. This process involves overriding the default WooCommerce templates to meet your specific needs. In this article, we’ll guide you through the steps to override WooCommerce templates. By the end, you’ll be able to tailor WooCommerce templates precisely to your requirements.

Benefits of Overriding Templates in WooCommerce

Overriding WooCommerce templates gives you a lot of control over how your online store looks and works. It allows you to make your store fit your exact needs. Here are the main benefits:

Consistency Across Updates

Using a child theme to override templates preserves your customizations even when WooCommerce or theme updates occur. This approach ensures that your changes remain intact and functional, avoiding potential conflicts with new versions of the plugin.

Ability to Add Unique Features

If you need to include custom features in your website, overriding templates provides a straightforward way to integrate these elements seamlessly into your product pages, checkout process, or other areas.

Enhanced Customization

Overriding templates allows you to make detailed changes to your WooCommerce store’s design and layout. Unlike WooCommerce, which uses hooks with limited customization, template overriding provides complete control over how elements are displayed and structured.

Understanding Default WooCommerce Template Structure

The default templates for WooCommerce are stored in the WooCommerce plugin directory. You can find them at /wp-content/plugins/woocommerce/templates/. These templates control various parts of your online store, such as how prices are shown, the layout of the cart, products, and more.

If you want to change the look and feel of your WooCommerce store, you will need to override these templates. For example, you might want to add custom information to the price display. Later in this article, we will discuss how you can customize the look by overriding templates.

How to Override Templates in WooCommerce

This section will talk about how to override WooCommerce templates easily. It can make your work easier and more organized. Here are the steps for overriding templates in WooCommerce:

Step 1: Create a Child Theme

The first step in overriding your WooCommerce templates is to create a child theme. It is a simple process, and if you need help with it, our detailed guide can walk you through it step by step.

Step 2: Make a WooCommerce Folder

After you create a child theme, the next step is to create a folder named woocommerce in its directory. It is important for overriding WooCommerce templates. The path will be /wp-content/themes/your_theme_name/.

Step 3: Locating the Template File to Override

After creating a child theme and a woocommerce folder in it, you can start customizing WooCommerce templates. Here’s how you can do it:

• First, go to the WooCommerce plugin directory. Then, find the template file you want to modify. For example, if you want to customize the price display on product pages, locate price.php under /wp-content/plugins/woocommerce/templates/single-product/.

• Then, copy the price.php file and create a similar folder structure in your child theme directory, like /wp-content/themes/your_theme_name/woocommerce/single-product/. Paste the price.php file into this new folder.

• Now that you have the price.php file in your child theme, you can make any changes. Open the file in a code editor and modify it to fit your needs.

Customizing Overriding Templates

Once you’ve found the template you want to change, you can adjust it and see how it looks on your site. For example, if you’re changing the price.php template file, you modify it in different ways, and then check your website to see how the changes appear. Below, we’ll show three ways to customize the price.php template file.

Adding an Icon Before the Price

To add an icon before the price for the single product page, you’ll need to customize the price.php in your child theme that you’ve already copied. Here’s what you need to do:

• Open the price.php file in a code editor.
• Insert the code to display the icon before the price and save your changes.

<p class="<?php echo esc_attr( apply_filters( 'woocommerce_product_price_class', 'price' ) ); ?>">
   <img src="path/to/your/icon.png" alt="Price Icon" class="price-icon"> <!--path of your icon uploaded on WordPress media library -->
    <?php echo $product->get_price_html(); ?>
</p>

After you save the template file, your single product page will show the icon before the price on the frontend.

Changing a Paragraph Tag to a Div

Next, we will do another customization in the price.php template file. This time, we’ll convert a paragraph tag (<p>) to a div tag (<div>). This is a simple adjustment that involves updating the HTML structure. You need to replace the <p> tag with a <div> tag.

<div class="<?php echo esc_attr( apply_filters( 'woocommerce_product_price_class', 'price' ) ); ?>">
    <?php echo $product->get_price_html(); ?>
</div>

After you save the code, visit a product page on your site to ensure that the price is now enclosed in a <div> tag instead of a <p> tag.

Adding Custom Text Before the Price

Another customization we will do while overriding the price.php template is adding custom text before the price. It can be helpful to include a special message or label before your prices. You need to replace it with the code provided below. This new code will add your custom text before the price.

<p class="<?php echo esc_attr( apply_filters( 'woocommerce_product_price_class', 'price' ) ); ?>">
    <span class="price-label">Buy at:</span> 
    <?php echo $product->get_price_html(); ?>
</p>

In this example, “Buy at:” is the custom text that will appear before the price. You can change this text to whatever you like.

Overriding your price.php file allows you to add a unique touch to your product pages and highlight important customer information.

Start Overriding Your WooCommerce Templates

We discussed how WooCommerce templating works and how you can customize your online store by overriding template files. You can safely make changes without losing them during updates by copying template files from the WooCommerce plugin to your child theme.

We also covered specific examples, like adding an icon or custom text before the price on product pages. With these techniques, you can tailor the look and functionality of your WooCommerce store to better suit your brand and meet your customers’ needs.