Getting started with SWPL Product Filters

Last updated July 10, 2026

What SWPL Product Filters does

SWPL Product Filters gives your shop the filter sidebar shoppers expect: pick a category, narrow by style, metal, stone, size, or price, and watch the product list update instantly. Everything is computed from your own catalog ahead of time, so filtering stays fast even with tens of thousands of products, and it keeps itself current as products change – imports included. There are no outside services and nothing to maintain.

Installation

1. Go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin, upload the plugin zip, and click Install Now.
2. Click Activate. The plugin works with your WooCommerce catalog.
3. When licensing arrives for your copy, enter your license key where prompted. Until then the plugin runs unlocked.

It works before you configure anything

Out of the box, the plugin reads your catalog and turns on up to eight of its best filter groups – the details carried by the most products, with an option count a shopper can actually scan – plus the Categories list and Price. Saving the Settings tab once replaces those defaults with your choices entirely.

Initial setup

1. Open SWPL Product Filters in the WordPress admin menu. The filter sidebar settings table lists every product detail your catalog could filter by, one row per possible group.
2. Check Show on the groups you want shoppers to see, and drag the dotted handles to arrange them. The Categories row at the top controls the category list in the sidebar.
3. Optionally rename any group in the Label shoppers see column – your product data keeps its own name; only the storefront label changes.
4. Use Starts to decide whether each group opens expanded or folded. Shoppers can always toggle a group by clicking its title, and a group they have filtered by never starts folded.
5. Press Save settings. The storefront sidebar updates immediately – there is no separate publish step.

Reading the table

The Values column is the honest count of choices each group would offer, measured from your real products. A group needs at least 2 values to be a filter – with nothing to choose between, it is hidden on the storefront even when Show is checked. Rows that appear grayed out carry that detail only as plain text on your products, so they cannot filter anything yet; the companion article on Auto setup explains exactly how to make one usable, usually with one click.

Behavior settings

• Apply filters automatically (default: on) – products update the moment a shopper checks a box. Turn it off and an Apply button appears so shoppers compose several choices first.
• Price adjuster – choose a two-handle slider (from – to), a one-handle “up to” slider with nudge arrows, or two typed price boxes. Whichever you pick, the ends of the scale always land on real products, so sliding to the end of a rail can never produce an empty page.

What success looks like

Open a category page on the storefront. You should see the Categories list, your chosen filter groups in your order, and the price control you picked. Check a filter: the product grid, the counts beside every option, and the price rails all update to match. Each active choice becomes a chip at the top of the sidebar – clicking a chip removes just that filter, and Clear all appears beside the chips once anything is active.

Filtered views get their own shareable web address, so back, forward, refresh, and copied links all work. Category links are different on purpose: they navigate to the category’s real page, which is what search engines index – filter combinations stay out of search engines so your category pages remain the strong ones in results.

Frequently asked questions

A group I enabled does not appear on the storefront

The group has fewer than 2 selectable values in your catalog (see its Values column), or no product in the current category carries it. A filter with nothing to choose between is hidden on purpose. Fix the data – on the product or the import feed – and the group appears automatically once real values exist.

Counts or filters look out of date

The catalog summary updates itself on every product change, so this is rare – usually a site migration or database restore happened underneath it. An administrator can rebuild the summary from the command line with wp swpl-pf rebuild; a large catalog takes about a minute and a half.

Do I need to re-index after imports?

No. Adding or editing a product by hand, running an import, or a stock change refreshes that product’s entry immediately. There is nothing to schedule and no button to remember.