Smart Categories for WooCommerce – Product Categories & Category Management

WooCommerce product categories are manual: you add each product by hand and re-check them every time a price, stock level or attribute changes. Smart Categories for WooCommerce makes a category define itself — you describe the products with rules, and matching items are added automatically and kept in sync forever. It is category management for a catalogue that will not sit still: the rule is the category, so product categorization stops being a weekly chore and starts being something the store does on its own.

• Unlimited nested rules. Combine AND, OR and NOT in nested groups — e.g. (Colour is Black OR Red) AND price < 50 AND on sale.
• 35+ fields to match on. Title, SKU, price, sale price, discount %, stock status/quantity, attributes, tags, brand, product type, ratings, all-time sales, dates, custom fields, dimensions and more.
• Live preview. As you build the rules you see exactly which products match, and how many, before you save.
• Always up to date. Membership refreshes automatically when a product, price or stock level changes, and on a daily sweep — no cron babysitting.
• Manual assignments are respected. Products you added to a category by hand are never removed by the engine.
• Categories or tags. Point a rule set at a product category or a product tag.
• Storefront sorting & stock. Order a smart category's shop page by best-selling, newest, price or rating, and push out-of-stock products to the end (or hide them).
• Gutenberg block + shortcode. Drop a smart category's products anywhere with the "Smart Category Products" block or [scwc_products id="12" limit="12" columns="4"].

Works with WooCommerce global product attributes and is HPOS-compatible. Automated collections, the WooCommerce way Other ecommerce platforms call these automated collections; WooCommerce categories never had them. Smart collections here work the same way and go further: the category rules nest to any depth, match on 35+ fields, and preview before you save. Point a rule set at a product category or a product tag, and the same engine runs both. Manual picks stay yours — the plugin only ever removes memberships it created itself, so a hand-assigned product never disappears because a rule changed. See it work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtkwkc6Axrk Read the full documentation — getting started, the rule reference (every field and operator), nested AND/OR/NOT groups, storefront sorting, the block and shortcode, performance on large catalogs, the Pro subcategory generator and troubleshooting. How it works

1. Create a category. Pick a ready-made template (On Sale, New Arrivals, Low Stock…) or write your own rules. The live preview shows exactly which products match, and how many, before you save.
2. Products flow in. Matching products are assigned immediately when you create the category.
3. It stays current. Membership refreshes when a product, price or stock level changes, plus a daily sweep — a product that stops matching leaves on its own.
4. Your manual picks are safe. The plugin only ever removes memberships it created itself.

Pro: a subcategory for every attribute value, generated Shoppers search for black hoodie, not hoodies. The category page that would answer that query usually does not exist, because building one per colour, size or brand by hand is a week of work that starts going stale the day you finish. Pro generates that level for you. Pick an attribute on any parent category and it creates one smart subcategory per value — Red Dress, Blue Dress, Black Dress — each with its own rule set, so products flow in and out on their own from then on.

• Two attributes at once. Combine Colour × Size on "Dresses" and Pro builds the cross-product: Red XL Dress, Blue M Dress, Black S Dress.
• Editable name templates. {value1} {value2} {parent} is the default; rearrange it, or write your own, and every generated page follows it.
• Preview before anything is created. The generation screen lists every page it is about to make and how many products each one will hold, so you see the shape of the level before you commit to it.
• New values grow their own pages. Add a colour to the attribute and a subcategory for it appears on the next daily run — nobody has to remember.
• Optionally pre-build empty combinations, so the structure is live before the stock lands.
• Category Tree page to see the whole generated hierarchy at once.

These are real category pages. Each generated subcategory is a genuine WooCommerce product category: its own URL, its own archive template, its own product count — indexable and linkable exactly like a category you created by hand. It is not a filtered view or a query-string variant that search engines ignore. And because the rule underneath is a normal smart-category rule, the pages stay correct without maintenance: a product that changes colour leaves one subcategory and joins another on its own. Free vs Pro The complete rule engine is free, with no limits on the number of categories, rules or products. Free — everything you need to organise a catalog

• Unlimited nested AND / OR / NOT rule engine
• 35+ match fields, live preview and daily auto-refresh
• Category and tag rule sets
• Storefront sorting and out-of-stock handling
• Products block + [scwc_products] shortcode
• Ready-made templates and in-admin Help & FAQ

Pro — automation for growing stores

• Auto-generate a subcategory per attribute value (Colour, Size, Brand…)
• Combine two attributes into a cross-product of subcategories
• Editable name templates, e.g. {value1} {value2} {parent}
• New attribute values grow new subcategories on their own, daily
• Sales-intelligence fields: units sold 7 / 30 / 90 days, revenue, velocity, days since last sale
• Trending and stale-product auto-collection templates
• Category Tree overview page
• Priority support

Smart Categories Pro is a separate download distributed through Freemius. Full comparison and pricing: erenlabs.net/smart-categories-for-woocommerce

1.0.11

• Fixed: date rules (before, after, between, on, day of week, month, day of month) now follow the site's time zone instead of UTC, so a rule switches at local midnight. A "between" range includes the whole last day, also on a daylight-saving change.
• Fixed: an Editor adding the Smart Category Products block saw an empty category list. The list now loads for anyone who can edit posts; shop settings and rules still need a shop manager.
• Fixed: dates shown by the rule tester are in site time.

1.0.10

• Security: the bundled Freemius SDK is updated to 2.13.5, a security release that closes a stored cross-site scripting issue in its admin notices and two lower-severity issues. Update recommended.
• Fixed: a NOT group that still held an unfinished condition - such as the empty "title contains" that "Add group" starts with - matched every product, so saving it could fill the category with the whole catalogue. An unfinished condition now matches nothing whether or not it is negated, and the "why" trace marks it as unfinished.
• Tested with WooCommerce 11.2.

1.0.9

• Fixed: on a shop that started on the free plugin and later upgraded to Pro, the sales table the Pro rules read was never created. Every rule that sorts or filters by sales - best sellers, units in the last 7, 30 or 90 days, days since the last sale - matched nothing, and the site error log filled with "table does not exist". The upgrade now builds the table on the next page load; nothing to do but update.

1.0.8

• Listing: the plugin now shows in your Plugins list as "Smart Categories for WooCommerce - Automatic Product Category Rules", the same name it carries on WordPress.org.
• New: the upgrade screen explains the Eren Labs Store Suite in full - a block per plugin with a sample screen, what it does, who it suits and its own price, beside the bundle arithmetic and a purchase box.
• New: every plugin in that section has its own button through to its product page, plus a three-step upgrade walkthrough and five questions about the Suite licence.
• Translations: all seven bundled languages now cover the whole upgrade screen, including the labels inside the sample screens, and the "Smart Category Products" block description that had been English-only.

1.0.7

• New: Eren Labs Store Suite — the upgrade screen now shows the six-plugin suite and its single-licence bundle.
• New: the plugin accepts a Store Suite bundle licence; one key activates every Eren Labs plugin installed on the site.

1.0.6

• Compatibility: tested up to WooCommerce 11.1.
• Translations: the free package now bundles the Arabic, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese and Turkish catalogs, so the admin screens follow your site language without waiting for translate.wordpress.org.

1.0.5

• Updated: bundled Freemius SDK 2.13.4.

1.0.4

• Listing: summary and tags now say smart categories and dynamic categories.
• Fixed: price rules read the shop's list price whoever is logged in — a customer-group discount from a sibling plugin could file a product under the wrong price band during a save or refresh.
• Fixed: price rules could not see a variable product at all.
• Fixed: a half-typed rule (blank number, empty term list, unfinished negation) no longer matches the whole catalogue.
• Fixed: a rules file that could not be read no longer empties a category one product save at a time; Refresh no longer ignores a category that is switched off, and refreshing a deleted category is not reported as success.
• Fixed: the assigner no longer claims a product that has been deleted; the review count counted rows, not products.
• New: six more languages — Arabic, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese — alongside Turkish.
• Improved: the upgrade page and its Free vs Pro table meet WCAG AA contrast in both colour schemes.
• Tested with WooCommerce 11 and WordPress 7.1.

1.0.3

• Fixed: the Products block now carries its name, description and icon on the server too, so it is listed correctly as "Smart Category Products" everywhere (previously the WordPress.org listing derived a raw name from the block slug).

1.0.2

• Changed: every shared registry name now carries the plugin prefix to avoid collisions with other plugins — the shortcode is [scwc_products], the block is scwc/products, the REST namespace is scwc/v1 and the WP-CLI command is wp scwc.
• Note: if you used the previous shortcode or block in your content, update them to the new names.
• Fixed: the shortcode now matches the tag documented in the readme.
• Fixed: the block and shortcode no longer count products that are hidden from the catalog towards the product limit, so they always show as many products as you asked for.

1.0.1

• New: first-run Smart Start onboarding — ready-made category suggestions computed from your own catalog, with live product counts and one-click creation.
• New: a clear result screen after creating a category (products added, view-on-store link) and after generating subcategories (parent + children overview).
• New: in-admin Help & FAQ page.
• Pro: live generation preview — see every subcategory a template would create, with product counts, before generating.
• Pro: Category Tree page — all smart categories and their generated children as a collapsible tree.
• Pro: optional "Also create empty combinations" mode for pre-building a season's structure.
• Improved: clearer action hierarchy in the create flow, connection-error retry on generation, full Turkish translation refresh.

1.0.0

• First release: the unlimited nested AND/OR/NOT rule engine (35+ fields, live preview, daily auto-refresh, manual-assignment-safe), category and tag rule sets, storefront sorting & out-of-stock handling, and a products block — plus the Pro subcategory generator and sales-intelligence fields.