By default, WooCommerce always shows the same featured products - until you manually adjust them. For shops with a large product range, this is a missed opportunity. Auto-Featured Products handles this automatically: every day, 10 different products are highlighted and yesterday's products disappear from the spotlight.

The plugin is free and is on GitHub: github.com/siekman-io/auto-featured-products

What does the plugin do?

  • Automatically selects 10 products to highlight daily
  • Removes the highlighted status of the previous day's products
  • Manual rotation possible from the admin dashboard
  • Admin overview with recently highlighted products
  • WP-CLI support for use in scripts and cron-jobs

WooCommerce Auto-Featured Products admin dashboard with list of recently featured products

Installation

Via WordPress dashboard:

  1. Go to Plugins → Add new plugin → Upload plugin
  2. Upload the .zip file of the plugin
  3. Click Install now and then Activate

Via FTP:

Extract the zip file and upload the folder to /wp-content/plugins/. Then activate the plugin via Plugins in the WordPress dashboard.

After activation, Auto-Featured appears as a menu item in the WordPress admin bar.

Use

The plugin runs automatically via a daily WordPress cronjob (wpscheduleevent). You don't need to set anything else.

If you want to perform the rotation immediately without waiting, use the manual button in the admin dashboard.

WP-CLI

If you have server access, you can also trigger the rotation via the command line:

wp auto-featured run

Handy to schedule as server-cron instead of WordPress-cron:

# crontab - daily at 06:00
0 6 * * * * cd /var/www/jouwsite && wp auto-featured run --allow-root

How it works

The plugin uses the built-in WooCommerce product status. Featured products have the _featured field set to yes in WooCommerce. On every rotation:

  1. Are all currently highlighted products set to no
  2. Any 10 products are selected and set to yes.
  3. The admin view is updated with the new selection

No custom database tables, no extra overhead - it builds purely on existing WooCommerce functionality.

// frequently asked questions
How many products are highlighted daily?

Standard 10 products per day. The previous day's products automatically lose their highlighted status.

Can I trigger the rotation manually?

Yes, there is a manual option in the admin dashboard to perform the rotation immediately without waiting for the daily task.

Does the plugin work with WP-CLI?

Yes, you can trigger the rotation via wp auto-featured run - useful for cron jobs on the server.

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