Live Category Filter for WooCommerce (wclcf)

This is a WordPress plugin I built to solve a UX problem unique to small WooCommerce shops: the default category filter is a dropdown that forces a full page reload for every selection — brutally slow on a 50-product menu.

Live Category Filter for WooCommerce replaces that dropdown with a row of chip toggles that filter the product grid instantly, in-place, with no reload. Multiple chips combine with OR semantics — tap “Chicken” + “Beef” and you see everything in either category. The current filter lives in the URL (?cats=chicken,beef), so visitors can share filtered views, browser back/forward works, and the page degrades gracefully when JavaScript is off — the server renders the filtered set directly.

The clever bit is the hybrid handoff: narrowing is instant client-side work, but broadening past what the server originally rendered triggers a single fetch to backfill missing products. Settings live under Settings → WC Live Category Filter: pick which categories show as chips, choose the order, toggle product counts. A [wclcf_filter_grid] shortcode brings the same filtering to any page beyond the shop archive.

Screenshots