WooCommerce products - can't sell them without a consult

Modified on Mon, 20 Oct at 9:55 AM

QUESTION

I've got some products I want to make intentionally out of stock (as we can't sell them without a consult)

and I know I can mark a product using the prevent disabling flag in REX to turn off stock control.

I however don't know if it will force the 'in stock' flag in WOO or if I can control that manually.

ANSWER

yes we have different methods for woo to achieve this.

Disable stock management - Using prevent disabling
Use a plugin or custom code to manually set the product's stock status meta value (_stock_status) to "outofstock"
Add a notice explaining that a consultation is required

Change the product type or add conditional checkout restrictions
Use a prominent notice on the product page explaining the consultation requirement
Optionally use a plugin like "WooCommerce Call for Price" or similar to replace the "Add to Cart" button with a contact form or message

Technically apparently ...

In the database
Find the wp_postmeta table
Click "Insert" to add a new row, or find an existing meta entry for your product and edit it
Fill in the fields:
- post_id: Your product's ID
- meta_key: _stock_status
- meta_value: outofstock
Click Insert/Update

I had flagged it as Prevent Disabling in Woocommerce and once updated selected the out of stock flag in Woo.

It looks like it kept the stock status that was last set.