WooCommerce Product FAQs

September 22, 2016

WooCommerce Product FAQs Plugin

Extends WooCommerce to allow for the asking, answering, and viewing of FAQs in a similar experience as on marketplaces like eBay and Amazon.

UPDATE As of 3.0.0, this plugin has the following requirements:

  • PHP 5.3+
  • WooCommerce 2.0.0+

If you have ever used eBay’s ‘Ask Buyer’ system before, you will know how this plugin behaves.
WooCommerce Product FAQs allows visitors to ask questions about specific products, get answers, and view other threads.
It also allows you, the store owner, to manually add questions to specific products.

Click here for a sample WooCommerce product page with some FAQs.

FAQ Notifications

Notifications are in place that will notify the admin of new questions, with links to administer each question.

Notifications are in place that will notify the asker when their question has been answered, with links to view the product.

Each notification email has a system to highlight the question specified in the email,
so in the case of numerous questions, the user does not have to hunt for his question.

To Do:

  • Add ajax loaders where ajax is used so the user knows that their request is being processed DONE

  • Consider adding inline registration option to FAQ form

Incompatibilities

  • Disqus – interferes with the comment_form function. Will hopefully rectify this soon.

  • 404 Redirected – strips $_GET parameters from URL, removing ‘View’ and ‘Preview’ functionality

Developers

= Available filters: =

Format: (filter ; filtered variable ; available variables: var1 (explanation [var type]), var2, var3, …)

All filters are prefixed/begin with woocommerce_faqs_

  • admin_faq_highlight_color ; Highlight color in the Dashboard when administering a question from the email link

  • front_faq_highlight_color ; Highlight color on the front-end when viewing a question from the email link

  • antispam_error_message ; Error message when the anti-spam check fails ; $result[‘message’] (error message [string]), posted form (full $_POST[array])

  • answerer_email ; Email for administering FAQs; $post_data (‘question_title’, ‘faq_author_name’, ‘product_title’, ‘question_content’ [array])

  • asker_email ; Email for the asker; $post_data (‘question_title’, ‘product_title’, ‘post_id’ [array])

  • answerer_email_subject ; Subject of administer email; same as answerer_email vars

  • answerer_email_message ; Final adminster message; same as answerer email vars

  • asker_email_subject; Subject of asker email; same as asker_email vars

  • asker_email_message; Final asker message; same as asker_email vars

  • answer_caps; Capability of answering questions

Installation

  1. Upload this plugin to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
  3. Visit WooCommerce -> Settings -> FAQs to manage the settings of the plugin
  4. Upon uninstallation (deletion) of this plugin, this plugin will delete its settings, but not the questions in the database

Usage

User Submitted FAQs

  1. A user will visit the single product page.
  2. They can click the “FAQs” tab, and view other questions, along with a question form.
  3. They may submit the form, pending all required information is submitted.
  4. You will receive an email with the product, question, and a link to administer the question.
  5. If you desire, you can click the ‘Approve’ link for that question (which just publishes it).
  6. After approving it, you can click ‘View’, to view it on the front-end.
  7. From the front-end, you may click that question to expand it and reply to it.
  8. Once you have replied to a question, the asker will receive an email with a link to that product’s page/faq tab.

Manual FAQ Entry

  1. Go to Products -> FAQs -> Add New
  2. Type a title (for reference, not display)
  3. Enter the question in the content area
  4. Choose the product to add the question to.
  5. Click Publish
  6. Immediately after publishing, you may click “Add Answer” in the “Answers” metabox to answer the question.

Screenshots

  1. Upon submission of a question

    Upon submission of a question

  2. An expanded faq

    An expanded faq

  3. Plugin settings

    Plugin settings

  4. Approve/preview/edit screen

    Approve/preview/edit screen

  5. Administrator previewing question on front-end (with quick approve)

    Administrator previewing question on front-end (with quick approve)

  6. Adding a FAQ Manually

    Adding a FAQ Manually

FAQ

The answer/reply form never shows up for me!

This plugin is currently incompatible with Disqus. For now, you will have to pick between these two plugins.

When I click “View” or “Preview”, the FAQ never shows up/is highlighted!

This plugin is currently incompatible with the 404 Redirected plugin. This plugin causes $_GET parameters to be stripped from the url.

Changelog

3.0.3

  • Fixed issue with post titles not showing in the admin

3.0.2

  • Sanitize/escape all the things
  • Full support for translation, including use of sprintf to wrap complete strings instead of concacentation
  • Fixed preview link for sites that do not have permalinks enabled
  • Switched to wp_json_send_* functions vs custom
  • Removed unnecessary term/meta caching for some queries
  • Fixed borked spinner on admin post row quick approve
  • Removed _antispam_error_message filter

3.0.0

  • Complete rewrite using namespaces vs class wrappers
  • Requirement of PHP 5.3+ added
  • Requirement of WooCommere 2.0+ added
  • Removed plugin boilerplate code

2.0.4

Resolved fatal error when Woo is deactivated

2.0.3

Resolved fatal error with PHP 5.2

2.0

Major update!

  • Added WooCommerce 2.1 compatibility
  • Completely updated/refactored to be based on the latest WordPress-Plugin-Boilerplate
  • Questions/answers formatted with microdata. Section now shows name and date of asker, and vcard of answerer. Requested by willcm.
  • Refactored notifications and capabilities – notifications now go to product author by default; answer capability is for product author an up (shop manager/admin).
  • A few more options to customize behavior:
    • Option to expand Q/A’s by default on tab
    • Option to set notification from name & email addresses
  • Added ability to manually add faqs to: (requested by [MacItaly] (https://wordpress.org/support/profile/macitaly)):
    • Specific products
    • All products
    • Specific categories
    • All categories
  • Added ability to disable asking functionality, so questions can only be added by users capable of editing products
  • Bugfixes

1.1.0

  • Fixed comment issues

1.0.9

  • Admin settings for tab title and priority

1.0.8

  • Full localization
  • Thanks to @OniX777 for partial localization and for Russian translation!
  • Replaced custom query arg function with add_query_arg
  • Lifted limit on faqs displayed per product (was using incorrect WP_Query param)

1.0.7

  • Hotfix to increase number of available products in FAQ editor to unlimited.

1.0.6

  • Filtered the post type columns to only include relevant information
  • Added ability to create FAQs from the admin
  • FAQs are now ordered by menu_order

1.0.5

  • Compatibility with WooCommerce 1.6.6

1.0.4

  • Fixed fatal error with theme_locals
  • Removed unnecessary comment filter
  • Reverted to $_GET paramaters and discovered incompatibility with 404 Redirected plugin

1.0.2 & 1.0.3

  • Better email support

1.0.1

  • Added $args to the comment_form function to disclude everything but the textarea.
  • Moved $_GET style requests to query_vars and parse_request

1.0.0

  • Initial release

Details

  • Version: 3.0.3
  • Active installations: 100
  • WordPress Version: 3.5.1
  • Tested up to: 4.7.29

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