YBO Coming Soon Products

Overview

YBO Coming Soon Products is a lightweight WooCommerce plugin developed by YBO Digital to manage products that are not yet ready to be sold.

WooCommerce products are frequently created before their final selling price, launch date or product information has been confirmed. Leaving these products with a blank or zero price can result in unclear catalogue displays, unwanted add-to-cart controls or products being made available for purchase prematurely.

The plugin automatically identifies products and variations with blank or zero prices and presents them as Coming Soon instead.

Coming Soon products remain visible in the WooCommerce catalogue but cannot be purchased. Their customer-facing price and purchase controls can be replaced with a clear, configurable Coming Soon label.

The plugin also provides product-level controls for cases where a product must be included or excluded manually, regardless of its current price.

Why This Plugin Exists

Products Created Before Pricing Is Finalised

Products may need to be added to WooCommerce before their selling prices have been received or approved.

This commonly occurs when:

• New product ranges are being prepared
• Product information is synchronised before pricing
• A product launch is being staged
• Supplier pricing is still outstanding
• A product must be visible for marketing purposes before it can be ordered

Without a controlled Coming Soon process, these products may display an empty price, an incorrect zero price or an inappropriate purchase button.

Preventing Accidental Zero-Price Purchases

A zero or blank price should not automatically mean that a product is free.

YBO Coming Soon Products prevents qualifying products from being purchased through the normal WooCommerce product page, catalogue controls, direct add-to-cart requests or custom purchase links.

The protection is applied through WooCommerce’s product purchasability and add-to-cart validation systems rather than relying only on hiding the visible button.

Maintaining Catalogue Visibility

Removing or hiding an unreleased product is not always desirable.

A business may want customers to see that a product or range is expected soon while preventing orders until pricing and availability have been finalised.

The plugin allows these products to remain visible in shop, category and search results while presenting a clear Coming Soon status.

Variable Product Protection

Variable products require more careful handling because individual variations may have different prices and release statuses.

The plugin evaluates individual variations independently. A zero-priced variation can be blocked without preventing customers from purchasing another correctly priced variation belonging to the same product.

A variable parent product is treated as Coming Soon only when all its visible variations qualify as Coming Soon.

How The Plugin Works

Step 1 – Evaluate the Product Price

The plugin checks the active WooCommerce price for each product or variation.

By default, a product is automatically classified as Coming Soon when:

• Its active price is blank
• Its active price is zero
• Its active price is below zero

Blank-price and zero-price detection can be enabled or disabled independently from the plugin settings.

Step 2 – Apply Product Overrides

Each WooCommerce product has a configurable Coming Soon status:

• Automatic – use the plugin’s configured price rules
• Force Coming Soon – classify the product as Coming Soon regardless of its price
• Exclude from Coming Soon – allow the product to operate normally regardless of the automatic price rules

This allows administrators to handle exceptions without changing the product’s underlying price.

Step 3 – Evaluate Product Variations

Individual variations can also be configured as:

• Automatic
• Force Coming Soon
• Exclude from Coming Soon

An automatic variation can inherit a forced or excluded status from its variable parent product.

This provides control at either the complete product level or the individual variation level.

Step 4 – Prevent the Product from Being Purchased

When a product or selected variation is classified as Coming Soon, the plugin marks it as non-purchasable through WooCommerce.

It also validates add-to-cart requests separately.

This provides protection against:

• Standard WooCommerce add-to-cart buttons
• Catalogue add-to-cart links
• Direct add-to-cart URLs
• Custom theme purchase controls
• Variation add-to-cart requests
• AJAX add-to-cart requests

Step 5 – Update the Customer-Facing Display

The plugin can replace the normal product price with a configurable Coming Soon label.

Administrators can choose to:

• Replace the price with the Coming Soon label
• Hide the price completely
• Retain the original WooCommerce price display

The normal catalogue add-to-cart control can be replaced with a non-clickable Coming Soon label.

A separate Coming Soon notice can also be displayed on the individual product page where the purchase form would normally appear.

Product Status Controls

Automatic Classification

Automatic classification retains the plugin’s simple default behaviour.

Products and variations are classified according to their current active price and the enabled blank-price or zero-price detection settings.

When a valid selling price is later added, the product automatically returns to normal without requiring an additional status change.

Force Coming Soon

The Force Coming Soon setting can be used for a correctly priced product that must not yet be sold.

This is useful when:

• A launch date has not yet arrived
• Stock has not yet been received
• Product information is still being finalised
• A product is being promoted before release
• Ordering must be temporarily prevented without removing the product

Exclude from Coming Soon

The Exclude setting allows a blank- or zero-priced product to bypass the automatic rules.

This can be used where zero is an intentional price or where another WooCommerce extension is responsible for determining the final selling price.

Exclusions should be used carefully because the plugin will no longer prevent the affected product or variation from being purchased.

Customer-Facing Display

The Coming Soon presentation can be adjusted from the plugin settings.

Available options include:

• Custom Coming Soon label
• Custom blocked-purchase notice
• Replace, hide or retain the price
• Display a non-clickable catalogue label
• Display a notice on the individual product page
• Enable or disable the plugin’s minimal front-end styling

The plugin’s built-in styling is deliberately limited so that the Coming Soon presentation can inherit the website’s existing WooCommerce and theme design.

Built-in styling can be disabled where the website theme or custom CSS provides the required presentation.

Dashboard and Product Management

The plugin provides a dedicated administration dashboard with separate sections for:
• Overview
• Settings
• Diagnostics

Overview
The Overview displays:
• Whether Coming Soon protection is enabled
• WooCommerce availability and version
• Number of Coming Soon products
• Number of Coming Soon variations
• Current automatic classification rules
• Recently updated Coming Soon items
• The reason each listed item was classified

The product summary can be refreshed manually when required.

WooCommerce Product List
A Coming Soon status column is added to the standard WooCommerce Products screen.
The column identifies products that are:
• Automatically Coming Soon
• Forced to Coming Soon
• Explicitly excluded

This allows administrators to review product availability without opening each product individually.

Diagnostics
The Diagnostics section provides a concise operational summary including:
• Plugin version
• WordPress version
• PHP version
• WooCommerce version
• Plugin enabled status
• Forced override count
• Excluded override count
• Cached Coming Soon product count
• Cached Coming Soon variation count

It also confirms the plugin’s principal compatibility and data-handling characteristics.

YBO Apps Integration

YBO Coming Soon Products appears beneath the shared WordPress administration menu:

YBO Apps → Coming Soon Products

The shared YBO Apps Overview provides access to the plugin alongside other installed YBO-developed applications.

This avoids creating a separate top-level WordPress menu for every YBO plugin and provides a consistent administration experience across the YBO plugin suite.

Configuration Settings

Enable Coming Soon Protection

The complete Coming Soon system can be enabled or disabled without deactivating the plugin.

When disabled, the plugin does not alter product purchasability, prices, product notices or catalogue controls.

Blank-Price Detection

Administrators can choose whether products and variations without an active price should automatically be classified as Coming Soon.

Zero-Price Detection

Administrators can independently choose whether products with a price equal to or below zero should automatically be classified as Coming Soon.

Price Display

Available price-display options are:

• Replace the price with the Coming Soon label
• Hide the price
• Keep the original price display

The selected display option does not change the product’s underlying WooCommerce price.

Catalogue Label

The normal product-loop purchase control can be replaced with a non-clickable Coming Soon label.

The product image and title links remain available so customers can still open and read the product page.

Individual Product Notice

A Coming Soon notice can be displayed on the individual product page in place of the normal purchase form.

Data Retention

Administrators can choose whether the plugin’s settings and product overrides should be deleted when the plugin is uninstalled.

This option remains disabled by default so that the configuration is preserved if the plugin is temporarily removed and later reinstalled.

Synchronisation Methods

Requirements

The plugin requires:

• WordPress 6.5 or later
• PHP 7.4 or later
• WooCommerce 8.0 or later

Support

YBO Coming Soon Products is a custom-developed WooCommerce solution by YBO Digital.

Support requests:
support@ybo.digital