An online catalog is a store that has its own website (made in Woocommerce), but without having implemented any payment method. In the online catalogs, visitors / customers are restricted from accessing the shopping and checkout pages. Thus, they are not visible: the add to cart buttons in the product pages and the icons in the Header section that refer to the order and cart completion pages.

Who uses an online Catalog?

Online catalogs are used by stores that:

• works only in physical format, and the website is only to promote its product types;
• store prices vary from day to day (may depend on market fluctuations), making it expensive to administer products;
• if the products are services, the prices can be set on the spot depending on the customer’s need or workload;
• presentation of products for B2B (Business to Business) business – the products are not available to the general public, but only to certain partner companies.

How to activate the online Catalog mode on a store created in Woocommerce?

There are at least 2 ways to do this:

1. By using a plugin. There are many plugins that do this, such as Advance Catalog Mode, or Yith Mode Catalog. These plugins have a free version and are very easy to use. Features:
   • they can change the text in the “Add to cart” button and create a redirect when clicked on it, to a contact form;
   • can delete the “Checkout” and “Cart” pages, respectively;
   • removes product prices.
2. By adding code snippets to the function.php file.

To hide the add to cart buttons:

remove_action( 'woocommerce_after_shop_loop_item', 'woocommerce_template_loop_add_to_cart'); 
remove_action( 'woocommerce_single_product_summary', 'woocommerce_template_single_add_to_cart', 30 );

To replace the “see product” button text:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_is_purchasable', '__return_false');

For price hiding:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_get_price_html', 'QuadLayers_remove_price'); 
funcția QuadLayers_remove_price($preț){    
    return ; 
}